A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

10.
our twentieth~entur.Y preoccupation with freedom and autonom,y, I still
maintain that with certain characters, George Eliot suggests a greater
degree of freedom than she has really provided. Maggie Tulliverts habit
of self-renunciation incapacitates her and makes it almost impossible
rCfi:. her to "choose" at all. Dorothea Brooke looks as if she is making a
dramatic choice in marrying W:ill Ladislaw, but the only alternative she
is offered is to stagnate at Lmvick. Derondats acceptance of his Jewishness
is constantly foreshadowed throughout the novel; he has a curriculum
vitae. Yet we are asked to commend his "choice." Vie seem to have been
offered in these oharacters greater freedom than is actually the case. An
analysis of George Eliot's fundamental ideology reveals that she holds her
characters, situations, and indeed her readers in too confining a hand.
This constitutes an undoubted limitation in the novels.
~~ first chapters examine her basic ideas. The later chapters offer
a critical assessment of those ideas. They seek to substantiate my claim
that George Eliot's incorporation of fundamental nineteenth-centur,y
assumptions into the texture of her novels constitutes in some areas an
enriohment and in others a decided limitation.
Let us now begin our analysis of George Eliotts system of beliefs
with an examination of how she achieved her compromise between
"necessitarianism" and the ability "to ivill strongly. tI 25