A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

Web images are a major patterning
in Middlemarch. Lydgatefs
failure to connect different experiences or to apply the same stringent
rules of observation and evidence to his emotional life as he does to
his scientific researches is described as an image of a web that has not
been constructed. The various strands are still separate. I~as
it not
ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather what we expect in men," the
narrator asks us, "that they should have numerous strands of experience
lying side by side and never compare them with each other?1I 4. Rose,IDond
and Lydgate during their engagement~e
described as industriously spinning
away at the web that binds them together. This is a salutary reminder
that we are responsible for our ovm bondage and cannot dismiss
our responsibility with pleas of ignorance or cries that circumstances
have been too much for us, as Mr Tulliver, for example, or even Mr
Farebrother try to do.
Besides the web imagery which refers specifically to particular characters
or particular situations, there are in liiddlemarch other examples
cf such images which refer to George Eliot's attitude towards the process
of writing a novel. These refer to her own sense of the complex material
in front of her, to the problems of selection and control if that material
is going to present to us the required pattern. She claims apologetically,
ItI at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and
seeing how they 17ere woven and interwoven, that all the light I can
command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed
over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe." 5 She is
iwo modest. Many critics have examined the rich historical and literary
allusi veness of her novels and especially of Middlemarch. 6 Mr Casaubon,
for example, apart from bearing the hame of an erudite contemporaFJ of
William Shakespeare, is compared variously with Locke, Milton, and
Aquinas. However, these references to scholarly gentlemen are subtly