Recurring Patterns of Behaviour in the Women Characters of George Eliot

RECURRING PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR IN THE
WOMEN CHARACTERS OF GEORGE ELIOT

If George Eliot has no heroes who are truly heroic, if “they are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed,”¹ her heroines, though representing a cross section of “very large majority,” are certainly more distinguished than their counterparts. It may be because she drew them “with a more intimate sympathy,”² but more so for they are essentially idealists in search of a vocation. This affinity and a certain homologous experience furnishes the motif or the pattern of their actions and their responses which tends succinctly to recur again and again in their behaviour, thus emphasizing the “family likeness.”

Her heroines are not portraits of perfect souls. In fact George Eliot had repeatedly stressed that her “artistic bent is directed not at all to the presentation of eminently irreproachable characters, but to the presentation of mixed human beings.”³ Her women characters are indeed highly “mixed” and represent a broad gamut of social structure. Moreover their emotional experiences range from acute self-mortification to criminal tendencies. Though each one of them is conceived in the context of a particular set of circumstances⁴, and cannot be readily transposed from one situation to another, though in any other situation their behaviour would lack conviction and plausibility, they epitomise their schematic congruity and persistent similarity. Their actions, their responses to challenges with which life meets them have a weave of recurring pattern. So that it seems as if their peculiarly nurtured spirit represents an integral image of a true woman which satisfied the emotional and literary necessity of the reading public of mid-nineteenth century.

It is not that they are a type or statically rigid in their behaviour. Nor are they easy to classify under a common head. George Eliot had maintained that their “character is not...something solid and unalterable.”⁵ They are badgered with doubts and contrary feelings. They undergo a change and the reader can witness their growing pains. The leit-motif which formates in their behaviour is the “moral progress”⁶ which Eliot believed “was her most consciously held aim as a novelist.” ⁷

Because these heroines are essentially projections of moral concepts, their various actions effectuate a pattern the basic design of which is consistent with George Eliot’s attitude towards women of her time. Though not an ardent feninist, she adumbrated the need for reform in the social position of women during mid-nineteenth century. Being a social rebel herself, she wanted women to prove their intellectual worth and cultivate “an independent delight in ideas.”⁸ In her young heroines we notice an impassioned search for knowledge, a keen desire to achieve “their intellectual emancipation with a resolute independence of purpose.” ⁹ For instance Dorothea Brooke’s devotion to classical languages has not much to do with her affection for her husband. Instead “those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a standing ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.”¹⁰ Maggie Tuliver is no less fervent in her intellectual pursuit:

“If she had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise man knew...Latin, Euclid and Logic would surely be a considerable step in masculine wisdom–in that knowledge which made men contented and even glad to live.” ¹¹

To maintain that Eliot believed in “the Victorian conception of women as a creature whose goodness should serve as a guide to men,”¹² is a pastiche sentimental exaggeration. Her women are more profoundly fused. Their intellectual grid is congeneric of their moral collation. When Daniel Deronda tells Gwendolen “we need that you should be better than we are.” ¹³ he is reiterating the moral contexture that cleaved these women and fashioned their normative behaviour. Thus their stern concept of duty”¹⁴ only diagramatize and embellish the warp and weft of their behaviour. When confronted with a choice between their own emotional inclinations and what they believe to be their duty, the struggle though severe is short:

“O! it is difficult–life is very difficult...I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I see–I feel it is not so now: there are things that we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly–that I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them.” ¹⁵

This dictum of Maggie Tuliver formulates the pattern of action for the other heroines also. Dorothea Brooke considers marriage “a state of higher duties.” Romola returns to her husband in spite of her growing hatred when she is reminded by Savonarola of her duty to those she has left behind. She agrees to go in order “to keep alive that flame of unselfish emotion by which a life of sadness might well be a life of active love.”¹⁶ Dinah Morris parts with Adam Bede because she considers it her duty to return to Snowfield. “Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another will. We must part.” ¹⁷ Duty for the heroines of George Eliot, was the “stern lawgiver.”¹⁸ “Right” and duty¹⁹ were almost inter-changeable for these women, asserting and reaffirming the spiritual archetype which can brook no violation. ²⁰

This makes her women characters religiously moral, not in a dogmatic adherence to any particular religion, but in closely following the dictates of their conscience. Their actions are conditioned more by an overwhelming sense of duty and “right,” than by their divergent faiths. Dinah Morris is a methodist, Dorothea Brooke is a puritan, Romola a catholic, Miriam a jew, Esther Lyon a protestant. But the fibre of their moral delineation is furnished and unified by the pattern of their behaviour. The need to work for others and willingly sacrifice their personal jobs is the iridescent cadence of their life. Their idealistic nature recognises renouncement as the basis for their ultimate self-realization. They reconcile their renunciation and self-despair with rapturous belief in life and their Creator:

“All my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys He has given me to know.” ²¹

This belief though “ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity” offered them by life, nevertheless made them living “ Theresas” with a spiritual grandeur” ²² which halos the very texture of their existence. It moulds their behaviour and adds poignant refrain to their activities.

