A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

184.
than work and money. The very fact that he can choose to remain poor,
that there is another kind of life available to him (which he has decided
to reject) places him in opposition to those of his own class who
cannot make such choices. His supposed eccentricity has to be seen
against his political views which are reactionary, authoritarian, and
paternalistic .. His electioneering speech against the widening of the
suffrage until everyone is deserving of the voiie reveals that he fully
shares his creator's distrust of democracy. The sanctimonious "Address
to Working Men by Felix _..Holt" contains more of the same sentiments.
Ignorant self-seeking voters are a threat to the well-being of the state.
"The nature of things in this world has been determined for us beforehand,"
he declares, "and in such a way that no ship can be expected to
sail well on a difficult voyage, and reach the ~ight
port, unless it is
well manned: the nature of the winds and the waves, of the timbers, the
sails and the cordage, will not aooommodate itself to drunken" mutinous
sailors. It 50 Vie must not imagine, therefore,' that Felix 1;s actually
achieving anything new or original; he is preaching resignation and cooperation.
Deronda's break with his Etonian-, Oxonian-educated \'I'or1d is presented
as entirely justified; the upper middle-class society we are
sho1m in this novel is tedious and artificial. Deronda feels that the
sorts of professions open to him, politics or law, for example, are insufficiently
demanding. He is secretly seeking some quest, some row~ntio
challenge. It comes in the form of a duty laid on him by his wholehearted
acceptance of his Jewishness and his resolve to follow faithfully
the trail that Ezra started. He sets out for the Middle East.
There is no ironic reporting of Deronda's decision; it occurs near the
end of the book and we do not even have the choric disapproval and
ribaldry that is accorded, by unimaginative characters certainly, to