A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

"Stran{Se, that some of us, II vll'ites George Eliot in I.1idd.lemarch,
"with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while
we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain "where our persistent self
pauses and awaits us." 1 (my italics) This indication that we have a
"persistent self" in addition to the many other references throu{Shout
the novels, to "Better selves,1I 2 u\'lorse selves," 3 "inner selves," 4
and "past selves, II 5 suggests stron~ly that in G-eorge Eliot t s view the
self is a stable entity_ This does not, of course, preclude the possibility
of maturing or growing. "Character," after all, as she tells
us,
"is not cut in marble"; 6 it is a "process and an unfolding." 7
The embryological image indicates a blueprint for change vdthin certain
fixed limits. Describing George Eliot t s "stable core of ego, II 8 W. J_
Harvey comments that
Her characters may ask themselves, lr~Vhere or why did I go wrong
in the past?" But they do not ask the prior questions, IIYmo was
that tIt which went "wrong in the past',? How is that tI' related
to the present 'I' which asks the question? How far is the
present 'I' responsible for what that totally different past 'I'
did?" Of course, th:1:s is not to say that George Eliot ••• denies
the facts of change and development. But change is still reconciled
to the idea of a stable ego; one's identity lies precisely
in the unique pattern of past changes whiqh constitutes one's
individuality. 9
This is a far remove from Humets "bundle"
10
theory of the self, constantly
changing, and given an illus~ cohesion only by memory patterns
in the mind. Evolutionary psychology emphasised the inheritance of
ancestral tendencies and patterns of response (Spencer's "partially-
. t dn" 11) 1 ~ ·1' , . t 1 th t th .
~nna e prepare ess ; nne. my ana ys~s maKes ~ c ear a ase ~nherited
characteristics were thought of as serving an integrative flimction.
They provided the base line of a triangle; but the angles distended from