A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

esults. This is the theoretic basis behind George Eliot's rather $elfconscious
question to her reader in ~ ftede" after we have watch~d
Arthur Donnithorne adopt a line of action vlhich has become a lIguestion
of tactics," 34 a deliberate policy to quieten Adam's suspicions by
~.>" •. --
means of half-lies and evasions. George Eliot turns directly to the
reader with the follo'lring question. "Are you inclined to ask whether this
can be the same Arthur who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling,
that delicate honour which shrinks from vlounding even a sentiment, and does
not contemplate any more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought
that his ovm self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion?"
She then provides the answer herself. "The same, I
assure you,
only ~ di:f:ferent conditions. II 35 (my italics)
,.
Lewes as a psychologist set himself to specify the conditions vlhich
lead to certain actions: George Eliot, as a novelist, set hersel:f the
same task. As I have already suggested he VIas inevitably dealing
generalisv:uions and abstractions, not individualised cases, whereas she
was working with particularised, individual human beines, adjusting her
perspective to include a character's "report" of his "own consciousness
about his doings or capacity" 36 as well as providing an overvievl as a
JIleans by which vie can get him into clearer perspective. Thus her aWareness
of "conditions II makes her write ironically of Lydgate, that "he
was at a starting point which makes Dany a man's career a :fine subject
for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who
could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose,
with all the pos:j-ble thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all
the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swims and makes his
point or else is carried headlong. 11 37
In this chapter I have been indicating the importance of the factor