Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/63

 the rudest storms, led as it were by an innate moral instinct in spite of all the cajolements of her wretched father, and in the tender purity of her nature carries an unblemished conscience to meet her coming happiness; the other, groping blindly around and wholly dependent upon aid and assistance from without, staggers and stumbles, and finally lies before us shattered and torn by remorse at the very time when freedom and happiness seem within her reach. The family relations of both are eminently significant. Mirah's whole soul yearns for the mother whom she has lost, and for the brother whom she believes she has lost; and when she is reunited to him, her joy is extreme. Gwendolen has an air of superiority and authoritativeness even towards her care-worn mother; and she is in the habit, before her downfall, of regarding her harmless sisters as so many superfluous pieces