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Q- Write a note on George Eliot's art of characterization

with special reference to Adam Bede? (PU.2015, 2007
note)

Art of Characterization
Characterization: Its Importance
Success in characterization is the measure of a novelists greatness, and
George Eliot is with the very greatest in this respect. Among the
excellences which distinguish the works of George Eliot, one is her power of
characterization. She brings before us a variety of characters who not only
bear the essential stamp of reality, but each one of whom is endowed with
his or her individual traits of speech and manner, and his own moral quality.
Says David Cecil, It is in the treatment of character that George Eliots
more active intellect gives her the most conspicuous advantage over the
typical Victorians.
Characters From Humble and Rustic Life
George Eliot, like a lot of other women writers, depended largely upon
her own experience. She kept close to that which she knew intimately
namely the experiences of her girlhood. It is to this experience and to her
life in the English Midlands that she returns again and again for her
material. Although in her later novels, George Eliot does draw characters
belonging to the upper class, she derives her strength and recognition from
the portrayal of, what Wordsworth calls, characters from humble and
rustic life. Wordsworth influenced her profoundly. She echoes
Wordsworths interest in rustic life and uses the dialect spoken by the
humble rustics to make her portrayal of character more realistic.
Use of Personal Experience
George Eliots full scale characters are all drawn from her family circle,
close friends and acquaintances. This is clearly noticeable in her early
novels. The male persons in the first novels, Scenes of Clerical Life are
portraits of real people whom she had been acquainted with or heard
about. She gives us the thoughts of the ordinary, humble, men and women
she had known, and sets them against a very unromantic background. They
are neither extraordinarily silly nor extraordinarily wicked, nor
extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment,
nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hair-
breadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not
pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves
at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions
more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bold and
disjointed. Yet these commonplace people, many of them, have a
conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right;
they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred joys; their hearts have
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perhaps gone out towards their first born, and they have mourned over the
irreclaimable dead.
Power of Psychological Portrayal
George Eliot looks into the minds of these common people and reveals
their thinking, feeling, sufferings and frustrations. Their concern with the
sublime prompting to do the painful right is illustrated by the story of
Maggie Tulliver and is echoed in Romola, Dorothea, Felix Holt and in all her
major characters. The writer who could visualise for us the hedonistic Tito;
the fine old puritan, Dr. Lyons; the erratic Gwendolen, the steadfast Mary
Garth; the commonplace Fred Vincy and the brilliant Lydgate; the rough
uncultured Bob Jakin and the polished scholar Casaubon dealing justice to
each, fairly appraising their merits and no less keenly exposing their
weaknesses, was a writer with no ordinary power of psychological
portrayal. Nor is she a whit inferior in the subtlety of her method, as is
evidenced by the delicate nuances in the characterization of Mary Garth
and Rosamund Vincy, and Romola. (Compton Rickett)
Realism
Such is her realism in the presentation of character, that after the
publication of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857, her readers of Warwickshire
were astonished to find that the characters of the novel were people they
had known and who were their neighbours. In the Sad Fortunes of Rev.
Amos Barton, George Eliot reveals her sympathy for common people by
making her hero, a man whose only noticeable quality is that he is
superlatively middling. She has sketched the unheroic hero from her
memory of the Rev. John Gwyther, Curate of Cheverels Colon between the
years 1838-41. A host of minor characters have been portrayed masterly.
George Eliot has characterised them realistically and they are seen clearly,
objectively, humorously and inspite of their moral and intellectual
deficiencies, with respect and sympathy. George Eliot reveals the
individual traits of these spokesmen of the small community of Shepperton.
Mrs. Hackit, whose character is based on fond recollections of her mother,
is a shrewd and good hearted woman. She is a good farmers wife and
manages the dairy, like Mrs. Evans, successfully. Mr. Hackit is a pleasant
gentleman. He, like the authors father, Robert Evans, is A shrewd,
substantial man, whose advice about crops is always worth listening to and
who is too well off to want to borrow money.
She had been greatly influenced and dominated by her father, and Adam
Bede and Caleb Garth are strongly reminiscent of Robert Evans, the upright
workman. He, like Adam Bede, was well-known for his trustworthiness, high
character and extraordinary strength. He had an immense knowledge of
plantations, timber and mines. Robert Evans excellencies had brought him
to the notice of Sir Francis Newdigate and the relationship between her
father and his employer is the source of the account of friendship between
Adam Bede and Arthur Donnithorne. Regarding the character of Dinah
Morris in Adam Bede George Eliot said: The character of Dinah grew out of
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my recollections of my aunt who is a very small, black eyed woman, and

