A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

74.
~ Inb orn Half.: 5!!.. Memory ..
In The Study of Psychology (1878), LeVies writes of the four tigre at
factors of Human Psychology: Organism, External 'Medium, Heredity" and
"relation to a Social Medium. It 1 I have dealt with three of these, but,
so far, have said nothing about heredity or the sorts of things nineteenth
century psychologists believed could be inherited. Although
theories of heredity no longer postulated an almost literal mingling
of bloods, this was still the pre-Mendelian period. Lewes, however,
certainly recognised such aspects of the mechanism of heredity as
"atavism," 2 whereby a characteristic could remain dormant for several
generations, and, what he calls the Itpotency of the individual," 3
which are basically Mendel's dominant and recessive characteristics.
The work in which he discusses his views on heredity, !h! PhY':liology
2f. Common ~ ( 1859-60), shows strikingly the interchange of ideas
that took place between him and George Eliot. At this time, George Eliot
was researching for her second full-length novel, ~ ~ .2!! ~ Floss,
and the two of them visited various tidal rivers in search for a suitable
location for this novel and its concluding flood. This preoccupation with
mills led Lewes to think of the continuous sound of a mill-wheel when
discussing whether consciousness requires attentiveness. 4 Conversely,
we can detect in ~ !1f!:l2!! ~ Floss a considerable interest in the
working-out of heredity in relation to the mingling of the Dodson and
Tulliver bloods in the persons of Tom and 1mggie. Some of the references
are deliberately folksy and unscientific, very much in keeping with the
lack of scientific understanding of the character who makes them .. Mr
Tulliver ruminates on the puzzling differences between Tom and Maggie
and offers the following reasons for his selecting his wi~e: