A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

79.
in a trenchant comment in The ~ ~ ~ Floss follmving the description
of Tom"s intransigent attitude towards his sister~": Geor-g~ Eliotwri'tes
~"Tom, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the limits of his
own nature, and his education had simply glided over him, leaving a slight
deposit of polish: if you are inclined to be severe on his severity, rem-
. ember that the responsibility of tolerance with those who have the
wider vision." 25 And that the wider vision is something hardly and painfully
won she has already told us in her summing up of the iconographic
chanter 15 in ~ B.e?:,e, after we have watched Hetty t s narcissistic musing
in front of the mirror and the contrasting meditative yearning of Dinah
over the world outside her window. For all Dinah's moral excellence, her
understanding of Hetty is shovm to be deficient. George Eliot reminds us
,
that "it is our habit to say tha:t while the lower nature can never understand
the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of th.e lower.
But I think, II she goes on, II the higher nature has to learn this comprehension,
as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experieuce,
often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong
end, and fancying our space wider than it is. II 26
These last quotations, while still stressing inherited nature with
ij;s implicit inequality also emphasise the nature and quality of experience
as a modifying factor. Tom Tulliver is perhaps the only major
character to be presented as "inexorable, unbending, unmodifiable" 27
and even he is accorded his act of generosity comparable to Rosamond
Vincy's acknoYlledeement that Will Ladislaw loves Dorothea. 'I'he precipitate
ending of ~ ~ ~ the Floss gives Tom!s act a permanence
whereas it is most likely of the same nature as Rosamond's, a single
act of generosity but not one which changes the whole bias of the
personality. Both Tom and Rosamond have the experience which brings
out, however momentarily, the finer sides of their natures; and through-