A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

142.
She accepts in these words a Ciuty lai(l on her long before she had a
ohoicein the l!lr:ltter. In her ttNotes on TheS:e.anish Gypsyand1Jragedy in
general", George Eliot describes its subject matter. "I saw, II she claims,
that "it might be taken as a symbol of the part which is played in the
general human lot by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of
the fact that what we call duty is entirely made up of such conditions."
38
If evolutionary psychology indicates that we can find in a study of
our ancestors an explanation of man's present condition, this new emphasis
on hereditary conditions implies tl~t
we are not only strineently
circumscribed by the present state of society but that we are now further
encumbered by a racial past which George Eliot presents as equally
binding as our personal past. Thomas Pinney in his article, liThe Authori
ty of the Past in George Eliot's Novels", remarks that lithe past is still
to bind" her characters, but it has been tlnewly interpreted not as a
living body of experience but as the sum of remote hereditary conditions."
39
Let us nov; return to Daniel ~nda, which even more than The S.l2anish
Gypsy shows the pressure of this "hereditary, entailed N€;}mesis ll 1 ... 0 in
the farm of a racial duty. liThe past determines duty for Deronda, II
Pinney informs us, IIjust as it does for Maggie, with the significant
difference that Deronda 1 s is a 'past' he never had •••• Clearly in the
earlier novels the authority for t he past is inseparable from the affect-
41
ions that grow out of personal experience; in Daniel D,eronda it is not."
Pinney later describes Deronda's acceptance of his Jewish mission in
terms which are reminiscent of Comte's belief that the ultimate moral
value comes in service to a national, not merely a familial or social
cause. He claims that Uloyalties •• • Dust ng¥l,be given to the service
of the whole race. The change is away from direct personal relationships
and towarcls the service of collective entities. It 42