A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

37.
all the causes operating at anyone time. Thus, when we come to the intricacies
of human relationships, we have a less rigid groundplan and
greater scope for moral development than would be the case in a totally
mechanistic universe.
But, to analyse George Eliot's ideas in relation to the general
ideas of her period is to run the risk of suggesting that her novels
Dre philosophic or moral treatises and to give weight to the adverse
opinion expressed by one critic 'Jlho felt thc'lt her books had been dictated
to her by the "ghost of David Hume. II 120 An analysis of her ideas
provides an accolmt of the uphilosophic equilibrium ll she achieved, but
there still remi\ins the problem of a "practical equilibrium" 121 in
terms of plot development, characterisation and. narrative technique •.:
Later, I 'will focus more closely on the actus.l novels in order to discuss
what happens to these ideas when they become part of the story of
a ~mggie
Tulliver, a Romola, or a Dorothea Brooke. For the moment, however,
I am concentrating on the "philosophic equlilibrium, II isolating
certain recurring ideas and clusters of ideas from her novels and relating
these to the ideological background of the mid-nineteenth oentury.