First of all, the author's comments reveal the relationship between the characters more clearly and make the characters more vivid. A novel as grand as Middlemarch involves so many characters that if the author doesn't guide it in some way, maybe the readers will really have a lot of inconvenience. Critics Harvey and Isabel Armstrong both compare the author's interruption to a bridge. The former is a bridge from the real world to the novel art world, while the latter is a bridge from the novel art world to the real world. From the reader's point of view, they should be a bridge for novelists to guide readers into her novel world. Dorothy and rosamond are two female characters with strong pen and ink. When telling their love story, the author inserted the following sentence: men and women often make sad mistakes when judging their own problems; Sometimes they regard their vague and surging desires as gifts, sometimes as religions, and sometimes as vigorous love. This sentence is neither too early nor too late. It just points out why Dorothy, a beautiful and extraordinary woman, resolutely married Mr. Kasoben, who is lifeless, hypocritical and vulgar, and why rosamond doesn't know whether she loves someone or not. Here, the relationship between Dorothy and Mr. Kasuben and the nature of the relationship between rosamond and Lydgate have been profoundly revealed. Armstrong also commented that her "comments" are like famous sayings of philosophers and casual facts about the relationship between man and the meaning of life. They appear in the narrative, just like clever prophetic proverbs.
Secondly, the author will sometimes say a few words before further developing the story, so that readers can know the development direction of the story and help readers better understand the essence of the relationship between the characters in the story. For example, before Mr Faisal Si Tong read his will, the author suddenly thought of the animals on Noah's ark. She said: when the animals entered the ark in pairs, it is conceivable that these animals in the same boat were talking to each other; They must have thought that so many kinds of animals obviously use limited forage, and the share of each animal will definitely decrease. As the story unfolds, readers find that Mr. Faesser Si Tong's relatives are looking forward to their inheritance, just as the animals on the ark are looking forward to their due forage. Through this analogy, the character's mentality is obvious.
Moreover, the author's comments are very helpful for readers to understand the causes of the character's personality and increase the credibility of the character's personality. Dorothy is one of the round characters in Eliot's novels, and her personality characteristics are difficult to be summarized in simple language. She took the initiative to marry the old pedant Mr. Kasoben, but the honeymoon was not completed. She almost collapsed under the great mental torture. Readers are inevitably puzzled by this. The author explained in time that many people were thrown into various ups and downs when they were young, struggling to find a foothold, while their elders were busy with their own affairs. We know that Dorothy's parents died when she was young, and she was forced to live a dependent life. The author implies here that her childhood misfortune has created her special personality: on the surface, she is quite mature and steady. Her understanding of the world is one-sided, vague and unreal. The author's interruption provides readers with the once-missing and indispensable internal logic of the novel, making the whole work an organism. As E.M. Foster said, the test of a round figure depends on whether he convincingly gives people a sense of surprise. If he never surprises people, then he is an ordinary person. This amazing contradiction and uncertainty in Dorothy's character is also close to an artistic truth, which embodies the author's artistic creation principles. George Eliot is a master of description. She is good at describing not only the appearance of characters, but also their hearts. These meticulous descriptions immediately show her character to the readers-true and kind. The famous critic Aba Woolson said that Dorothy is the most beautiful and noble heroine in the novel. I'm afraid the description of the characters' appearance and heart in the novel is indispensable for critics to come to this conclusion. About Dorothy's appearance, the author wrote:
Miss Brooke (that is, Dorothy) has a kind of beauty, which is even more radiant because of her simple clothes. Even if she wears the plain coat worn by the virgin Mary in the eyes of Italian painters, her wrists and jade hands will look beautiful. Her figure, posture and outline are more elegant and noble because of her simple clothes. Compared with the fashion popular in small places, she is like an introduction to the Bible in a contemporary newspaper or a poem by a classical poet.
In this appearance description, the author skillfully uses the methods of comparison and analogy to describe this unusual girl, describes her appearance and highlights her charm. As we know, the Virgin Mary painted by Italian painters in the Middle Ages and even the Renaissance always wore clothes with dark colors and simple styles. It is this unpretentious dress that can reflect her holiness and brilliance. It is undoubtedly of extraordinary rhetorical significance to describe an ordinary town girl with the clothes of the Virgin Mary painted by artists. We not only saw the appearance of this character, but also understood the meaning of this description in the religious and secular sense. In order to show Dorothy's refined style, the author compares her contrast with fashion to the difference between the language style of the Bible and classical poets and that of contemporary newspapers. This metaphor also goes beyond the simple description of appearance, but highlights the charm of the characters. The author not only describes a young woman with natural beauty, but also writes about her taste, her upbringing, her externalized spiritual world and her disharmony with the living environment. This description set the tone for Dorothy.
When describing Dorothy's inner world, the author intentionally or unintentionally hinted that the social environment and educational background in which she lived left a mark on her mind, and revealed the illogicality of her way of thinking and judgment:
Dorothy can recite Pascal's Random Thoughts and Guillaume Taylor's religious works in long paragraphs. She takes care of the fate of mankind with the concept of Christianity, and thinks that it is unreasonable for women to work hard on some unimportant things. She believes that it is impossible for one to pay attention to dressing and paying attention to the eternal spiritual world at the same time. Her heart is full of theories, and she naturally longs for unfathomable ideas, including her code of conduct in Tipton parish. She pursues the intensity and sublimity of things. She'll even die for it ...
