A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

193.
scription. Soon after our introduction to her we have been told that
"solitude in any wide soene impressed her with an undefined feeling of
,
immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the midst of whioh she was
.. helplessly incapable of asserting herself." 4
Vfuether it is presented ironically or vdth pathos, Gwendolen's failure
to "knowt' the world is still shown to be a moral one. Thus when we
read that she has "no permanent oonsciousness of other fetters, or of
more spiritual restraints," 5 our notion of her moral flippancy is reintorced.
On the one side is the confused, ignorant individual and on
6
the other, the inexorability of the ''hard unacoommodating Actual."
Only those George Eliot characters who are able to make a realistic
appraisal both of themselves and of the forces ranged against them
show true moral worth •. There is no escaping the stringency of this
message; it is reiterated in novel after novel.
Gwendolen is presented with irony and later with compassion. More
frequently a charaoter's failure to see clearly is 8 major s~urce
of
dramatio irony, a valuable source of tension in the novels between what
is the case and what a character hopes is the case. The more generalised
perspective we are given ana charaoter enables us to see what he cannot:
the reality of the situation in the external world to which he is blind,
and the mauvaise.!2!. by which he tries to oonvince himself that he is
behaving honourab~.
George Eliot is masterly in her analysis of such
bad faith, "the twists and turns of the corrupted self as it seeks to
evade truth and responsibility." 7
:Arthur Donnithorne's meditations about Hetty at the beginning of their
affair provide a striking example of how the exposure of bad fa! th generates
irony. Arthur recognises fully the dangers of continuing this
relationship and sensibly resolves that ''he must not see her alone again;
--
he must keep out ot: her way." 8 We then follow the convolutions of his