A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

1.30.
has sacred virtue.!! 19 She finds in herself, accordingly, the courage to
question Savonarola's motivation and accuses him of partisanship and injustice.
She asks, "a1most with bitterness, U
!lIDo you, then, know so
well what will further the coming of Godts kingdom, father, that you
will dare to despise the plea of mercy--of justice--of faithfulness to
yourownteaching? •• Take care, father, lest your enemies have some
reason when they say, that in your visions of what will further God's
kingdom you see only what will strengthen your own party.'" 20 She is
shattered at having spoken to her spiritual mentor in such terms and
George Eliot hastens to explain to us, (intrusively r think), that "it
was inevitable that she should judge the Frate unfairly on a question of
individual suffering, at which ~ looked with the eyes of personal
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tenderness, and he with the eyes of theoretio conviction."
We see Romola, having rejected Savonarola's leadership, seeking to
find another basis for assessing moral situations. The ~ate's public
insistence on his own infallibility, (Whatever his private doubts), has
alienated her and revived her conditioned distaste for visions and
priestly fanaticism. Romola's moral confusion is such that lithe vision
of any great purpose, any end of existence which could ennoble endurance
and exalt the common deeds of a dusty life vlith divine ardours, was
utterly eclipsed for her now by the sense of a confusion in h~n things
which made all effort a mere dragging at tangled threads, all fellowship,
either for resistance or advocacy, mere unfairness and exclusive-
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ness."
Romola t s moral confusi on entails what would nowadays be called
"cognitive disequilibrium." 2.3 It would be seen as a very necessary stage
in a person's progress to a higher level of moral awareness. The following
twentieth century account of moral development offers an illuminating
gloss to Romola's growing paint, "Moral discourse between levels, then,