A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

127.
quality of her judsements, the rigidity t',hich has caused her to adopt a
condescending superiority towarrlsotherpeople. Her f'irmness of principle,
while in many ways it is shown to be a nobility, the hereditary pride of
the Bardi family, nonetheless masks an inflexibility of purpose. Tito,
with his moral suppleness, his lack of adhesion to any other principle
than that of his ovm well-being, damages those with whom he comes into
contact, especially when they have expectations of him that he is unable
or unwilling to meet. Romola's unflinching integrity is also, in its
way, destructive. As she asks herself, II What if the life of Florence
was a web of inconsistencies? Was she, tilen, something higher, th!ilot she
could shake the c1_ust from off her feet, and say tThis world is not good
enough for me. '[" And she recognises quite truly that, "if she had been
really higher, she would not so easily have lost all her trust."
She returns again to Florence and even to the despised Tito, if he
should still need her, although we already know of his death. She now
devotes her lifle to Monna Brigida, Tessa, and Tito's two children. Outwardly"
at least, her life is very little different from what it was
when George Eliot herself described it as "self-repressing" and "colourless.
II 12 She still accepts the demands of outward ties, of duty, and
indeed of sacrifice. She manifests the lIstoical resignation" 13 which
George Eliot regards as such an essential ingredient in this life. It
is Romola's inner life, her attitudes that have changed. At the beginning
she accepted her role as her father's unceasing attendant because
.
she loved him, and she would have done the same for Tito; later she fell
completely under the sway of Savonarola and accepted, as a Florentine
woman, the duties towards the sick and the poor which he laid upon her.
11
But she was not acting freely; she chose, certainly" to become his disciple
and therefore accepted his injunctions ~s
her duty,'but she was
still, in a sense, constrained. Only at the end of the book, where we