A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

Tragedy, ..
George Eliot t s novels present us wi:~i'l
the suffering of individual
human beings 3_5 they struggle to come to terms with. ' .. :;').6
modating Act'val whioh has never eon::mlt,,,,d O'l.ll" taste
Ithard unaccom,·""
is entirely unselect."
1 This would seem to offer a bi.ueprint :rar :'::;ragedy in the
opposition it suggests between individual Llsignificance and the vast,
impersonal,',law-governed forces of the world. I
modern soience, refers to the "vision of fate U
N. Whitehea.d, disoussing
held. by the Greek dramatists.
He cla.ims that it is this same vision, t'remox'seless and indifferent,
urging a tragic incident to its inevitable issue" that is
possessed by science. tlFate in Greek tragedy,tI he maintains, Itbecomas
2
the order of nature in modern thought. If George Eliot develops the
same idea in her "Notes on The Spanish Gypsy and Tra.{;sdy in general II ..
"Our determination as to the right, It she claims, "would consist in an
adjustment of our individual needs to the dire necessities of our lot,
partly as to our natural constitution, partly as 3h£~.::cers
of li:fe llUth
our fellow-beings .. Tragedy consists in the terrible rlif'ficulty of' this
adjustment. II 3 She analyses "the good tragic subject whioh.
to be x"..:lally tragio "*. must represent irrepa:t'able collision
between the individual and the general •••• It :~.s the indivi