A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

53.
guli'ed by an "undying habit of fear." 49 At the very end of the book when
he might still have been able to get safely out of :B'lorence, he is able
to escape his physical pursuers but not the mental furies which make him
excessively a~~{ious.
He has opportunely diverted his pursuers' attention
from himself' by throwing away his purse, has dived into the Arno and
swum a reasonable distance but his certainty that he is still being pursued
causes him to swim longer than is necessary, to over-tire himself
and eventually to come ashore into the waiting stranglehold of his vengeful
father. A major irony of the book lies in the f~wt
that ,ve see Tito
confidently assuming that he is in control of' events, weighing possibilities
I:md choosing accordingly, feeling successful iri the measure to
which he manages to escape physical danger or public opprobriu..'ll, v:hile
all the time the real danger lies i'rithin, in lithe contaminating effect
of deeds." 50 His illusion of freedom is supreme; we see, howe'1er', all
too clearly, that he is totally bound, that far from confronting possibilities
flexibly and creatively, he is treading a:18xrovring and more
circumscribed path.
If we concede that George Eliot's belief in the the~J of psychological
determinism provides her with a set of assl~mptions
for effectively
representing a character whose successive choices morally c_abase
him, what do we make of the rever'se situation, wherE;' a character s
choioes are positive and I1!orally superior? Does s' ..)oh a system work as
adequately in the case of Maggie Tulli -J3r'? I al'.l IDer'E;ly posing this
question here as I will dated. with it in detail
when I
the implications of George Eliot's intellectus.l system, but I wanted
to draw attention at this stage to the fact that
t s moral gro,yth
is presented to us in a similar way to the moral re[s-r8ssions ofAx,thur
and THo.
In this chapter, I have been tracing some
s of George E:1iot's