A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

spones. Psychoanalytic critics have mooted either George Eliot's relationship
with her brother, Isaac Evans, 37 or have seen Maggie's
supreme moral victory as rather an instance of an immature dependence
and a "neurotic strategy. II 38 Feminist critics have likewise objected to
the masochism 39 of George Eliot's treatment of Maggie expressed in such
statements as "she had made up her mind to suffer. II 40 These critical
theories all endeavour to explain the reason for George Eliot's treatment
of Maggie and as such are not susceptible of proof. I am offering
explanations of h2! George Eliot brings Maggie to this pass, of how it
is that so many readers of ~ ~ 2.!! ~ ;;;.,Fl;;;;.;;;,o,;;.ss,;;. are dissatisfied with
George Eliot's solution for Maggie and detect that she herself is uneasy.
I am not denying the validity within the world of the novel of
the motives George Eliot supplies. I am merely seeing them as rationalisatioris
of a decision that was inevitable, not because of Maggie's
moral stature, not because she had a neurotic fear of asserting herself
but because like the "poor uneasy white bear tt 41 she haa,. acquired
an habitual response; a response of submissiveness and renunciation
of her own claims. Maggie is no more free to choose to behave differently
than Arthur Donnithorne can avoid the t'vitiating effect" 42 of
his actions or Tito can a:et aside his lIundying habit of fear. II 43 The
.ntrain of causes" 44 binds her as irrevocably as it binds Bulstrode.
George Eliot's trenchant comment that "our deeds determine us, as much
as we determine our deeds" 45 applies as forcibly to Maggie as it does
to Arthur. Maggie is as much a victim of a deterministic and mechanistic
world view as the other characters I have been st~dying.
I have shown that a habit whether of fear or of renunciation is
binding and the fact that George Eliot brings the weight of her authorial
approval to bear on Maggie and the full bent of her irony on Tito
Melema should not disguise from us that each character is equally con-