A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

1
to scrutinise the evidence before her
her to meke a harsh aLd. uncompromising.
judr'ement.against Mr Bulstrode •. She, regretfully, has to
concede that the rumours that Lydgate is Bul~:)trodet s natural son have
no foundation, when she learns that :Gydgate "had never heard of Bulstrode tl
before he came to Middlemarch. She retorts, however, "with an air of
precision:.' ••• 'That is satisfactory so far as Mr Lydgate is concerned .....
/)2
But as to Bulstrode-.,..the report may be true of some other son. It II .
The seco~1d point is that until sympathy, the necessary ingredient of \
moral ewarenes s, :i s eequ:ired, then :if we are to a vo:id moral snarer..)', we I
must intensify not relax the rules. Only those who are at the upper end
of George Eliot's moral scale are permitted, after ouch" soul-searching,
to set aside the rules. And they are qualified to do 30 because of their
sensitivity towards others and their capacity to empathise, to ignore
their egoistic preoccupations and preferences in the service of others.
Dorothea, in Uiddlemarch, is a clear example of such a morally evolved
character. She spends a night wrestling with her grief that Vfill is lost
~ ~; t .
to her for ever, not just because a marriage to him
QuId be unsuitable
in the eyes of the world, but because his potentially adulterous relation-
~hip
with Rosamond Lydgate removes him from her respect and tarnishes his
"brightness;t 63 She finally silences her own clammering needs and asks
herself the question: '''What should I dr)-:...how should I act nov1" this·
very day, if I could clutch my ovm pain~
and compel it to silence, and
think of those three?'" 64 And the answer she offers herself, :ilends her
again to uuddlemarch, to Rosamond, to
once more to represent to her
the truth of Lyclgate t s involvement with Bulstrode and. Raffles. George
Eliot not only allows her, however temporexily, to stock.Rosamond (made
vulnerable by Will's fierCe denunciation on the previous day) out of her
egoistic narrowness so that she generously admits that it is Dorothea
whom Will loves. She also Dermits Dorothea to take arc unusual and un-