A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

Psychological Assumptions,
A knowledge of the psychological assumptions entertained in the
nineteent~ntury enables us to pinpoint the co-ordinates within ~
which George Eliot presents her characters. But those assumptions do
not constitute one fixed and delimited set of beliefs. Nineteenth
century psychology only gradually emerged from its dependence on philosophy.
As it incorporated research findings from the fields of biology,
neurophysiology, and sociology it became a science in ita o,vn right. The
school of association psychology which developed from Locke's chapter on
"The Association of Ideas" emphasised the way in which frequent or
vivid impres~;ions
coalesce in the mind and predispose our thinking and
reacting in certain definable ways. Research into the functioning of the
brain was, at this time, in its infancy, and attempts to relate ideas
to actual neural circuits led to what R. S. Peters sees as a persistent
confusion in nineteenth century empirical thought, a confusion between
"philosophic questions about the meaning of ideas and about the grounds
of knowledge" and "questions in genetic psychology about their origin. II
1
Alexander Bain is an important figure in the development of psychology
in that his concern with action led to a more dynamic approach to psychological
problems and opened up the way to a study of behaviour.
The publication of The Origin :?!. Species in 1859, and the sociological
i'r.ritings of such men as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer reinforced
the increasing importance given to environment or the "medium"
in which an organism lived. Both evolutionary biology and sociology recognised
the interdependence of one creature with another and the complexity
of their inter-relationships. It was acknowled.ged that no