Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature for

Secondary Schools

Bc. Daniela Němcová

Approaches to Female Subjectivity in Four

Novels by George Eliot
Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D.

2014
 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………

Daniela Němcová
 Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor, Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D., for the time he
dedicated to my work and valuable advice throughout the writing of the thesis.
Table of Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 5

1. Adam Bede ................................................................................................................ 9

1.1 Eliot’s approaches to physical beauty ..................................................................... 9

1.2 The portrayal of character qualities of the heroines .............................................. 13

1.3 The portrayal of marriage and motherhood .......................................................... 16

2. The Mill on the Floss .................................................................................................. 21

2.1 The portrayal of the main protagonists in childhood and adulthood .................... 21

2.2 The approach to Maggie’s inward and outward conflicts ..................................... 28

2.3 The portrayal of relationships between female and male characters .................... 31

3. Romola ........................................................................................................................ 38

3.1 Eliot’s approaches to the heroines and their life ambitions .................................. 38

3.2 The approach to marriage and traditional roles..................................................... 46

4. Middlemarch ............................................................................................................... 52

4.1 The portrayal of the heroines with consideration of their life expectations .......... 52

4.2 The approach to the marriage and struggling for independence ........................... 56

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 65

Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 68

English Resumé .............................................................................................................. 72

Czech Resumé................................................................................................................. 73
Introduction

George Eliot, born as Marry Anne Evans, worked as a translator, journalist and

last but not least she was one of the leading novelists of the 19th century in Britain. She

produced most of her novels in the time of great social changes that influenced

women’s rights and opportunities. As she was known for her realism it is not surprising

that many of the contemporary social issues considering questions of women’s social

position and rights are mirrored in her fiction. Eliot wrote her first novel almost seventy

years after Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in

1792 which is considered one of the first works of feminist philosophy in Britain. The

time of Eliot’s career was influenced by the continuation of the attempts of bringing

more attention to female subjection and unequal conditions.

In 1869 John Stuart Mill published his essay called The Subjection of Women

which prepared the ground for coming legal changes. In this work Mill discussed

human’s natural liking for authority and he advocated women’s rights for equal

opportunities in domestic as well as in political sphere by comparing female subjection

to modern slavery. He examined also the injustice in marriage and benefits coming from

giving women more freedom in all spheres of life than they had in his time.

Also thanks to Mill’s work some of the laws that were still discriminating

women in Mill’s time began to change. Just a year after the publication of the work

mentioned, the first Married Women’s Property Act was passed allowing women to

keep their own wages and earnings independently on their husbands’ incomes. Their

growing freedom was also supported by publishing the Married Women Act in 1886

which allowed a woman deserted by her husband to apply to the court for the

maintenance for her and children. The rights of mothers were supported by the

Guardianship of Infants Act in 1886 by which mothers could be appointed guardians for

5
their children either alone or together with the guardians appointed by the father after

separation of the married couple. These acts are only examples of the reforms that to

certain extend enabled women to leave their husbands if they treated them violently, to

have separate property and become more independent.

This thesis deals with the issues related to female independence in George

Eliot’s novels. Approaches to female subjectivity in four novels Adam Bede, The Mill

on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch will be examined from several angles and

perspectives. As legal changes leading to the improvement of women’s life

opportunities are mentioned, women’s intellectual independence is closely related to the

topic and I will take it into account in my analysis of the novels. Focusing on the

treatment of female subjectivity in the selected novels, my aim is to discuss Eliot’s

approach to the physical beauty of her heroines in relation to their character qualities

which often predict their success in life. The aim of the thesis is also to compare and

contrast the approaches to marriage and motherhood as these topics are important for

the portrayal of individual heroines. Moreover, the idea of sisterhood among women

will be analysed in some of the novels and I aim to examine the relationships between

the male and female characters. The following chapters concentrate on the analysis of

the main female protagonists which are usually two in each novel. Some of the minor

characters are also examined when it is relevant for the examination of the portrayal of

femininity in the particular novels.

