A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

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orthodox step, discard her fortune and offer herself to the man she loves.
But even Dorothea is not shovm as acting "indi viduelistically" in the
sense that she has rejected all principles of moral guidance. Before
she asks herself the vital question, we are told that "she yearned towards
the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her
errant will." 65 The words "perfect Right II show us that Ceorge Eliot is
setting up an absolute standard of moral goodness. She may have retained
the rugged individuality and independence fostered by the religious individualism
of her Puritan background; she may have had the intellectual
honesty and courage to accept relativism in the sphere of knowledge; but
in moral matters she attacks and exposes the dangers inherent in ethical
individualism. We can hear again the earnest and ringing tones with which,
according to Myers, she pronounced to him that "Butyl! was "peremptory
and absolute. II 66 In ethical concerns, therefore, G'eorge Eliot is an
absolutist. VIe have a moral scale in George Eliot's novels but those who
mount to the upper end of this scale are not allowed a free range of
choices across a wide area of possibilities. In fact their range of
options narrows; it does not open out. This constitutes a paradox in
George Eliot's thought, not unlike her attempt to reconcile a belief in
a causally determined universe with her belief in the possibility of
educating the will. Her solution to this shows th\lt she is a "soft deter-
minist," one of those who believe that "freedom is necessity understood."
67
In the sphere of morality, George Eliot resolves the problem of ethical
individualism in a similar way. It might be expected that if any of her
characters should be granted the freedom to act on their own warrant, it
would be such characters as Romola, or Dorothea, or Deronda. But paradoxically
such characters have not more freedoo of choice, but less. Since
George Eliot claims there is a principle of "perfect Right" and since her
characters evolve to the point where they recognise this principle and