(as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of
preaching. This aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, was a Methodist preacher of
great saintliness. Like Dinah Morris, she was known for her charity in
Derbyshire. According to Gey Roslyn, In the novel the descriptions of
Dinah are descriptive also of Elizabeth, the heroine of fact, and the heroine
of fiction are alike in walking, talking, dress, occupation and the fortunes of
life.
The Professions
George Eliot spent the first thirty years of her life in the Midlands where
she had enough opportunity to study the mannerisms and life of the lower
classes. We have it in her own words that she had lived among craftsmen,
farmers, tradesmen, mechanics, farriers, butchers, gardeners and
innkeepers, and as we glance over her principal characters, we are assured
of the fact that her sympathies lay with them. Her characters are all
modelled on the memories of her life in the Midlands. They belong to the
various professions and occupations that George Eliot had been familiar
with. Adam Bede is a carpenter; Dinah Morris works in a factory. Hetty Sorel
is a pretty but vain dairymaid, Silas Marner is a linen weaver, Maggie
Tulliver is the daughter of a miller, Felix Holt is a watchmaker, and Esther
Lyon is a governess. She never-forgets the low and the humble. Romola is
based on fifteenth century Florentine life, yet George Eliot has filled page
after page with conversations of the commonfolk. According to Henry
James, She is unmistakably a painter of bourgeois life as Thackeray was a
painter of life of drawing-rooms.
Female Characters
When we glance over the whole range of George Eliots characters, we
come to the conclusion that she was exceptional in the portrayal of female
characters. One of her male characters, Tito, in Romola, has been called a
woman in disguise, so profound was her understanding of the female mind
and heart. The rendering of Hetty Sorel in Adam Bede is a triumph. Hetty
Sorel is a beautiful, vain, dairymaid who hopes to gain a higher place in
society by using her beauty. Says John Bennett, George Eliot portrays with
insight and convincing truth Hettys physical charms and her shallow,
pleasure-loving, hurtless nature, without ill-will, but without any strength of
purpose to withstand temptation.
Dinah Morris is one person who penetrates through her surface beauty
and perceives the weakness of Hettys character and realises that she is
not equipped with necessary qualities to face the ordeals, of life. Realising
the shallowness of the vain, pretty dairymaid she tries to prepare her for
the possibility of pain and trouble in her Life. Leslie Stephen claims that
Hetty is thoroughly charming. George Eliot has been criticised for
crucifying the pretty, vain dairy-maid. It is almost as though Hettys very
prettiness is scored up as a bad mark against her, comments Walter
Allen. There have been biographical surmises that the plain looking George
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Eliot was punishing herself through the sins of the beautiful Hetty. In her
novels there are heavy, ironical paragraphs describing the beauty of
women like Hetty, and the havoc they caused in the lives of men. Hetty
suffers because she yields to temptation. This is true not only of Hetty but
also of Maggie Tulliver, Mrs. Transome and Gwendolen Harleth who
also suffer for their moral transgressions. They all testify to the authors
firm belief in the disastrous effect of sin.
Minor Characters: Mrs. Poyser
Her minor characters are drawn from various walks of life in
the Midlands. We meet farmers, clergymen, gardeners, school masters,
carpenters, milk-maids and innkeepers. After reading Adam Bede we feel as
if we know Mrs. Poyser, Martin Poyser, the Revered Irwine, Mrs. Irwine, his
mother, Lisbeth Bede, the mother of Adam and Seth Bede, Bartle Massey,
Mr. Cragg, and Joshua Rann intimately. Of George Eliots minor characters
Mrs. Poyser stands out foremost. The most interesting characteristics of
Mrs. Poyser are those which George Eliots mother also had. J.W.
Cross remarks: His (Robert Evans) second wife was a woman with an
unusual amount of natural force; a shrewd practical person, with a dash of
the Mrs. Poyser vein in her. Mrs. Evans, like Mrs. Poyser, was a successful
dairy woman, housekeeper and mother. She was a devoted wife with a
sharp tongue which subdued her husband, children and servants. Mrs.
Poyser is the wittiest of all George Eliots characters. She pervades the
novel Adam Bede and is well-known for her sharp tongue, but a kind heart.
Says Charles S. Olcott, Mrs. Poyser, whose practical common sense is
revealed in a succession of lightning flashes of pithy aphorisms and quick
repartee, has a place by the side of Sam Weller among the most
delightfully humorous characters of our literature.
George Eliot admitted that there was a great deal of herself in Maggie
Tulliver, the central figure in The Mill On the Floss. Many of Marians own
experiences and emotions have been woven into the character of Maggie.
In Arbury Farm, Marian would follow Isaac, her brother who was three years
older than her, adoringly, and was miserable when he was away from her.
Maggie like her creator adores her brother Tom and craves for his love.
Mary was a sensitive, passionate child, like Maggie, and she thirsted for
life, beauty and knowledge. The description of the childhood of Maggie is
unique. Every characteristic of her own childhood appears also in Maggie,
for example, her own love for music. Love for music is one of her strongest
bonds with Philip Wakem. Says Walter Allen, As a rendering of the growth
of a girl from early childhood to young womanhood, a girl marked by
intellectual distinction, a generously ardent nature and a strong capacity
for feeling, Maggie has never been surpassed.
Evolution of Character
The characters in George Eliots novels grow and develop as the story
proceeds. They are round characters. We behold them at the end of the
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book different from what they were at the beginning. In certain cases, they
become more hardened and more debased than what they were before.
One striking example of such character development is Tito Melema
in Romola. The gradual downfall of Tito can very well be placed besides the