The first chapter deals with Eliot’s first novel Adam Bede published in

1859. Rural location of this novel is taken into account. This chapter aims to analyse the

main female protagonists Hetty Sorrel and Dinah Morris from the perspective of their

family background, physical appearance and future life ambitions and final success.

6
Their character qualities are compared and contrasted in relation to marriage ambitions.

The character of Adam Bede is also mentioned in relation to the two female characters.

In the second chapter I examine The Mill on the Floss written just a year after

Adam Bede, in 1860. The analysis of the novel provides the comparison of the

characters of Maggie Tulliver and Lucy Dean. The emphasis is put on Maggie as she

seems to be more crucial character for the whole story. Her inner conflicts, relationships

to men and a difficult relationship with her brother Tom are examined. I focus on

Maggie’s inner life as it shapes her character and presents the heroine as an outstanding

person in her surroundings.

The third chapter deals with Romola (1862-63), an exceptional novel in Eliot’s

work. The main heroines Romola and Tessa are analysed from the perspective of their

different social background, different life ambitions and approaches to marriage. The

idea of unity among women and sisterhood is emphasized in this novel and I

concentrate on this in the final part of the third chapter.

The last examines Middlemarch (1871-72) in which Dorothea Brooke and

Rosamond Vincy are the most important characters for my analysis of femininity in this

novel. Here I deal with the change of relationship between men and women in marriage

and contrast them with general views on women. The question if self-realisation versus

motherhood is also examined in this final chapter.

In the thesis I refer to the novels mentioned using the following abbreviations:

AB for Adam Bede, MF for The Mill on the Floss, R for Romola and MM for

Middlemarch.

In the conclusion, the approaches to female subjectivity in selected novels are

compared and contrasted. I aim to see the development of Eliot’s approach to

femininity as I examine the novels in chronological order in which they were published.

7
 In relation to the issues mentioned, several sources are used to help us with the

analysis of the feminine subjectivity. Two of them are of an outstanding importance.

George Eliot: Her Mind and Her art (1948) by Joan Bennett provides an analysis of all

Eliot’s novels. It also comments on George Eliot’s different life periods and how they

influenced her career. Though the work itself is not biographical in its essence, it uses

Eliot’s letters and biographies as main sources of information. The book was chosen for

the aim of the thesis because it deals with the novels in a wider sense and puts them into

the context of Eliot’s work. In spite of the fact it does not specifically examine female

question in the novels it is concerned with the characters in general.

The book by Barbara Hardy The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form

(1959) provides a more detailed examination of the novels from the points of view of

their structure, protagonists and it also emphasizes the importance of the author’s voice.

In this work as well as in her other books the author works with Eliot’s novels in

relation to Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. She shows the significance of using

certain topics differently because Dickens was a male author and she compares his

approach to George Eliot’s feminine points of view. Though she does not write about

Eliot in relation to Jane Austen explicitly, we can still see some mentions of the

continuation of the lineage of female British writers which helps us to see Eliot’s

importance in the literature and significant features of her work.

Considering these two books mentioned are not the newest works related to the area

of our interest, more contemporary sources are also used for the purpose of this thesis.

8
 1. Adam Bede

The novel provides the reader with an insight into the rural life of the eighteenth

century England. The ratio of male and female protagonists is equal as Eliot creates a

story of four main characters: Arthur Donnithorne, Adam Bede, Hetty Sorrel and Dinah

Morris. Compassion with other people and mutual understanding in the small rural

community belongs to the main themes of the novel as well as the question of benefits

of hard work and choosing between two life paths. Some similarities and differences

can be found in the two main female protagonists who both influence the plot of the

novel.

1.1 Eliot’s approaches to physical beauty

It seems reasonable to analyse the female characters and the author’s approach

to the feminine question also with the focus on the image of female beauty as it is an

inseparable part of women in the novels examined and it can help the reader to make a

more detailed knowledge of the characters. Here we come to one of the most important

differences between Hetty and Dinah. Concerning Hetty, the description of her beauty

undergoes some significant changes as the story continues. From the very start the

reader is persuaded that she is a beautiful young girl of seventeen years of age and her

physical beauty is described from the man’s point of view. To give an example we can

mention the scene where Arthur Donnithorne meets Hetty in her house making butter.

