A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

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perspective between the "hard unaccommodating Actual" 3 and the
struggling individual. But when we come to analyse George Eliot t s
world view in terms of her treatment of individual characters, we find
ourselves predominantly conoerned with her allowanoe of freedom to those
charaoters.
In an early novel, ~!ll1. 2!!. ih2. Floss, Maggie Tulliver struggles,
falls short of her self-imposed ideal" and ultimately triumphs. In her
last novel, :Daniel Deronda, George Eliot shows us her hero willingly
accepting the dictates of a duty which is laid upon him by the faats of
his Jewish parentage. To show us Maggie's upward progress, George Eliot
makes use of the assumptions underlying the theor.y of psychological
determinism, which, as we have seen, owes much to the laws of association.
These describe how we learn in any given situation and especially
how we come to acquire habitual responses. Thedo\mward moral graph of
such characters as Arthur Donn1thorne, Tito Melema, Godfrey Cass,
Nichmlas Bulstrode and, even to a certain extent, Tertius Lydgate, has
been plotted by means of this theor.y of psychological determinism with
its emphasis on cause and effect and its rigid straightline development.
But as a means of depicting the upward development of a character like
Maggie, it is less satisfaoto~.
In much the same way as Tito ielema is
bound more closely by his choices, Maggie's successive choices do not
enfranchise her but instead they constrain and limit her freedom. In
Daniel Deronda. we see a comparable loss of freedom. In this novel, we
can recognise George Eliot 1 s acceptance of the tenets of evolutionary
psychology. Deronda's search for a commitment, for a duty, takes on the
form of a search for himself. His, ignorance of his parentage becomes far
him an ignorance of his identity. The revelation of his Jewishness is
eagerly welcomed by him as an indication of where his duty lies. We are
led to believe that he chooses freely and willingly. But if we scrutinise