A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

138.
herself is somewhat ambivalent; she can never completely conceal her
distaste for 1'{hat she has Tito describe as a "monkish vision, bred of
fasting and fanatical ideas." 23 Dino fails to elicit, by a little
brotherly questioning, the facts about Romola's intended marriage, and
George Eliot's judgement of him is quite unequivocal; she describes the
specifically Christian interpretation of his vision of Romola's distressed
and alienated condition as coming from "the shadowy region where hunan
souls seek wisdo:,,11 in contrast, as she says, to lithe human sympathies
24
which are the very life and substance of our wisdom." Yet, as 1/11" Lyon
insists in Felix Holt, Itthe right to rebellion is the right to seek a
higher rule, II. 25 and it is to seek a higher rule that Dino has deserted
his father. Geore;e Eliot herself was unquestionably avw.re of this conflict
between "individual suffering"and "theoretic conviction, II and says quite
explicitly that "if such energetic belief, pursuin8 a grand and remote
end, is often in danger of becoming a demon-worship, in ':,hich the votary
lets his son and daughter pass through the fire \nth a readiness that
hardly looks like sacrifice, tender fellow-feeling for the nearest has
its danger too, and is apt to be timid and sceptical towards the larger
aims without which life cannot rise into religion." 26
The search for a commitment, a "duty, II is very relevant to a study
of Middlemarch, whether we consider Lydgate's medical researches,
Casaubon's misdirected mythological quest, Fred Vincy's discovery pf
"work" in Caleb Garth's sense, or Dorothea's resigned acceptance that
she can be effective only as a wife and mother. It also illuminates
George Eliot's treatment of the much maligned character, Will Ladislaw.
The earljr part of the novel shows Will indulging himself by chasing
inspiration throughout the length and breadth o~
Europe. It appears that
"Will had declined to fix on any more precise destination than the en-