Very soon we can notice that her physical appearance which might suggest innocence of

her soul reveals some of her coquettish behaviour. In the dairy scene the narrator

comments on the fact that relying on the relation of physical appearance and innocent

character might be misleading in this case:

9
 Hetty’s was a spring-tide beauty; it was a beauty of young frisking things,

round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence – the

innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a

promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeple-chase over hedge and ditch,

and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog. (AB 70) 1

In this passage we can notice a comparison of Hetty to an animal and the symbols of

pets to which she is compared might suggest that she is not more that a toy or small

thing that serves to amuse others, especially men. This is a theme to which we can

return. Hetty’s attitude to physical beauty is crucial when we aim to analyse her

character. That she is proud of her physical appearance and considers it one of her main

virtues can be observed in the mirror scene where Hetty spends her time in a privacy of

her bedroom and enjoys admiring her own beauty. Eliot also comments that her beauty

might be the main reason why men are interested in her:

How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the easiest folly in

the world to fall in love with her: there is such a sweet baby-like roundness

about her face and figure; the delicate dark rings of hair lie so charmingly about

her face and figure; her great dark eyes with their long eyelashes touch one so

strangely, as if an imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them. (130)

Therefore it can be observed that Hetty is portrayed as a beautiful blossoming girl but as

the one who is too much attached to her beauty and that quality of hers implies the

shallowness of her character.

1
Eliot, George. Adam Bede. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1997. Print.

10
 It should be pointed out that the description of Hetty’s beauty is strongly related

to her destiny and changes of her life. At the beginning of the novel she is described as

mentioned in the paragraphs above. These descriptions are connected to the parts of her

life when she is happy and when she is constantly imagining her future with a handsome

and noble man by her side and is looking forward to it. However, as the story develops

and she falls in love with Arthur Donnithorne (whom she can never marry) the passages

celebrating her attractiveness slowly disappear. Finally when she is in prison waiting

for a death sentence for murdering her own baby we see a completely different person

in her: “ ‘I saw her myself, and she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a

frightened animal when she saw me. I was never so shocked in my life as at the change

in her’ ” (AB 360). Now one gets the impression that her beauty faded away.

Eliot approaches Dinah’s beauty from a different point of view. It can be argued

that she is also physically beautiful but her attractiveness is of a different quality. From

the beginning of the novel she is compared to a saint and Eliot also states that she is not

like ordinary people and she is very unique among other tenants. “ ‘She looked like St

Catherine in a Quaker dress. It’s a type of face one rarely sees among our common

people’ ” (53). Dinah’s beauty is not emphasized as something extraordinary and she

wins our sympathy mainly because of her behaviour and character qualities. That she is

a Methodist preacher implies that her behaviour towards other characters is motivated

by her ambition to help people to come to God and support them when they are in

difficult life situations. Her beauty and character are constant in the sense that Dinah

does not undergo a change in character as Hetty does. She is still very pious at the

beginning of the book as well as at its end. However, it cannot be claimed that she is a

character without any development though her story is not as dramatic as Hetty’s. From

a preacher she turns into a mother of two children and into Adam Bede’s wife. Lora

11
Lefkovitz comments on her change: “Dinah becomes what Hetty had been, a sexual

woman” (Lefkovitz 94).2 The reader is aware of that Dinah’s physical appearance

changed too as in the last chapter her maternal figure is described although in the whole

novel she was portrayed as a frail woman who is pretty but not strikingly beautiful for

men’s eyes.

