A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

111.
see the world entirely in her orm terms, that is, in terms of her egoistic
desire.
An eminent philosopher among roy friends, who can dignify even
your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science,
has shmm me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive
surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid,
will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions;
but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination,
and lo! the scratches .... .rill seem to arrange themselves
in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It
is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially,
and it is only your candle which produces the flattering
illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an
exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The
scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person
now absent--of Miss Viney, for example. Rosamond had a Providence
of her ovm who had kindly made her more charming than other girls,
and who reemed to have arranged Fred's illness and lKr Wrench's
mistake in order to bring her and Lydgate 'Nithin effective proximity.
57
Feelings based on egoism are dangerous and cannot be allowed free rein;
and yet feelings are all-important. How does George Eliot resolve this
conflict? IneVitably, by prescribing certain kinds of feeling. Most
feelings have to be disregarded and most people are not sufficiently advanced
morally to be allowed to trust entirely to their feelings without
reference to some socially-valuable goal or principle. For instance, this
is how she sees the influence of Evangelicalism on the town of Milby in
Janet's Re;eentance. By means of Evangelicalism, "a principle of subordination,
of self-mastery, has been introduced into l.5t man'i] nature; he is
1 b 0.1 f · . d' . d' I ,,58 A
no onger a mere un e 0 ~mpress~ons, es~res, an ~mpu ses. l\
comment in The ~ ~ ~ Floss sums up in general terms why Maggie has
been abandoned and rejected by Tom and by the inhabitants of St Ogg's.
It reveals George Eliot's insistence on the necessity of individual
judgements but stresses as well the quality of feeling behind those
jUdgements. "The casuists have become a byword of reproach," she tells
us, "but their perverted spii:it of minute discrimination was the shadow
of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed--the