A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

175.
He enjoys the intellectual tlu'ill of politickine, of playing one group
off against another because this gives him a sense of power and superiority.
His political betrayals cannot even be justified on the grounds
that tAey are a response to a strong partisanship or loyalty_ Tito has
simply converted his rootlesssness, nis insufficient reletionship vdth
his ovm past into a political advantage.
I set Gwendolen alongside Maggie to show opposite ends of this moral
axis: I could set Will Ladislaw alongside Tito as an example of a character
who ha5 a similarly d:isplaced childhood but who, after his initial
dilettanteism, settles dovID to a life of service to the community. Under
Dorothea's influence and in his desire to deserve her good opinion,
Ladislaw finds a place for himself and a "dutytl to others, which shows
him to be of quite different calibre to Tito. Tito acknowledges only the
one duty and that is to himself.
In discussing the problem of rootlessness, I have shovm that George
Eliot distinguishes between two sorts of people. There are those, like
Gwendolen Or Deronda or Will Ladislaw, whose displaced childhoods are
no fault of their ovm and who all, in their different ways, feel the lack
of a settled and certain past. Then there is a character like Tito Melema,
who-consciously exploits his lack of rootedness because such a state
provides a freedom from bondage to his fellow creatures and an escape
from the ties of duty. Deronda's mother, vdth her vain attempt to discard
her Jewishness, and Hetty Sorrel, whose roots are shallow,
25
we are
told, notwithstanding her family connections, belong in the same categcry
as Tito, and like him, are judged to be morally reprehensible.
George Eliot relates this question of a character's rootedness both
to his psychological and his m0ral well-being. It is not a matter of
denicting psychological health in moral terms or moral strength in