George Eliot: As a Psychological Novelist
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George Eliot is a great psychological novelist.She is one of the ' founding- fathers' of the modern psychological novel. As a psychological novelist, it was her endeavor to represent inner life.
She depicts the inner struggles of her characters and thus lays bare their souls before her readers. From the psychological point of view, in George Eliot novels, the characters develop gradually, as we come to know them. They go from weakness to strength or from strength to weakness. In Adam Bede, she has very beautifully presented the psycho-analysis of the characters of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. She analyses, their motives, impulses, mental processes, inner conflicts, their souls' study, and development of their characters. Thus she discusses her characters inside out.
The result of such clear understanding of the inner man is that her characters are all psychologically consistent. They have the inner consistency which is lacking in the characters of the other Victorian novelists. Further, this psychological insight also enables the novelists to sketch successfully the growth and development of a character.
George Eliot is an " intellectual novelist". She has written the novels principally from the inside of her character, not from the outside, as most of her contemporaries and predecessors had done. Her novels are remarkable for their psychological realism and this is her peculiar contribution to the English novel. The great psychological novelist analyses the motives, impulses and mental processes which moves her characters to act in a particular way. Thus she 'dissects' the soul of her characters and brings out inner struggle. As Robert Browning shows this struggle, in his dramatic monologues in poetry, in the art of the novel. Samuel Richardson, George Meredith along with George Eliot are the pioneers of psychological dissection.
She is more interested in the inner drama of her characters than the outer actions. She moves in the depths of mind and heart and thus draws her characters inside out. Therefore, her major characters are not formed, like Dickens and Thackeray's rather they develop with the story, as a reader gets familiar with them.
Her power of psycho-analysis and her understanding of human mind and motives are clearly discernible in Adam Bede. The admired parts of the novel are those in which Eliot gives deep insight into her characters and brings their conflicts to light. For this reason, Adam Bede is regarded as one of the first psychological novels. There are certain glimpses of her observance, intellect, and wisdom, scattered throughout the novel, in the form of sentences like
"When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of but are severity."
George Eliot's grip of psychological essentials enables her to draw complex characters much better than her predecessors. She has psychological and emotional realism which is more important than the factual realism of the ordinary novelist. It is this grasp of psychological essentials which gives her characters their reality. George Eliot knows very well that " man is a strange combination of vice and virtue." She searches the intensity and ratio of these two aspects in her characters. In some characters, the "defect" arises from their virtue, as in the case of Arthur Donnithorne. He is a nobleman, who wishes to be praised and admired for his gentleness, everywhere. He has the soft corner for beauty and Hetty's innocent charm attracts him. His very fault is that he tries to suppress and resist the temptation, which results only in its becoming more vigorous. Eliot has beautifully handled the struggle of Arthur's mind and heart. She detects various confusing and fighting elements in Arthur's mind, such as; his genuine regret, his fear of disapproval and his false hope that in the end, everything would be alright, at least with him things must always come right. Eliot says:
"It is the favorite stratagem of our passions to show a retreat and to turn sharp sound upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day in our own".
Eliot beautifully expresses the fact that an ordinary weak man cannot bear the acute stress and tension of realizing his sin. Hetty, no doubt, was an extraordinary charming beauty, yet she was an ordinary timid village girl, with her irrational dreams and longing for a life of an aristocratic lady. She is safe and secure within her Hayslope world, but as soon as she leaves it, she is exposed to sufferings of shame and guilt. Her weak nerves refuse to bear this weight and she goes in suppression, withdraws to admit or deny her sin.
Her power of describing mixed characters extends to mixed States of mind. She is particularly good at showing how temptation triumphs. No other English novelist has given us so valid a picture of the process of moral defect, as Donnithorne's gradual yielding to his passion for Hetty.
A critic says:
"George Eliot can follow the windings of motives, through the most tortuous labyrinths, for firmly grasped in her hand is always the central clue".
George Eliot achieved her greatest success in drawing complex characters. Novelists who concentrate on the outside aspects of characters generally fail in the portrayal of complex characters. George Eliot is a psychological could successfully draw complex characters.
She has a power of analysis of causes and motives. For example, in the chapter called " A Journey of Hope", Eliot spent more time in Hetty's poor brain and heart than Hetty spends on roads in her unwise search for her runaway lover. This is psychology. Eliot is very deft in her psychological approach.
When George Eliot's characters think, we share their thoughts. For example, when Adam accidentally comes upon Arthur and Hetty embracing in the woods, Hetty scurries away, and Arthur, with deliberate and elaborate carelessness, saunters forward to Arthur.
George Eliot looks into the minds of these common people and reveals their thinking, feelings, sufferings, and frustrations. Her portraits are all primarily portraits of the inner man. Eliot reveals another psychological reality that everyone either consciously or unconsciously, strives after the " ideal goodness". Adam is shown good but his goodness is not an ideal one.
Adam was in love with Hetty and thought that she could never be wrong. But when he comes to know about her faults and sufferings he feels genuine sympathy for her and suffers with her. Thus, Eliot shows him reaching ideal goodness, through the power of love.
George Eliot's novel "Adam Bede" is the first psychological novel. It is her highest achievement in drawing complex characters and to understand the inner action. She thoroughly incarnates herself into her characters and brings their subconscious and even the unconscious to light. We can say that George Eliot's gift of psycho-analysis in the novel "Adam Bede" is really a peculiar among the Victorian Novelists.
Related Topics:
George Eliot: Hetty's Character