ABSTRACT
Middlemarch is one of the clearest examples of the conflict of narrative impulses. From the outset the similarities between Dorothea Brooke, a latter-day Saint Theresa, and Schiller's saintly Joan of Arc in Die Jungfrau von Orleans are striking. Most significantly, the fact that George Eliot cannot render Dorothea's reconciliation to the constraints of ordinary life as compelling the drama of her self-renunciation leaves the conflict of narrative discourses unresolved. Felix Holt also shows clear signs of Schillerian preoccupation with the problematic destiny of moral idealism and the novel presents a similar conflict of narrative impulses to that seen in Middlemarch. Unlike most protagonists in Schiller's political dramas, Felix is not an aristocratic figure struggling at the highest levels of power, but harkens back rather to William Tell. In Felix, however, Eliot draws on another aspect of Schillerian heroism: that of the 'moral and political' idealist in conflict with political reality which he fails to understand or to assess correctly.
