A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

159.
Tulliver, to a certain extent, anu Dorothea Brooke, both morallyinspired
heroines, set up their own images of a better self towards
which they strive. More usually in George Eliot novels, hO"NeVer, the
notion of a better self is carried in the mind of some loved one. George
Eliot tells us in Middlemarch that "even much stronger mortals than
FredVincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they
love best. "rhe theatre of all my actions is fallen' said an antique
personage when his chief friend was dead; anu they are fortunate who
get a theatre where the audience demands their best." 9
Unfortunately the idea that other people have about us may not necessarily
be helpful. We have already seen the damagin{:; effect of other
people's expectations on a character like Lydgate who W8,S partially
defeated by Rosamond's intransigence and by the power of gossip in a
community like Middlemarch. Rosamond expects him to play his role in
her myth of herself as a woman with a certain class distinction;
Middlemarch expects the worst and is too quick to come to a low estimate
of Lydgate's actions. Lydgate's anguish at having fallen short of
his ideal self is paralleled by Ladislaw's recognition that he is sliding
into that "l,leasureless yielding to the small solicitations of circumstance,
which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous
bargain." 10 Both Ladislaw and Lydgate show the possible moral
failure if the goal of the ideal self is not reached, just as the
earlier examples of Tito, Pxthur, and Bulstrode reveal the moral dangers
of concealment and distrust.
In this analysis, George Eliot's debt to Feuerbach becomes clear;
his thinking reinforced and confirmed her own thoughts. A brief
rtsum{ of Feuerbach' s intellectllal position v,ill facilitate comparison
betneen his views and George Eliot's.