A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

228.
ness will demonstrate a breadth of sympathy, an opening out, and a
greater degree of freedom. Strict habit formation does not suggest a~
of these. This is not to say that the laws of causation are miraculoualy
suspended in the case of the later characters. The strict sequence
of cause and effect is no less binding. It is merely that other aspects
of moral growth are foregrounded and the formation of habits, even of
suoh morally reputable habits as renunciation of self, is no longer
emphasised. The prinoiples underlying the thear,y of psyohologioal determinism
allow for trenohant analyses of moral deterioration; they
provide too rigid a frame for the presentation of a oharacter painfully
aOhieving moral awareness.
The framework of belief that pervades ~!!ll. .2!l !!!! Floss limits
the freedom of the heroine. Let us now consider whether the tenets of
evolutiOnary psyohology whioh George Eliot utilises in Daniel Deronda
allow the hero a full development.
He came back with what was better than freedom--with a duteous
bond which his experience had been preparing him to accept
gladly. 52
These words describing Deronda' s state of mind after he meets his mother
in Genoa reveal the opposition that George Eliot saw existing between
freedollLand duty. But does Deronda accept this "duteous bond lt freelY or
is he oonstrained by his experiences, his ancestral yearning, and his
creator's firm and ~ielding hand'? In answering this question I will
briefly recapitul~te
what evolutionary psychologists have to say about
anoestral memory and relate it to leorge Eliot's oonoept of duty. This
will enable me to consider the implioations of this theory for Deronda I s
freedom of choice and to analyse exactly how much freedom a morally
evolved oharacter can experienoe in a hierarohical moral scheme governed
by suoh moral absolutes as duty and renuno~atioD.