Do Novels Debunk Psychological Problems Successfully?

George Eliot is Victorian novelist and also the pioneer of modern novel in Victorian Age Literature. In Victorian Age novel is one of the main achievements comparing it with Elizabethan drama. There were many novelists in the Victorian age but George Eliot got fame worldwide. Here David Hall says, “The subject mattes were toys in the hands of Eliot, she had a full grip on her characters’ mental and psychological thinking…”

Charles Dickens and Thackeray both were famous novelists of Victorian age but their novels show lack subject matter unity according to the critics of the Victorian age. Novel; humanitarian, in the hands of Dickens, satirical, in the hands of Thackeray, but in the hands of Eliot the novel became perfect psychologically and spiritually and there was a unity between soul and mind of the characters introduced by Eliot in her novels.

Eliot’s novels sometimes show psychological problems and sometimes reflect every day-life-realism in the best and fine way. Her themes of novels and complicated characters both are the production of her personal experience and observation. Her novels expose realistic features of the Victorian age society. Eliot’s novel Middle March clearly reflects pure realism of her age.

Eliot’s main contribution to the novel is to introduce internal and external conflict of the characters reflecting real good or bad circumstances in the finest way. As we what Maggie does in the novel is right due to having the sense of right and wrong. In spite of this, she loved Philip and Stephen Tom and her father. Here external dilemma reflects between Maggie and Stephen episode, and internal dilemma is reflected between Maggie and Philip episode in the finest way.

Eliot introduced complex characters as one of them is Maggie in her novels and their external conflict turns into internal conflict with the passage of time. Eliot clearly shows her characters’ habits, internal and external thinking, mental and psychological thinking as Maggie was neglected by her family and its reaction appeared in external and internal conflict.

As we see that Tom, Lucy, Philip an Stephen all develop the story of the novel in a fantastic style and situations and hardships in the novel are the production of misunderstandings and the wrong training of the characters in their childhood is the main cause of internal and external conflict of all Eliot’s characters.

Every character of the novel has a sense of duty and desire and their duty and desire makes the novel and characters complicated for the readers and critics. Stephen is a faithful lover but engaged with another, is liked by Maggie, but Maggie wants to marry Philip and loved Stephen.

Robert Browning poured inner conflict in his poetry the same Eliot did in the novel with a well woven story of inner soul and her conflict in human mind partly the production of the situation and partly the shadow of heredity. As Over Heart, ”Eliot’s novels are a beautiful blend of new ideas, new theme and real inner conflict.”

But she introduced her characters in life-like situation as a thinker and politician. Her characters swing between duty and desire. Duty reveals outer conflict and desire reveals inner conflict both take part in developing the main theme and story.

Besides, she exposes a tragic conflict like Marlowe or Shakespeare bases on her personal experiences and observation of the society in which she was living. Her novel has a beginning, middle and an end like a well written play. She chooses her characters from middle class, aged and young combination. The sympathy while reading the novels appeals to human emotions, not human mind.

To sum up, Eliot was an intellectual, active, a sensitive and a philosophical novelist of her age. She did not come under her age like other novels and play writers of the Victorian age. She was against Victorian plot, characters, themes and subject matter and the technique of producing the unity of actions for public entertainment. She wrote with a serious purpose not for enjoyment like other novelists.

As Robert Mall says “She wrote just to refine her the Victorian age, but she introduced universal traits in her characters like jealousy, envy and pride in simple words.” What Eliot reveals in her novels as green, jealousy, envy all are the essential traits of human being while social problems and status problems both are shown society production in her novels.