A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

Gwendolen's rejection of the stability of her family life and her consequent
rejection of the claims of duty contrast strongly with Deronda's
love of his family home and his search for relationship, identity, and
duty. (When the book is laid out schematically like this, we can Bee
wQy George Eliot was angered at suggestions that it might profitably be
divided.) Similarly, Maggie Tulliver' s sensitive response to other
people is presented as a foil to Tom's rigidity, although they both have
a love of the past, a recognition of its value, and a strong sense of
duty. It is just that Tom's morality partakes of the inflexibility and
narrowness of his nature. He lacks the compassionate tolerance of his
sister.
The morally degenerate characters likewise have their taxonOn:l3". They
lack the qualities that make up the constitutive categories. Alcharisi
suffers from remorse but still claims confirmation that she was in the
right to make a life for herself without considering her father's wishes
for her. Tito Melema's "first distinct colloquy" 98 points constantly
to his moral insufficiency when he decides, on purely hedonistic and
egoistic principles, to continue his comfortable existence in Florence
and not seek out his adoptive father. Some oharactersare inevitably
more highlighted than others. Alcharisi's role is purely functional:
to conceal from and eventually to reveal to Deronda, the faots of his
birth. \Vbat she is and how she becomes what she is, are of no importance
to the development of the plot so that she can be charaoterised
and taxonOmically placed quite briefly by her insistence on her own
rights. Tito Melema, on the other hand, is important in himself, not
just functionally. Accordingly, we have the laying out of the stages
of his moral decline by means of a technique George Eliot adapted from
the assumptions of the theory of psychological determinism.
The categories are not necessarily discrete. This is especially