The
Ambiguities of Moral
Choice in
“Middlemarch”
Professor P. P. SHARMA
Indian
How
very difficult it is to distinguish between right and
wrong seems to be one of the concerns of George Eliot in Middlemarch. The
density of social life that marks off this novel from the earlier; ones is
perhaps meant to suggest that individuals don’t live in isolation, that nobody
is an island, that people have willy nilly to express themselves through the medium of society
by which they are also influenced. The emphasis therefore shifts from the
protagonist to the larger group, a kind of organism of which he is part. In
order to understand him in any meaningful way we have to observe him in the
complex context of his manifold social relationships, in his interaction with
others. Most of the ambiguities, it seems to me, arise from this fact: when one
acts in a certain way, others may fail to see his motive correctly and consequently
there may be misunderstanding. The original motive may itself undergo some
change; or the real motive may be concealed from the actor; or working through
what F. R. Leavis calls, “dark indirections and
tormented inner casuistries” he may achieve his object by playing hide and seek
with his conscience through rationalization. In. the last case he does
something patently wrong and still manages to devise a justification for it. A
psychological realist, George Eliot penetrates into the secret working of the
mind of her characters and describes with great subtlety how they founder
through murky regions.
Let
us consider Dorothea first. At times Eliot seems to be too much identifying
herself with Dorothea to be able to bring her shortcomings into proper focus.
She is compared to Saint Theresa. But where is room for Saint Theresa in this
imperfect world? Her decision to marry Casaubon leads to a tragic failure. But
even though we sympathise with her we cannot help blaming
her for her obtuseness in the choice of her husband. The whole point of the
novelist making us listen to the commentary of such diverse characters as Sir
James, Mrs. Cadwallader, Celia and Mr. Brooke is just
to tell us that what she thinks right is not really so and she herself will
come to realise this although a little too late. Too much of independence on Dorethea’s
part, bordering on wilfulness, blocks out all other
perspectives except her own. One can be too good for the world. This is
what Eliot herself perhaps means when she says: “Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond,
and never find the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind.”
How
temptation insinuates itself into the mind of its victim to finally carry him
away on an unethical impulse is very interestingly brought out in the character
of Lydgate. Lydgate’s conscience was greatly troubled while deciding whether to
vote for Farebrother or Tyke. He hated to be taken
for a vassal of Bulstrode, for one who was trying to
curry favour with the influential banker. But he also
knew well that it would not be possible for him to go against the express
desire of Bulstrode. He was, however, most reluctant
to accept the facts as they were. His desire for promoting his personal
interest disguises itself in the clever argument that by keeping on the side of
Bulstrode he would be able to do unhindered
at the hospital the work that would eventually benefit the common people. His
moral resistance is broken down and in the calm comfort that he is sacrificing
the interests of a much better candidate, Farebrother,
for a larger cause he is clearly twisting facts to suit his own convenience.
Later
in the novel we learn that Raffles is killed by the administration of alcohol–something
that Lydgate had forbidden. But his death brought about in this manner suited Bulstrode who otherwise stood in great danger of being
exposed. Lydgate should not have winked at the way his instructions were
flouted. But because he had received a loan of one thousand dollars from Bulstrode precisely at that time he thought it best to keep
quiet. What treatment can claim to be infallible? Raffles might have died even
if his prescription had been strictly followed. Moreover an orthodox physician,
he reminds himself, would have given alcohol to the sick man in his extreme
agony.
One
may sometimes make a moral choice under the pressure of social gossip. Mrs. Bulstrode and Mrs. Plymdale talk
about the rumoured flirtation between Rosamond and
Lydgate. Out of sheer curiosity Mrs. Bulstrode
catechizes Rosamond about it and subsequently tells her husband too. Bulstrode’s admonition to Lydgate to let his niece Rosamond
alone acts as a kind of spur to Lydgate’s attachment to her. If Lydgate had not
become the centre of controversy he would presumably not have been so irresistibly
moved by Rosomond’s pathetic situation when he had gone
to call on her father.
Doctrinal
perversion, like evangelicalism in the case of Bulstrode,
can also land one in confusion, lending to his choice a specious colouring of acceptability. See the self-deluding reasoning
Bulstrode indulges in just in order to exalt his
motives and to exonerate himself from any possible
charge of swindling. By misappropriating other’s money, he persuades himself to
believe, he was only the more effectively acting as an instrument of God’s
glory. Similarly, like a true pharisee, even as he
kept his hands from hastening Raffle’s death, he saw no sin in contemplating it
as the desirable issue and went on to make a distinction (a distinction without
a difference, one might add) between intention and desire. How true is Pip’s remark in Great
Expectations: “All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the
self-swindlers...”
Needless
to say, George Eliot’s omniscient narrative method is ideally suited to laying
bare the ambiguities of her characters in making their moral choice. The
novelist is in a privileged position to know all that is going on in the minds
of his characters. Moreover, there are dark and mysterious compulsions and motivations
which are seldom disclosed to the world except through self-flattering
distortions but they are not out of bound to the novelist. No wonder some who
were reared in the tradition of a smug and facile faith in the angelic nature
of man felt outraged at this ruthless exposure. But it takes a lot of courage
to strip away illusions in order that reality–the reality of human nature in this
case–may have a chance to be recognized. Indeed, George Eliot was a realist who
never wanted to gloss things over, part of whose candour
consisted in reckoning with some unsavoury facts about
human life.