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Article: Fred Vincy and the unravelling of 'Middlemarch.' (by George Eliot)
- Article from:
- Papers on Language & Literature
- Article date:
- January 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Southern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The issue of moral judgment is a preoccupation with George Eliot. She wants to be fair to the persons in her fiction, to do right by them in keeping with an attitude often described by readers as sympathy or fellow-feeling. This is why in Chapter 29 of Middlemarch, after casting Mr. Casaubon so unfavorably for so long, she announces "For my part I am very sorry for him" (193) and goes on to show why. However, the injunction to avoid hasty or excessively harsh judgment carried with it the risk of excessive tolerance, of being too good to a character, and of thus compromising the moral fairness and realism to which she was committed.
Her treatment of Fred Vincy ...