A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

50 ..
It is this very rigiCiity of habit :formation that is cause fo? CCrl-
. corn, and-suggests the sort of' limitat:'Lon that J" •..
sadly when he says that
the doctrine of what is called Philosophical ~\Jecessity weighed
on my existence like an incubus. I felt as I was scient:'..fically
proved to be the helpless slave of antecedent circ~~stances;
as if my character and that of all others been formed for us
by agencies beyond our control, and '.vas wholly out of our own
power. I often said to myself, what a it would be if I
could disbelieve the doctrine of the formation of charact~ by
circumstances .••• it would be a b:.f:essing if the doctrine of necessity
could be believed by all quoa~ the characters of others and
disbelieved in regard to their own. '9
However, Mill's buoyancy returned and
orge Eliot's earlier novels
could almost be said to be~ploring the implications of the
in
~ Szstem of' Logic, that Itwe are exactly as capCi.0le of making our ovm
character, if ~~, as others are of maJr..ing it f'or us," 40 a remark
which contains the same resonance as George Eliot t 13
cOIllInent to Nfl'S
Ponsonby about the need to "will strongly.
Two characters from the early novels who clearly illustrate this
capability of making their ovm characters, however lli"vdttingly, are
Arthur Donnithorne in B,$d,e, and THo Melema in RS:~lOlf-l" The technique
which George Eliot adopts for setting these characters before us,
is to present them with various moral
again, whether to deny Baldassarre's
CBS; whetl1er to see Hetty
We are shown the
characters grappling with their o .... m conscious and unoonscious desires,
their unstable resolutions, their self-deceits and .!:a;tionalisations .. All
the time the authorial commentary is hammering home -co us the inescapable
fact that "our deeds determine us, as much as we
our deeds."
The point George Eliot is making so forcibly is ths,t we CalL'1ot 8.scape the
psychological pressure of our choices. Although ',ve
escape the physical
consequences, George Eliot does not allow this to happen to her
C~ld"racters, thus laying herself o}?en to charges O~·l out a
retributi ve justice or a "poetic justice 11
saa.::..y out cf keeping in such