A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

112.
truth, that moral judgements must r~in false and ho~low,
unless they
are checked and enlightened bya perpetual reference to the special
circumstances that mark the individual lot. 11 59
In the same passage she extols the necessity of our acquiring the
"insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or
from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a fellow-feeling
with all that is human. 1I
60 We can recognise here George Eliotts
attempt to enlarge the moral sensibilities of her readers. But the
major point is fully made. Until such time as we have achieved such a
state of moral awareness, and such a state is rare indeed, th~n we
must accept and obey the social sanctions and prohibitions of our particular
community. Only in an ideal, utopian vlorld when we have all
transcended our state of petty egoism will such s~nctions
and prohibitions
be unnecessary_ She discusses, for example, in Romola, the
part played by remorse in advancing moral awareness. Painful as it is,
our civilisation has not yet progressed to that state of sympathetic
moral feeling where such dread can be dispensed with. She describes it
as lithe initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire" which
checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations
which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the
absence of feeling. "It is good, II sing the old Eumenides, in
Aeschylus, "that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul,
forcing it into wisdom--good that men should carry a threatening
shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else, how should
they learn to revere the right?" That guardianship may become
needless; but only when all outward law has become needless-­
only when duty 6
and love have united in one streal!1 and made a
common force. 1
Vfuat can we conclude about George Eliotts relativism? The first point
is that she saw only too clearly the dangers of a type of individual
judgement based on egoism and on the blind certainty that there is no
need ever to look for further evidence. I have especially mentioned
Middlemarch in this connection. Mrs Farebrother's refusal, for example,