Random thoughts mentioned in this paper is Pascal's work praising Christianity and Christian spirit, and Guillaume Taylor is also a famous religious philosopher. Under the influence of their works, it is inevitable that Dorothy despises secular life and yearns for sacred spiritual life. However, she lacks the necessary premise and rational thinking when making specific judgments, so her judgment is untenable and disastrous. She worships worldly things subjectively and blindly. This is the root of her personality tragedy. From this psychological description, we know that Dorothy is not a person living in reality. She is ambitious and consciously shoulders the mission of religion and morality, but it is not difficult to find that her so-called sacred altar is only in imagination, which also indicates that her pursuit of being divorced from reality will lead her into a huge spiritual dilemma.
Besides Dorothy, Eliot's description of the appearance and inner feelings of Mr. Kasuben and rosamond is also very successful. She almost made us believe that the story is born of each other's feelings, because her description is an abstraction and summary of relatively scattered stories, which makes the characters in the novel have a clearer outline. As we all know, a person's speech is closely related to his personality, in other words, everyone's speech has different discourse styles. In novel creation, the design of character discourse is the key to determine the success or failure of character creation. George Eliot is ingenious in the design of characters' discourse. There are many characters in Middlemarch, and it is not easy for each character to have his own discourse style. However, the author has succeeded in making the characters' discourse style unique and become the main means to portray characters.
The different discourse characteristics of these characters are first manifested in the different styles of writing. Take Mr. Kasoben's writing as an example. His words are few and unfathomable. When he speaks, he is used to being accompanied by solemn and dignified gestures, which makes people somewhat awe of his words; His written language is formal and rigid, with uncommon words, complex sentence patterns and awkward words. Even his love letters to Dorothy seem to be rigorous academic papers, rather than letters for daily communication. The message conveyed by this style to readers is: either he is a bookworm who is ignorant of the world and bent on studying, or he is a pretentious hypocrite, or both. The acceptance of his style reflects the receiver. Cai Liya's aversion to him shows that she is clear-headed and sensitive; Dorothy's blind worship of him shows that she is kind by nature, lacking judgment and full of fantasy.
Secondly, the discourse content of each character is also different. Different discourse contents reflect the speaker's different ideas, life interests and ways of thinking. The following is a conversation between Dorothy and her sister Celia about Mr. Kasobon, from which we can find the personality differences between the two sisters. Cai Liya first broke the silence:
Mr. Gershoben is really ugly!
Zelia. He is one of the most unusual people I have ever met. He looks like Locke in the painting. They all have deep eyes.
Does Locke have two white furuncles on his face, too?
Oh, I think so! Especially in the eyes of people who don't like him.
Why are you angry, Dorothy?
You are so mean, Zelia! In your eyes, people are just animals in dresses, and you will never find their great souls in their faces.
Does Mr. Kasoben have a great soul?
Of course. he knows, i guess. Everything about him is as profound as his biblical cosmology.
He doesn't seem to talk much.
That's because no one is worth talking to.
There is a sharp contrast between the two sisters' words: Zeilya pays attention to Mr. Kasoben's objective and external things, such as his sunken eye sockets and ugly boils; Her reaction to him was instinctive disgust. Dorothy pays attention to the imaginary Mr. Kasobon, and she appreciates his inner things, such as knowledge and soul. She tried to combine the ideal Mr. Kasobon with this stuffy old man. Reflected in the discourse, Cai Liya's words are objective and calm; Dorothy's words are subjective and emotional. The author successfully depicts two girls who are not much different in age and live in the same environment by using the differences in text content, and readers will never confuse these two characters.
In addition, the differences in characters' discourses are also reflected in their adaptation to the context. The smooth communication of discourse depends on the speaker's ability to follow certain communication principles and adjust his style and discourse content according to different contexts. Stylist Turner once said: the change of style is measured by the change of context. In the case of interdependence, style needs to be explained according to this dependence. According to this view, what style to adopt is not free. The choice without any restrictions is at least partially limited by the context. In Middlemarch, some characters show good adaptability to different contexts. Mr. Brooke is a typical figure of this type. His style and discourse content will be adjusted accordingly with the change of context. In public or social life, his words are polite and decent without losing his sense of distance. In private occasions or family life, his words are cordial, cordial and casual. This good adaptation to the context shows the maturity, sensitivity and good judgment of the characters. On the other hand, other characters show extreme inadaptability to the context. This is the characteristic of what Mr. Kasuben and Dorothy said. Mr. Kasoben is used to using an overly formal style, and speaking at the dinner table is as cautious as speaking in public. Moreover, his voice is cadenced like singing, and he shakes his head from time to time, which is in sharp contrast with Mr. Bruck's casual words. Because his style and expression are out of context, his words lose their meaning and communicative function. The audience either thinks he is funny or unfathomable. Dorothy tries to avoid secular topics and refuses to use common words in various contexts. So it also led to a lot of communication stagnation. This extreme inadaptability to the context subtly reveals the childish, extreme and unbalanced coordination ability of characters. To sum up, it is not difficult for us to draw a conclusion that the characters created by George Eliot have high artistic value, unlike the narrow Victorian moral dogma that some critics have said. The author himself once argued that my role is cultivation in the aesthetic sense. My purpose is not to be an enlightenment teacher, but to arouse the noble feelings called by social morality, not to prescribe anything for society. In order to achieve this goal, the author pays attention to its artistic appeal rather than other things in characterization, and her excellent characterization skills enable her to achieve this goal. However, as Woolf, another British novelist, said, if we read George Eliot carefully, we will find how little we know about her. Learn more about this writer.