A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

22.
Let us now examine the novels to see whether George Eliot is able to c.onvert
her reconciliation·· of· freedom and necessity into a satisfactory
framework within which she can work out the possibilities of grovrth or
decline in individual characters.
The philosophic problem of conciliation leads in the novels to a
technical problem of point of view. To present convincingly a world of
causal necessity and constraint, a different perspective, even perhaps
a different language is required from that which is suitable for an
analysis and description of the inwardness of a character, his mt>tivation,
his struggles and his triumphs. If a purely extraspective viewpoint is
adopted there is no difference discernible in the process by which a
raindrop gets to the ocean and a m~~ gets to the office. 56 ~.
~~l:::l.-t--pt1rPo:;e-.
It is only vrhen we take the man's motivation,
his mental processes into account that the two activities of the man
and the raindrop are not similar. But shif'ting perspective to allow
for a man's own account of his behaviour, allowing the validity of an
intropseotive viewpoint, may be merely to introduce what Herbert
Spencer calls our "subjective illusion" 57 of free will. '''Sir,' said
Johnson, in his characteristic way, 'we know the will is free, and
there's an end of the matter.' II 58 But unfortunately it is only the
beginning.
The twentieth century behavioural psychologist, B. F. Skinner,
comments that "it requires a special verbal environment to impose consciousness
on behaviour by inducing a person to respond to his ovm
body while he is behaving. If consciousness seems to have a causal
effect, it is the effect of' the special environment which induces .self'­
observation." 59 George Eliot would not have accepted Skinner's statement.
She accepted the Itcausal efficacyfl 60 of the desire to change-­
Alexander Bain calls it "Rhetorical efficiency." 61 The episode I have