Male point of view is also interesting when female beauty is examined in Adam

Bede. In has been already mentioned that Hetty is considered a good-looking sexual

woman who is attractive for men. Judith Mitchell points out how Arthur and Adam

respond to her beauty: “Arthur’s response is straightforward and in a sense fitting: he

sees a pretty toy and wants to play with it (which he does, indicating his own

shallowness-not however, so culpably as Hetty indicates hers, we may note).” (Mitchell

17)3 This is also reflected in his behaviour towards Hetty. He has an affair with her

though he knows they will never be married. The fact that Adam’s reaction to Hetty’s

beauty is different might be also caused by his different social status. While Arthur

stands above Hetty in social hierarchy, Adam who works as a carpenter sees her as his

equal and the only thing in which he might be considered standing above her is his

moral quality. Though she flirts with men while she is conscious of her own beauty and

wants to be seen as the most beautiful by women Adam still tries to find that innocent

part of her being. It seems that in this respect Eliot’s male heroes are still trying to find

and have that Victorian ideal of a woman who can be a good mother for her children

and last but not least a good wife with feminine virtues and skills. “In other words, as

2
Lefkovitz, Lori. “Delicate Beauty Goes Out: ‘Adam Bede’s’ Transgressive Heroines.” The

Kenyon Review, New Series 9. 3: 84-96. JSTOR. Web. 20 Jan 2014.

3
Mitchell, Judith. “George Eliot and the Problematic of Female Beauty.” Modern Language

Studies 20. 3: 14-28. JSTOR. Web. 20 Jan 2014.

12
well as an aesthetic/sexual response, a beautiful woman conjures up in the (male)

observer the longing for a pure (desexualized) maternal goodness, which he then

projects onto her” (Mitchell 18). This is exactly what Adam does when he is in love and

does not want to see Hetty’s weak points.

1.2 The portrayal of character qualities of the heroines

Some crucial differences can also be found when considering character qualities

of the protagonists. The shallowness of Hetty’s character and her obsession with her

own beauty has already been mentioned. However, she is not ill-willed or bad. Despite

the fact that both she and Dinah are pictured as gentle women the reader can see that

only Hetty is compared to a toy or a pet that can be abused because she has no

protection and she is not as morally strong as Dinah is. This is caused also by her social

status and maybe her age. According to Patricia Beer, this is the main reason why

meeting Arthur Donnithorne is extremely dangerous for Hetty. “Hetty is not the spotless

victim of Adam’s imagination but she is unusually vulnerable, being protected by

neither common sense nor the ability to love, and has no real chance of escape from

man like Donnithorne” (Beer 207).4 This comment also suggests an idea of Hetty’s

simplicity which makes her trapped in nobleman’s arms. Her vulnerability contributes

to the depiction of her character which creates a certain response in the reader.

Now we come to the question of what this means for the reader. Eliot leads her

reader to sympathize with Hetty though she is not as pious and morally strong as Dinah

is. It even awakes compassion with her because all her disappointment and disillusion

4
Beer, Patricia. Reader, I married him: a study of the women characters of Jane Austen, Charlotte

Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. London: Macmillan, 1974. Print.

13
have the same source. All her life is destroyed when she realizes she cannot achieve any

of her life goals. From the very beginning of the novel we know that she wants to

become a lady and have a rich husband who would buy her all she needed and wanted

and would take her into the higher levels of society. Because her world view is very

limited disillusion comes.

She was too ignorant of everything beyond the simple notions and habits in

which she had been brought up, to have any more definite idea of her probable

future than that Arthur would take care of her somehow, and shelter her from

anger and scorn. He would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from

that she could think of nothing he could give towards which she looked with

longing and ambition. (AB 319)

Bruce Martin interprets the statement mentioned above and in his study dedicated to the

meaning of marriage and rescue in Adam Bede he sees the main source of Hetty’s bad

luck in her economic position: “Hetty’s position as a woman totally without economic

means or wordly sophistication is further reason for viewing her weakness and crisis in

her life as pitiable” (Martin 760).5 I can only agree with Martin here because the

reader’s compassion deepens when Hetty is compared to Dinah Morris. This contrast

contributes to the credibility of both characters as it portrays them as real people not just

black and white fictional characters.

