A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

251.
lationship to tragedy. We are examining those characters who can be said
to suffer from hamartia. They show a fatal flaw and we can concede that
their stories are tragic. There is a sense of waste surrounding
Lydgate t s realisation that he will not be able, after all, to contribute
,
significantly to medical progress. There is great pathos in lmggie s
desperate struggle with the more passionate side of her nature and in
her final oomprehension of the true meaning of renunoiation. George
Eliot tells us that "it is [!h~
very perception that the thing we renounce
is precious, is something never to be compensated to us, which
constitutes the beauty and heroism of renunciation. II 112 There is great
tenderness in the final portrait of Gwendolen's suffering, in her
attempts to disoard her egoistic clinging to Deronda and rejOice at his
happiness. It is these situations that survive a reading of the novels,
not whether Tito and Grandcourt get the deaths they deserve.
George Eliot' s own expressed goal in writing her novels was to win
our sympathy for t'struggling, erring human creatures. It 113 In~vitably
our sympathies are more engaged with oharaoters who are It wrestling, It 114
like Maggie Tulliver, with themselves and unyielding environments,-;thl1n
when we are oOnfronted with the downfall of the unjust or the elevation
of the just. And so we appreciate George Eliot's powers more fully when
she oeases to direot us so foroibly.
I have concentrated on the implioations of George Eliot's moral and
psychological position in order to show that it constitutes a rigid set
of co-ordinates and provides a more or les8 distorting model for her
more extreme oharaoters. The edges of this moral frame are the problem.
Against its lower boundaries, lesser oharacters, Tito Melema and
Grandcourt, for example, are bruised. They are made to endure a form of
poetic justice sadly out of keeping for a realistic novel. 115 Against
its upper frame there is a limitation of possibilities. Characters like