Their concern with “eternal consequences” and anxieties of a spiritual life” ²³ makes them dispense with common feminine finery. They invariably dress simply in unostentatious grey, black or white. Yet they are not ugly or plain-looking. Unlike Charlotte Bronte’s heroines, they possess beauty of an unusual kind:

“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible.” ²⁴

Romola possesses a face

“in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence...transfigured to the most loveable womanliness by mingled pity and affection.” ²⁵

Dinah Morris looks like a “picture of an angel”, possessing serene calm beauty with no stroke

“left blurred or unfinished. It was one of those faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of colour on their pure petals.” ²⁶

Even Maggie Tuliver is striking in her unusual “nut-may-de brown” colouring with thick hair. While Hetty Sorrel, Tessa, Rosamund and Gwendolen are beautiful enough to invite comparison with any femme fatale.

More striking than this note of beauty is that these women are “full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad.” ²⁷ Their emotional turbulence and yearnings, their self-conquests and struggles, colour their actions and behaviour so that the motif which finally emerges is repeated over and over again. If this recurring pattern behaviour does not become monotonous, it is due to their highly individualistic character and dissimilarity of situation and circumstances. But the moral pattern of their soul is undoubtedly the same. Even when some of these women have criminal predilections like Gwendolen or Catarina, when some of them lapse into moral laxity like Hetty Sorrel and Rosamund Viincy, they have their moments of redemption. They are not outside the paling of kinship binding these women together.

Hetty’s only concern when she realizes her guilt, is to prevent its shadow ominously falling on her family. Tessa is simple-hearted enough to believe she is Tito’s wife. Gwendolen bitterly repents and atones for the sin she has not actually committed. Rosamund, when she fears she has lost Lydgate, behaves with complete composure and naturalness which shakes her flirtations into love. ²⁸

Thus we see a “family likeness” running through the women characters of George Eliot, investing them with both physical beauty and spiritual sublimity. In them we see the remarkable process of refinement and sublimation operating under the trials and sorrows of life. We see them bearing the burden of their destinies, their imperfect souls ceaselessly struggling towards perfection. We watch Maggie striving between her own impulses and her strong convictions not to cause others unhappiness. We observe Romola trying hard to overcome her growing indifference and hatred against her husband. We see Dorothea awakening to Casaubon as an arid pendant with a mean and petty nature, yet hammering herself into disciplined loyalty.

Their actions and their responses, their struggles and their achievements are minted to constitute a series of recurring patterns, because inevitably they remain to the last “children of a large family.” ²⁹ But as George Eliot herself was aware that

“family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits together by bone and muscle, and divides...by the subtler web of...brains.” ³⁰

So do these women differ each from other, in their diverse moments of humanity and sensitivity, their small triumphs and their profound martyrdoms,³¹ their innate sense of responsibility and their tremulous hopes of achievement. Essentially though they remain a tribute to their Creator who had set out to “enlarge men’s sympathies”³² by presenting “a hero-woman...without the slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled with serious conviction,”³³ which provided the leit-motif of their actions forming a recurrent pattern in their behaviour.

¹ George Eliot, Scenes from Clerical Life (Nelson’s Classics, London Chapter v.
² Leslie Stephen, George Eliot (London, 1924) p. 74
³ J. W. Cross, George Eliot’s Life as Related to her Letters and Journals (London, 1885)Vol. i. P. 431. Hereafter referred to as Life.
⁴ Lord David Cecil, Early Victorian Novelists (London, 1934) p. 286
⁵ George Eliot, Middlemarch (The World’s Classics, London, 1947) Chapter lxxii.
⁶ J. W. Cross, Life, Vol. i. p. 472.
⁷ Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies (London, 1949). p. 244.
⁸ Gordon, S. Height (ed) The George Eliot Letters (New Haven, 1954) p. 107.
⁹ Patricia Thomson, The Victorian Heroine (London, 1956) p.63.
¹⁰ Middlemarch, Chapter viii.
¹¹ George Eliot, Mill on the Floss (The World’s Classics, London) Chapter iii, Bk. iv.
¹² Mario Praz, The Hero in Eclipse in Victorian Fiction (London, 1956) p.34l.
¹³ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (The World’s Classics, London) Chapter xxix.
¹⁴“Duty was indeed one of the watch words of her life” too: Margaret Crompton, George Eliot: The Woman (London, 1960) p. 182.
¹⁵ Mill on the Floss, Chapter xi, Bk. vi.
¹⁶ George Eliot, Romola (The World’s Classics, London) Chapter lii.
¹⁷ George Eliot, Adam Bede (The World’s Classics, London) Chapter lii.
¹⁸ W. Wordsworth, “Ode to Duty.”
¹⁹ Mill on the Floss, Chapter xiv, Bk. vi.
²⁰ F. W. H. Myers, Essays-Modern (London, 1883) p. 268. F. W. H. Myers called it “the sovereignty of the impersonal and un-recompensing law.” But it was more than that, a kind of a moral stretch point which needed continuous affirmation, as far as George Eliot’s heroines were concerned.
²¹ Adam Bede, Chapter lii.
²² Middlemarch, Prelude
²³ Middlemarch, Chapter i.
²⁴ Middlemarch, Chapter i.
²⁵ Romola, Chapter v.
²⁶ Adam Bede, Chapter ii.
²⁷ Mill on the Floss, Chapter v. Bk. iii.
²⁸ Middlemarch, Chapter xxxi.
²⁹ Adam Bede, Chapter xvii.
³⁰ Ibid., Chapter iv.
³¹ Robert Speaight, George Eliot (London, 1954) He considered this martyrdom more as a “symbol of love”. p. 57.
³² Gordon S. Height (ed) The George Eliot Letters. (New Haven, 1954) p. iii.
³³ J. W. Cross, Life, Vol. ii. P. 244.