A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

Grandcourt. Deronda. refrains from uselessly suggesting to her that she
should feel .differently, but instead indicates to her a meditation technique.
She can use her fear to intensify her self-awareness and provide
a mea~s oj self-restraint •. ~ofldii·aamOlrl::she'S··Gwendolen in thesELwords:
Vum your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the
idea of increasing that remorse which is so bitter to you. Fixed
meditation may do a great deal towards defining our longing or
dread. We are not always in a state of strong emotion, 8,nd when
we are calm we can use our memories and gradually change the bias
of our fear, as we do our tastes. Take your fear as a safeguard.
It is like quickness of hearing. It may make consequences passion':"
ately present to you. Try to take hold of YO~8ensibility, and
use it as if it were a faculty, like vision. .
This passage shows very clearly that George Eliot had no doubts that the
will WaS educable, and her analogy with the organs of sense--"quickness
of hearing," "faculty of vision"--indicates that she accepts that the
mind is "inside" the physical organism, and therefore is 3ubject to the
same laws~ Far from rejecting; therefore, as the behaViourist~ categar~
ioally ao; the "oausal 'efficacy'! 19 of the feeling of self':aWarenes~,
Geo:rg~ Eliot has Deronda attempt to proVid~ a "felt purpose'; ~ by offer~
ini some motivating force to stiff~ti Gwendolents Will. The only thing
that is in question is whether Gwendolen has sufficient strength of will
to carry out Deronda t s proposed programtne~
If the laws of causality operate universally it is difficult to
imagine a P~/looPhole through which a person can choose to exert his
will. Such a loophole, however, is found in the distinction that was
drawn between laws which could not be altered and laws which could be
adapted for the purpose of instituting desired changes. In his discussion
of the age-old problem of free will and determinism, Donald Mackay points
out that the vexing question for moralists is not whether they are free
to choose but whether they are free to change.
21
And it is this aspect
r""-­
of the determinism dilemma that most occupies George Eliot ..
This is the
importance of her advice to Mrs Ponsonby. It is anticipa.ted earlier in a.