debasement of Macbeth. We see in him the full representation of
deterioration. He desires to get on in the world but falls a victim to the
circumstances which are of his own making. Tito, who is a scholar, like
Godfrey Cass (Silas Marner) and Arthur Donnithorne (Adam Bede), yields
to his egotistic desires and commits base and cruel deeds.
George Eliots Clergy
George Eliots experience of painful conflicts from religious causes,
accounts for her sympathetic delineation of clergymen. Her picture of
clergy ranges from Savonorala, a Dominican friar, to Dinah Morris, a
Methodist preacher. The Evangelical movement and the clash between old
and new ways of worship had always interested George Eliot. As a novelist,
George Eliot saw in the drama of Evangelicalism excellent material for a
realistic portrayal of common life and this might have led her to write
Janets Repentance. George Eliot portrays the Evangelical movement with
all its good and bad, its hypocrisy and sincerity. Her admiration for saintly
Evangelical characters can be seen in her early books. Mr. Tryan in Janets
Repentance and Dinah Morris in Adam Bede are such characters, portrayed
realistically.
Her novels abound with simple-minded clergymen who unmoved by
religious dissent, go about their parish duties and minister to the wants of
the poor according to the tradition handed down by their ancestors. The
clergy are not without their weaknesses as, for example, Mr. Irwine in Adam
Bede, but despite such weaknesses they are treated with sympathy.
Mr. Farebrother in Middlemarch is a man of the world who plays for
money, yet he has pity, tact and wisdom. I dont pretend to say that
Farebrother is apostolic. George Eliot contrasts the worldly, kindly
Farebrother with the Evangelical Mr. Tyke, who is inhuman.
The Rustic Chorus
The novelists minor rustic characters, such as Mr. and Mrs. Hackit, Mrs.
Patten, and Mrs. Poyser, Lisbeth Bede, Dolly, Mr. Winthrop, Macey, Mr.
Craig, Bob Jakin, Britle Massey and a host of others, once met are difficult
to forget. Through them George Eliot shows the upper class how the other
half lives. Mrs. Poyser with her homely wit and genuine kindliness is
masterly drawn. Her dialogues are scintillating with wisdom. To these minor
characters of various professions, she gives the realism which Lewes
demanded in his article Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction
in the Westminster Review in which he insisted: the merchant must have
an air of the counting house, and an ostler must smell of the stables.
The rustic characters in the early novels, specially, can be compared in
their eccentricities and grotesqueries to the rustic characters of Thomas
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Hardy. The chorus of lively rustic characters plays an important part in her
novels. According to Barbara Hardy, they contribute to the intensification of
theme and character. Apart from playing their minor roles in the action,
the chorus is also the narrator and is important for making tragic
statements for the author. The chorus throws the ordinary hero into relief,
the relief of the frame and the relief of contrast.
The rustic chorus comments on the protagonist and very often the
reader comes to understand the protagonist better through the
conversation among the chorus. The chorus is also responsible for
providing to the readers information about the characters and their family
history. In Silas Marner, through the famous scene at the Rainbow Inn one
gathers a great deal about the Raveloe gentry. We learn that in Raveloe the
right opinion is the community opinion and the community speaks in one
voice. We learn that Raveloe is a surprisingly homogenous society with no
wide range of rank or wealth and the gentry of Raveloe are scarcely less
native than the rustics, their lives are almost as confined and sequestered
(Walter Allen). The tragedy of the hero becomes the tragedy of the whole
community and this brings the protagonist and the community together in
a common bond, as we also see in the case of the Rev. Amos Barton and
Rev. Mr. Gilfil in the Scenes of Clerical Life.
In Adam Bede the community of Hayslope plays the part of the chorus.
At the twenty-first birthday celebrations of Captain Donnithorne, Mr. Poyser
keeps referring with apprehensive irritation to the Squire, and the rumours
about the mysterious tenant. All this reaches a climax when old Squire
approaches the Poysers with a proposal and is routed by Mrs. Poyser. At the
same feast the Captain announces that Adam is being given the position of
the manager of the woods. Adam makes a fine speech but of much greater
interest are the opinions of those present:
Some of the women whispered that he didnt show himself thankful
enough, and seemed to speak as proud as could be; but most of the men
were of opinion that nobody could speak more straightforward, and that
Adam was as fine a chap as need to be.
In Mill on the Floss even the minor characters are sketched with the
same firmness and strength as the major ones. The Tullivers, Gleggs,
Pullets and Bob Jakin are all individualised and distinct. The Dodsons are
based on George Eliots recollection of her mothers family, the Pearsons.
Mr. Evans with all his strength of character was submissive to his second
wife, Christina Pearson. She came from a yeoman family and her social
position was better than her husbands. Mrs. Evans was a superior woman,
both socially and financially, and Robert Evans held her in awe. Her family
no doubt are the prototypes of the emmet like Dodsons. The Dodson
sisters have been drawn with George Eliots characteristic shrewd
observation and humour. Each sister has her own distinct appearance,
behaviour, thinking and mode of talking.
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Conclusion
The characters of George Eliots novels are real, living breathing human
beings. They are warm, full of vitality, with human desires and weaknesses.
George Eliot was writing before Freud, yet her novels are rich in psycho-
logical analysis of character and motive. She not only penetrates to the
inner depth of her characters but the characters are studied in relation to
their environment. Her contribution to the English novel in the field of
characterization is that she made it conscious of character on a deeper
level.

