A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

8.
ible laws--and work towards the yielding, the dynamic and the 'personal
world of individual moral growth, and ultimately of moral growth that
comes about as the result of the influence of one personality on another.
An analysis of ideas is constantly in danger of becoming too abstract, too
remote from the actual novels. We are not examining tracts or philosophic
treatises. It may be exciting to track dovm certain of George Eliot's
ideas and r.clate them to contemporary thought , but we must not lose sight
of the fact that the real focus of our attention is the struggling individual
as his life is unfolded within the world of the novels. The rich
texture of George Eliot t s thought, the set of mental constructs by which
she sought to understand the world she lived in and the endless variety
of human nature, provide a framework for the novels. They constitute a
mental scaffolding. If we examine the novels in terms of this scaffolding,
we can recognise where it offers a spaciousness for the character's development
and where it imposes restriotions on oharacter grmrth and plot.
Once we have identified George Eliot's basio moral and psychological
assumptions we can evaluate their effectiveness as determinants of aotion,
and assess their impact on her control of authorial distance and on the
possibilities for choice that she offers her charaoters.
Thus in one area, George Eliot's system of beliefs provides a fruitful
tension in the novels. In her efforts to depiot both-the '~ard,
unacoommod.
ating Act ual" 20 and t he struggling individual, she has to shift her perspective
from the one to the other, and reveal the dissonance that exists
between what the character believes is the case and what really is the case.
This is the source of much of the irony of the novels so that while, for
example, we rejoioe at Gwendolen Harleth's defiant energy, we can see the
pathos of her having wandered into a swamp wearing her satin shoes. 21
Similarly the scientific and literary allusions create a network of
references which relate the personal and the individual circumstances to