In contrast to Hetty, Dinah is strong enough which enables her to support people

in need and it is her who stands by Hetty in prison. She is also the one who helps Hetty

to bear her suffering. It is not only age that influences Dinah in her behaviour. What she

5
Martin, Bruce. “Rescue and Marriage in Adam Bede.” Science in English Literature, 1500-

1900 12. 4: 745-763. JSTOR. Web. 22 Jan 2014.

14
follows is “the divine will” and this distinguishes her from Hetty who relies only on her

own feelings and other people’s opinions in the community. First the reader goes

through the passages praising her extremely good character qualities and might get the

impression that Dinah is almost a saint and later on Eliot allows us to see that this

character is also a human. Joan Bennet points out the moment of this revelation:

And Dinah herself becomes more sympathetic in Book VI, not because she is

less faultless but because the author allows us to discern her human nature more

clearly when she blushes and trembles at Adam’s voice, when she resists him in

case her love for the creature should interfere with her devotion to the Creator,

and when she finally submits. (Bennet 108)6

Bennet here supports the assumption that Eliot creates characters that are credible and

close to real people when she gives them human qualities which real people have.

Dinah’s hesitation and her increasing love for Adam helps the readers to forgive her

extreme purity which might be even provoking and making the character incredible.

Bruce Martin also expresses his doubts when it comes to the conception of Dinah’s

character:

I would not argue that Dinah Morris is a perfectly conceived character.

Undoubtedly the religious idiom in which she operates makes her unpalatable to

many modern readers, while her unrelieved ‘goodness’ must have disturbed even

some nineteenth-century readers. (Martin 753)7

6
Bennet, Joan. George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1948. Print.

7
Martin, Bruce. “Rescue and Marriage in Adam Bede.” Science in English Literature, 1500-

1900 12. 4: 745-763. JSTOR. Web. 22 Jan 2014.

15
So when it comes to character qualities, the female protagonists of Adam Bede are very

different.

Though Hetty’s highest ambition is to be married and protected for the rest of

her life Dinah’s aims are not oriented to the secular issues. On the contrary, she wants to

help people and she sees her mission in preaching. Although Dinah’s mission is to

change human characters through spreading the trust in God, the one who finally

changes at least Adam is not Dinah but Hetty. As Martin suggests, Hetty’s story awakes

sympathy to Adam’s fellow creatures. “Sharing her undeniable guilt causes him to look

upon every sufferer regardless of guilt, as worthy of sympathy” (Martin 748). There

comes the question whether changing one person in his character is not of the same

importance as helping the fellow creatures in ordinary life. It seems that by this Eliot

puts Hetty on the same level with Dinah.

1.3 The portrayal of marriage and motherhood

Another important aspect related to the examination of female characters and

their portrayal in Adam Bede is the portrayal of marriage and motherhood and also in

this respect it is evident that the protagonists have different approaches to it. It has

already been pointed out that marriage is a life aim for Hetty and she does not have any

higher ambitions or ambitions in other spheres of life. However, it is interesting that the

character who wants to marry does not share the same approach towards motherhood.

At the end of the book Hetty is found guilty and punished for a child murder. She hates

her child mainly because it caused her suffering and destroyed all her hopes for her

future with Arthur. When she wants to find Arthur and tell him what happened she finds

out that he has gone to Ireland and her desperation is even bigger. The dream about

16
being a nobleman’s wife is gone and because she is not used to deal with difficult

situations in her life, she wants to commit suicide and she leaves her newborn baby,

which consequently dies.

From what Hetty tells Dinah about the murder we can see that it was a

consequence of panic rather than a prepared plan: “ ‘I longed so for it, Dinah, I longed

so to be safe at home. I don’t know how I felt about the baby. I seemed to hate it – it

was like a heavy weight hanging round my neck; and yet its crying went through me,

and I daredn’t look at its little hands and face’ ” (AB 389). Looking forward to the

marriage that can never happen because Hetty and Arthur come from different social

classes and her reaction to unexpected motherhood suggest that Hetty is described as an

immature young girl (and she is only seventeen at the beginning of the novel).

