A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

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these characters, Romola, Felix Holt, and Daniel Deronda, and with
the novels that bear their names.
\Yhen we look at George Eliot's presentation of Romola we see instantly
the damaging effect of the loss of the ironic narrator. Romola is a
stilted two-dimensional character, who, for all her painful moral
struggle, never takes on the roundedness of living flesh. She is idealised
and towards the end of 1(Jle novel when she drifts in the boat to the
plague-ridden village, ~hologised.
It is not just the omission of the
ironic narrator that makes her remote; unlike Dorothea, she has no prosaic
younger sister to comment on her excesses. Celia has, for example,
the uncomfortable belief that theories, and Dorothea is given to theories,
are not unlike spilt pins and cause a comparable inconvenience when you
sit or eat. And Ceorge Eliot satirises with gentle irony, her own youthful
asceticism, when she makes the following comment about Dorothea and
her horse-riding. t'Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in
spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjqyed it in a pagan
sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it. II
Such a range of varied comments is lacking in the presentation of
Romola. The follOwing description of her patience under the boring demends
of her blind father's scholarly pursuits is characteristic.
As Romola said this, a fine ear would have detected in her clear
voice and distinct utterance, a faint suggestion of weariness
struggling with habitual patience. But as she approached her father
and saw his arms stretched out a little with nervous excitement
to seize the volume, her hazel eyes filled with pity; she
hastened to lay the book on his lap, and kneeled down by him,
looking up at him as if she believed the love in her face must
surely make its way through the dark obstruction that shut out
everything else. At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of
Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering
in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, was
transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity and
affection: it was evident that the deepest fount of feeling within
her had not yet wrought its way to the less changeful features,
and only found its outlet through her eyes. 21
This authorial portrait of Romola is repeated in the various comments
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