A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

28.
discussion of Lydgate in chapter 15 of Middlemarch she comments, 00 I
have already mentioned, that'lcharacter too is a process and an unfolding."
85 The word "unfolding" is especially interesting because of its
embryological connotation and its suggestion that a man's growth will
be defined by an embryological blueprint. We are reminded of 1.Jr Irwine's
remark to Arthur Donnithorne in Adam Bede that "a man can never do anything
at variance with his own nature." 86. The following epigraph from
chapter 41 of Felix ~ expresses the same idea.
for the soul can grow,
As embryos, that live and move but blindly,
Burst from the dark, emerge regenerate, 87
And lead a life of vision and of choice.
Growth is therefore seen to be possible but within set limits, just as
freedom is limited and restrioted. Character is seen to unfold and develop
but it is still consistent with its own nature. We will find, therefore,
that in our ana~sis
of a particular character we need to concentrate
our attention on the small "aetermining" actions that precede the major
act of choice. Iris Murdoch states that "the exercise of our freedom is
a small pieceTtleal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose
leaping about unimpeded at important moments. The moral life, in
this view, is something that goes on continually, not something that is
switched off between the occurrence of explicit moral choices. 1I
88 In
Middlemarch, on this assumption, it is more rewarding to consider not
just the fact that Lydgate votes for Tyke, thus cementing his relationship
with Bulstrode in the eyes of the Middlemarchers who do not find
Busltrode's piety endearing. We need also to consider the minute adjustments
of expediency and self-interest with the .Voider recognition
of social factors, what George Eliot calls "niceties of inward balance,"
89 f"or it is in these preliminaries to action that we learn
most about character. W. J. Harvey regards the exercise of the will
as one of the "constitutive" categories by means of which we come to