A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

33.
understood, not beating and bruising one's wings against the inevitable,
but throwing all one's energies into achieving whatever it is possible
to achieve, however slight. The consonance between Stoicism and George
Eliot's thought patterns is interesting, showing as it does,rhow similar
world views lead to similar responses. Within both systems it would
appear that although some freedom is acknowledged, it is undeniably the
scantest of freedoms, and consists less in the possibilities of action
than in the cultivation of a state of mind.
In this section I have examined the question of freedom in connection
with the one character, Lydgate, from the one novel, Middlemarch. I will
now look briefly at a further aspect of George Eliot's concept of freedom
in connection with Gwendolen Harleth from Daniel Deronda.
George Eliot expresses her delight in each day as providing an opportunity
for exercising the will, for "willing to will strone;ly." 106 This,
taken in isolation from the patterning of the novels, might s~ggest
a
Nietzchean glorification of the super-hero, the apotheosis of the will
for its ~vn sake. In these terms the history of a character like
Gwendolen H&rle~h, whose "will was peremptory," 107 would read as a
tragedy in that she was unfortunate enough to marry a man whose will
was stronger, and who took a sadistic delight in controlling her, effecti
vely paralysing her will with his "torpedo" 108 ":,,like grip. But George
Eliot would never have consented to so morally neutral an analysis of
her work. Psychological criticism directed at Gwendolen's failure to
master Grandcourt might well stress that the fault lay in her low selfesteem,
which allowed her to suffer from uncertainty and self-doubt; it
vlOuld JIlf',ke much of Gwendolen' s barel:(~~inted
at frigidity as a determining
factor i~
the failure of the marital relationship. This low selfesteem
in George Eliot's terms, however, provides the entry for possible