A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

identified the crucial aspects of George Eliottsconcept of morality
and acknowledged her belief in the possibility of moral development,
we can assess the state and progress of any given character. She does
not need to claim explicitly that a certain character, Mr Casaubon, for
example, is deficient in the moral sense; she can indicate this by a
reference to his small measure of sympathy, and we know instantly how
to regard him. In this way, we register that his "was that proud narrow
sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation
into sympa.thy. II 95
The various signalling devices indicate to the reader the character's
moral status and warn us whether he is capable of moral growth or is in
moral decline. They provide us with an effective taxono~ of character.
Duty, relationship to the past and a healthy, integrative memory, sympathy,
attitudes towards immutable laws, all provide constitutive categories.
Martin Price has pointed out that "manners ' ••• for Jane ..Auaten
are the field in which the moral self is revealed and defined." 96
•••
George Eliot has several such fields. Thus the contrasting attitudes
Gwendolen holds towards the family home at Offendene reveal that she has
grown morally and integrated herself to the past. I have already quoted
the authorial regret, at the beginning of the novel, that she is not so
established, but after she has been scathed by her marriage to Grandcourt,
she thinks wistfully of Offendene as a weloome haven and no longer
as a place of imprisoning dullness.
She saw the grey shoulders of the downs, the cattle-specked fields,
the shadow,y plantations with rutted lanes where the barked
timber lay for a wayside seat, the neatly ... clipped hedges on the
road from the parsonage to Offendene, the avenue where she was
gradually discerned from the windows, the hall-door opening, and
her mother or one of the troublesome sisters coming to meet her.
All that brief experience of a quiet home 'which had once seemed
a dullness to be fled from, now came back to her as a restful
escape, a station where she found the breath of morning and the
unreproaching voice of birds •••• 97