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文摘:本文是一篇介绍英国女作家乔治·艾略特作品的课程作业。艾略特是维多利亚时代著名的女性作家，她的文学成就使她成为19世纪毋庸置疑的最伟大的英语作家之一,她的独特魅力在文学界引起了极大的反响，众多学者都致力于从女权主义角度去研究她。伊莱恩·肖恩沃特，是著名的女权主义批评家，认为女性写作经历了三个阶段:模仿、抗议和自我发现。
她还说,我们也可以看到作者的三个发展阶段。乔治·艾略特的一生更符合伊莱恩·肖瓦尔特定义的女性文学的第二阶段。我们可以看到乔治·艾略特的小说分为三个发展阶段,她小说中的女性角色不是彼此分开毫无联系的，而是应该作为一个整体。本文试图通过她的第二部小说，《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》，探索乔治·艾略特对女性主义的态度。 The Voice on Heard: A Feminist Study on Maggie's Tragedy
She also said that we could also see the total three development phases in an author. George Eliot's lifetime is the very second phase of women's literature defined by Elaine Showalter. In George Eliot's novels, we could see the total three development phases, so the female characters in her novels were also not separated but should be taken as a whole. This thesis try to explore George Eliot's attitudes to feminism presented through her second novel, The Mill on the Floss.
Key words: Feminism; George Eliot; The Mill on the Floss Content Table Introduction: 1. Social Background of The Mill on the Floss 2. George Eliot and Feminism 3. Literature Review Chapter 1 The portrait of Maggie as a Victorian woman 1.1 Within the “Golden Gate”: her childhood and its influence 1.2 Wandering in the “Thorny Wilderness”: her growth into a young woman 1.2.1 Maggie’s suffering in her “Anguish Loneliness” 1.2.2 Maggie’s release in her renunciation 1.2.3 Maggie’s predicament in love 1.3 The supreme moment of reconciliation Chapter 2 The causes of Maggie’s tragedy 2.1 The conflicting character of Maggie 2.1.1 Rebellion and obedience 2.1.2 Self-satisfaction and self-renunciation 2.1.3 Selfishness and altruism 2.2 The fetters of patriarchy society 2.2.1 Female dependence on male 2.2.2 Female’s smothered self-awareness Chapter 3 The significance of Maggie’s tragedy 3.1 Comparison between George Eliot and Maggie Tulliver 3.2 The unique feminist views of George Eliot 3.2.1 The modern aspect 3.3.2 The traditional aspect 3.3 The voice of George Eliot through Maggie’s tragic destiny
Conclusion
Introduction:
More than 100 years ago, in such a patriarchal society as Victorian England, women's living state in education, marriage and vocation was far inferior to that of men. The idea was prevalent that women had to stay dependent on a man: first as a daughter and then as a wife. Allays at her book! But it's bad--it's bad...a woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble ...she'll read the books and understand 'em. better nor half the folks as are grooved up.
This is what Mr. Tulliver told to her beloved daughter, Maggie, asking her not to receive too much education, which was thought to be bad for a girl. In Victorian England, compared with men, women were discriminated against as far as education is concerned. No matter what kind of class they were in, sons got better education than daughters did. The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, founded in 1857, was one of the first learned http://www.liuxuelw.com/dxcglxlw/ societies to admit women and to allow them to read papers at meetings. It was not until 1869 that Girton College, the first college that admitted women was founded. It was the prevalent belief that men belonged to the workplace whereas women belonged to home, thus boys must be educated to make great achievements in the workplace, while girls merely needed to know how to be a good housewife.
Education and vocation are closely related. Women in Victorian England were excluded from the formal education that would allow them to speak with equal authority as scientists or medical practitioners, as a result, the jobs women could find were either the poorly paid work like sewing or overcrowded professions such as teaching and nursing. As Mary Poovey argues in Uneven Developments: “The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England admitted so few feminist voices. Women were silenced as ‘patients’, their voice, and their resistance，was rarely heard.” Men were in the workplace and women in the home. Men struggled for domination in the political and economic realm, and women's influence was in reconciliation.
The deep concern of the Victorian English society is further revealed in its attitudes to marriage. In the 19th-century Britain women were expected to marry and have children .The laws in Britain were based on the idea that women would get married and that their husbands would take care of them. As Barbara Leign Smith has defined, “a man and a wife are one person in law; the wife loses all her rights as a single woman, and her existence is entirely absorbed in that of her husband.” Accordingly what marriage could bring for women was an enormous material sacrifice.
Women as the moral providence of our species, are the saints, duty-bound to remain chaste, abstain from politics or work outside the home, and espouse motherhood or perpetual widowhood as their highest goal.
This is what Comte promotes as a new "Positive Religion", and this is a good illustration of women's living state in Victorian England. 2. George Eliot and Feminism
There're reasons for us to say George Eliot lived like a feminist but not as a feminist. Unlike her fellow women writers, such as Brontes or Mrs. Gaskell, who wrote silently and did not take part in any social movements or debates on social ideologies, on the contrary, George Eliot took an active attitude towards life; gave her support to some active female contemporaries; questioned the contemporary ideologies about women and concerned them in a wider social, political and historical context than most Victorian women novelists. To see it in more details, we see how George Eliot devoted herself for the Victorian Woman Question.
To some extent, George Eliot supported the employment opportunities for women, saw the need and called for reform of employment. She recognized the hardships faced by self-supporting women, sympathizing with her old school teacher, Maria Lewis, an over-worked governess, and with fellow writer, Eliza Lynn, who "has great difficulty in obtaining any literati employment''
The Woman Question concerned issues of sexual inequality in politics, economic life, education, and social intercourse. In the political area, it was abundantly evident that women continued to rant: as a second-class citizen. They could not vote or take any political place except the highest place of queen (it is quite ironic that woman governs a patriarchic society, yet it seems that the Queens are in general antifeminist). Petitions to parliament advocating women's suffrage were introduced as early as the 1840s; there was also agitation for improving employment opportunities for women.
In addition to pressing Parliament for legal reform, feminists worked to enlarge educational opportunities for women. In 1857 none of England's three universities was open to women. Although Queen Victoria opposed the movement to dive women the right to vote, she still believes in education for her sex, she gave support and encouragement to the founding of a college for woman in 1847. George Eliot saw the need for improving education for women. Admired the energetic companions of friends and acquaintances such as Barbara Bodichon, Octavia Aill, Florence Nightingale, and Bessie Parties to achieve those ends. Barbara Hardy notes that "despite her generous sympathy with Victorian feminism. George Eliot plays no active part in the movemen". Like many of the early feminists. George Eliot was cautious about taking too radical a stance on the "women questions"; she always avoided a revolutionary position. She kept her sights on practical issues and specific measures: refusing to be drawn into more ideological partisanship, she declared herself "unable to give a judgement on the Woman Question.", partly because of its complexities and partly because she regarded innovations like women's suffrage as "extremely doubtful good" . Indeed the ironic tone of her mocking references to women. Lawyers in Russia and women professors in Italy indicated a basic skepticism about the desirability of radical change. Moreover, her lack of enthusiasm for radical feminists' programs derived from a belief that women are incapable of dealing with social and political ideas. With brisk decisiveness, she declared to a feminist friend that “Enfranchisement of women' only makes creeping progress; and that is best. for woman does not yet deserve a much better lot than man gives her''. |
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