A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

aooept the Positivistio faith in irreversible laws. Neither an implaoable
deity nor a rigid set of laws provides muoh leeway for the individ~
ual. G. :M. Young attributes the power of Evangelioalism to "its rigorous
logio, the 'eternal. miorosoope' with whioh it pursued its argument into
the reoesses of the heart, and the details of daily life, giving to
evf!1."Y aotion its individual value in this life, and its eternal oonsequenoe
in the next." 12 T-he "eternal miorosoope" he refers to produoes
an anxious, introspeotive -analysis of all thoughts, attitudes, and
a.ctions whioh, while it was no doubt exoellent training for a potential
novelist, was soaroely oonducive to optimism. George Eliot's schooldays
were imbued with the strict Calvinism of her teachers, the Misses
Franklin, and not even the more sanguine beliefs of her :Methodist aunt
and pncle could temper suoh a gloomy religious baokground. George Eliot's
own description of her feeling once she had rejected her early Christian
beliefs shows her immense gratitude fm: a release from the "wretched
giant t S bed of dogmas ft on which her soul had been "racked and stretched
ever sinoe it began to think." 13 Offering a clear indictment of the
oppressive nature of Evangelicalism, she writes or her
inexpressible relief to be freed from the apprehension ••• that
at each mQment I tread on chords that will vibrate for weal or
woe to all eternity. I could shed tears of joy to believe that
in this lovely world I may lie on the grass and ruminate on
possibilities without dreading lest ~ conclusions should be
everlastingly fatal. 14 .
There is no mistaking the emotional consonance between Evangelicalism
and a Positivistic faith in the "consequences of deeds." 15 The "solvent
of feeling" 16 described in Romola if we are to be receptive to new
ideas is· obviously the sense of "individual nothingness" 17 in the face
of forces beyond our control. Science, as U. C. Knoepflmacher olaims,
may have removed the Calvinist deity, but it allowed "George Eliot--and
fellow Puritan renegades such as T. H. Huxley--to convert it into an