A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

2.52.
Romola, Dorothea Brooke and Deronda, while they appear to have greater
freedom to act than their fellows, are actually tightly constrained by
their creator. In her rule-governed universe there is no room for the
random nor the truly original. But in the welter of existence that
faces the morally struggling and suffering characters, there is more
space. Her presentation of the decline or rise of such a oharaoter is
more three-dimensional. There are. inevitably morepossibilites for
progress and regression, and greater opportunities for t he exercise of
irony ..
If' we accept t he terms of referenoe offered us in the novels, and
adopt their set-of criteria for evaluating the behaviour of the different
oharacters, we may not find the loss of freedom too damaging. If,
on the other hand, we step outside George Eliot' s moral frame, reoognise
the persuausive force of her encoded messages, and attempt to judge her
characters apart from her own clearly expressed intentions, we find ourselves
regretting that she held both her characters and the reader in
such a constraining hand.