A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

110 ..
The third, and for the present discussion, the most important unitideo"
"ethical individualism,1I can be seen immediately to be an extension
of the
ous tYro. The outline of relieious individualism particlly
ant ed it. "Ethical individualism" as Lukes it is that view
I
of morality '.,;hich states that "the SOUT'ce of moral ve.lues and prir,ciples,
the creator of the very criteria of marcel evaluation is the individual. II 51
He points out that this belief is latent in Knnt and RUrne, although they
both .avoided its implications. Hume' s belief that
can form no ",7ish
\'l h ~o " h has not a re f erence to society ,,52 per tl y an t··· ~c1.pa t es 0 b-Jec t" lons
to the re13.tivism implicit in his theories. Such social orientation offers
.
a probable restraint against unbridled egoism and selfishness.
'1'he extension of ethical indi vi G.ualism into the t,·:entieth century
produced the "acute dilemmas" of "existentialism, emoti vism, 2.nd
. t·· II 53 ThO tOO t 0 b I - - 4h - 0
prescr~p 1. v:Lsm. ~s nega l ve PlC ure lS a anceCi. by v e c.La:Lm -'-h v a t
"there is an important diff'erence between autonontf" G.s:fined as beifl.g
"self-determined deciuing and choosing on the basis c:f consciousness of
one's self' and one's situation--and the extreme and intransigent moral
:,pluralism implicit in ethical individualism. n 54
k-c'.-
--
The saving phrase aut2!lQl1\Y, in keeping with trv& twentieth-century
bias towards self-realisation. George , vliththe typical nineteenthcentury
preoccupation with moral improvement, relies on moral awareness,
or moral intelligence, to coin a phrase in line \'lith ~_1er
~tupidity."
own IImoral
55 The primary componeni; of this, as we L'1Ve seen, is sym-
II
pothy. Sympa.thy is thus the "so:]..vent of' 56 0 f t'
t;;J....L.HF, necossary l nere
is to be Ita
influence of ide8.s. u '1'he disast::,··.>us consequences
that follow from allo".':ing OUT' egoistic bias to colour our j
have already been sho\':n in George Eliot t s de:::criptio:r:s of
t S
self-deceptions. She is even more trenchant in the fe.fious "pier-gl'lssil
metaphor in M1.dcllemar...£b"
which describes Rosamond Viney's capacity to