ANSWER 2:
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 soul before her readers.
From the psychological point of view, in George Eliot novels, the characters
developed gradually, as we come to know them. They go from weakness to
strength or from strength to weakness.

George Eliot like a lot of other women writers, depended largely upon her
own experience. And it is to this experience and to her life in the English
Midlands that she returns again and again for her material. Although in her
later novels George Eliot does draw characters belonging to the upper
class. Wordsworth influenced her profoundly. She echoes Wordsworth's
interest in rustic life and uses the dialect spoken by the humble rustics to
make her portrayal of character more realistic.

George Eliot's full scale characters are all drawn from her family circle,
close friends and acquaintances. This is clearly noticeable in her early
novels. The main persons in the first novel, ' Scenes of Clerical Life' are
portraits of real people whom she had been acquainted with or heard
about.

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. Her novels are remarkable for their
psychological realism, and this is her peculiar contribution to the English
novel.

Such is her realism in the presentation of character, that after the

publication of Scenes of Clerical Life in 1857, her readers of Warwickshire
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were astonished to find that the characters of her novels were people they
had known and who were their neighbours. She had been greatly
influenced and dominated by her father, and Adam Bede and Caleb Garth
are strongly reminiscent of Robert Evans, the upright workman. He, like
Adam Bede, was well known for his trustworthiness, high character and
extraordinary strength. He had immense knowledge of plantation, timber
and mines.

George Eliot spent the first thirty years of her life in the Midlands where she
has enough opportunity to study the mannerism and life of the lower
classes. We have it in her own words that she had lived among craftsmen,
farmers, tradesmen, mechanics, farriers, butchers, gardeners and
innkeepers, so her characters also belong to the various professions. For
example, Adam Bede is a carpenter, Dinah Morris works in a factory, Hetty
Sorel is a pretty but vain dairy-maid.

When we glance over the whole range of George Eliot's characters, we

come to the conclusion that she was exceptional in the portrayal of female
characters. The rendering of Hetty Sorel in Adam Bede is a triumph. Hetty
Soral is a beautiful, vain, dairy-maid who hopes to gain a higher place in
society by using her beauty.

Dinah Morris is one person who penetrates through her surface beauty and
perceives the weakness of Hetty's character and she tries to prepare her
for the possibility of pain and trouble in her life. There have been
biographical surmises that the plain looking George Eliot was punishing
himself through the sins of the beautiful Hetty. There are heavy, ironical
paragraphs describing the beauty of women like Hetty, and the havoc they
cause in the lives of men.

The rustic characters in the early novels, especially, can be compared

in their eccentricities and grotesqueries to the rustic characters of Thomas
Hardy. The chorus of lively rustic characters plays an important part in her
novels. In Adam Bede the community of Hayslope plays the part of the
chorus. At the twenty-first birthday celebrations of Captain Donnithorne, Mr
Poyser keeps referring with apprehensive irritation to the Squire, and the
rumours about the mysterious tenants. All this reaches a climax when the
old Squire approaches the Poysers with a proposal and is routed by Mrs.
Poyser. At the same feast the Captain announces that Adam is being given
the position of the manager of the woods. Adam makes a fine speech but of
much greater interest are the opinions of those present.

For example, in the chapter called "A Journey in Hope, Eliot spends for more
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time in Hetty's poor brain and heart than Hetty spends on road in her
unwise search for her runaway lover. This is psychology. Eliot is very deft in
her psychologicl 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 Adam.

The characters of George Eliot's are real, living breathing human beings.
They are warm, full of vitality, with human desires and weaknesses.