A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

222.
do not "choose, ~
in Mill t S sense, to make their characters base ar.d
ignominious. On the other band, Kaggie can certainly be said to have
chosen to make her character. She decides consciously and deliberately
to practise self-renunoiation until it becomes an habitual response"
part of her oharacter. The theory of psyohologioal determinism showing
how bondage is created by laying down and "fixingll of habits works
supremely well with a morally decliningcharaoter. It is strangely inappropriate
for George Eliot to have used this same technique to portr~
the moral asoendanoy of her heroine. The reader aooepts that habits
of conoealment, or prevarication, or fear entail loss of freedom. This
leads to no oontradiotion within George Eliotts own soheme, so that a
oharacter like Tito can have increasingly less freedom while he persists
in not reoognising the fact. We aooept that ~dgatets arrogant
assumption of superiority over oiroumstances, whioh is indioative of his
sadly lower moral stature, is entirely delusory. The enooded messages,
however, that surround Kaggie tell us firmly that she is not. of their
kind; she is warmly sympathetic and "sees" more truly than the people
around her. Her deoision to rejeot Stephen is diminished if she is not
seen to have a genuine freedom of choioe at that moment, if she is oonstrained
by habitual self-renunoiatory responses. George Eliot oertainlY
wants us to' feel that she is free to choose, but a close analysis Of the
text reveals that we are on uncertain ground, that even George Eliot has
doubts as to the nature of Maggie' 5 two major moral decisions; the one
affecting Philip at the time when she is determined not to oontinue seeing
him, and the other when she rejects Stephen, espeCially the second
time after reoeiving his anguished letter.
There is a piece of authorial commentary following Maggie's first
unexpected encounter with Philip which shades almost imperoeptibly into
. Maggie' $ own thoughts about the situation by means of the teohnique,