George Eliot,Victorian Period,Women Novelists Research Papers (original) (raw)
In spite of her apostasy, George Eliot still believed in the moral and spiritual values of Christianity and it is hardly surprising she should have used the metaphor of the horizon to refer to this ideal notion of the essence of... more
In spite of her apostasy, George Eliot still believed in the moral and spiritual values of Christianity and it is hardly surprising she should have used the metaphor of the horizon to refer to this ideal notion of the essence of Christianity since the horizon is both unreachable and yet always visible, showing the direction one ought to follow. Her characters’ moral odyssey is about learning to see beyond the limits of their own self-centered experience; however, as Lydgate underlines in Middlemarch, « a man’s mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass. » We shall therefore focus not only on George Eliot’s insistence on the necessity « to see beyond the horizon of mere selfishness » but also on the idea that a genuine moral horizon can only exist in her eyes if people develop the capacity to contemplate various horizons, not only the most distant ones but also those that are the closest to them so that they should not neglect the sufferings of individuals for the sake of abstract ideals. Sight and vision are clearly linked in George Eliot’s novels and so is the notion of sympathy since Lydgate compares the idea of the mind shrinking and expanding with that of « a systole and a diastole » thus implicitly referring to the beating of the heart.
In the Victorian society, the fallen woman was identified with the monstrous Other as in the case of George Eliot's Hetty Sorrel in Adam Bede as well as the author herself. Both Eliot and her Hetty were monsters of their society as they... more
In the Victorian society, the fallen woman was identified with the monstrous Other as in the case of George Eliot's Hetty Sorrel in Adam Bede as well as the author herself. Both Eliot and her Hetty were monsters of their society as they violated the Victorian norms. Through the tragic story of Hetty Sorrel, Eliot depicts how the victimized female becomes a monstrous Other. This paper asserts that Eliot creates Hetty as her double to reflect her own unrest and anger in the conservative Victorian society. The paper also examines how, as a product of Eliot's complex mind, Hetty takes two polar opposite roles throughout the novel: a monster who contravenes the Victorian rules and a monstrous Other who is the victim of Victorian ethics and principles. Accordingly, Hetty becomes Eliot's madwoman who mirrors her own wrath and dilemma between the traditional role attached to woman and her rebellion against patriarchy.
In Romola (1862) G. Eliot recreates herself in the setting of the Florentine Studium and Lorenzo de Médici’s circle with abundant dialogues in which, among others, the romantic German theories about the superiority of Greek culture and... more
In Romola (1862) G. Eliot recreates herself in the setting of the Florentine Studium and Lorenzo de Médici’s circle with abundant dialogues in which, among others, the romantic German theories about the superiority of Greek culture and about Roman literature as a derivative literature are transferred to the end of the 15th century.
Throughout numerous mentions of humanists she attacks –moving to another setting what was being denounced by so many nineteenth-century authors– false erudition, committed to power and luxury, to “imitate what is imitable” (like Panhormita), “quote falsely” (Calderino) or speak “an offensive Latin” (Ficino). The worst of all are “the many hungry scholars” in Rome, who hope the resurgence of the Latin language as something more than a culture vehicle; in front of them, Florence and Poliziano represent the elitist culture which despises the barbarisms of so many false wise men.