Becoming a convict who has no support except for Dinah by her side happens very

quickly. Though it would not be considered as a social disaster for a noble man

marrying a girl from lower class than he himself belongs to in Victorian England as it

used to be in previous periods, Eliot still ironically comments on the situation between

Arthur and Hetty: “No gentleman, out of a ballad could marry a farmer’s niece. There

must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish” (118). Here Eliot’s ironic

approach to the depiction of marriage issues can be traced. She implicitly states that

there is an extremely influential public opinion on marriage in the rural community and

people like to interfere with these issues as well as judge unequal couples.

Concerning marriage Dinah’s opinions and behaviour are completely different.

She comes to a decision to marry Adam after a long time which she needs to think it

over and come to a conclusion that it is not in conflict with God’s will which she

follows. In this she is much more mature than Hetty and she does not fall into passion

so easily. Although there are some hints that suggest her feelings for Adam are growing,

17
the final decision comes almost at the very end of the novel. However this decision is

presented as the highest blessing in Dinah’s case:

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined

for life – to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all

sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be with each other in silent

unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? (AB 458)

However, the contrast between her previous thoughts and her final decision is very

strong as she explains her previous opinions on marrying:

“I know marriage is a holy state for those who are trully called to it, and have no

other drawing; but from my childhood upward I have been led towards another

path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no

wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures

whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know.” (437)

The marriage of Adam and Dinah is a marriage of two people who are of equal social

position, they both have an outstanding position between their neighbours and they both

had to undergo a certain change within themselves. This might be the reason why their

marriage is praised in this case. Dinah also becomes a mother and she has two children

with Adam and we witness an idyllic scene when she comforts her husband and

welcomes him on his way home.

George Eliot also comments on women’s lot in general. That it was not easy is

quite obvious from Bartle Massey’s (Adam’s old friend) comments in which he

expresses his derogatory opinions on women and their social role. “ ‘I tell you there

isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than

a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor makeshift way, it had
18
better ha’ been left to the men – it ha’ been left to the men’ ” (206). It seems that she

considered the role women had in those days pitiable and it can be supported by the

following passage:

And Hetty must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman,

with a woman’s destiny before her – a woman spinning in young ignorance a

light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and press

upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once her fluttering,

trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human anguish. (AB 215)

In this passage the narrator explicates the women’s role as pitiable while awakening

reader’s compassion by prophecy that all women will probably end up badly when they

are trapped in their ignorance or naivety. It might be the awareness of the difficult

position women had that led the author to make one of her protagonists an outstanding

character with many virtues and the other one ordinary girl who had bad luck and whose

way into troubles was very quick.

We have two different types of women in Adam Bede. The virtuous one gets her

reward in the form of an excellent husband and (probably) happy family life in

accordance with the “divine will” and the other one who is too light hearted and

immature becomes a convict and we do not hear about her any more. It seems that

celebrating a family as a steady unit worth of praise was one of the messages that gets to

the reader via this novel besides its artistic qualities. The heroines are compared to

flowers and pets which emphasizes the fragile nature of women. However, it seems that

we cannot claim that the female characters would awaken more sympathies within the

reader than the male characters do. But it might seem that they play more important

19
roles in the plot as a whole. Male characters are not portrayed as brutal creatures who

tyrannize poor frail women but their relationships are more complicated which only

gives us evidence that they are also close to realistic characters. None of the females is

seen in black and white perspective and that they are interrelated with male characters if

novel can be observed.

In Adam Bede Eliot indicates awareness of the actual social situation women had

in her time and she wants more for her main protagonists than to be a sexual object of

men’s desire. She approaches female subjectivity by giving the main protagonists

beautiful bodies but also moral qualities and weaknesses of real people.

The notion of female beauty is problematic in her novels precisely because she

did not see it as a problem: according to the dictates of her time, she believed

that a lovely woman should signify certain feminine attributes, should initially

reject the desire of the male subject and should finally submit to this desire

completely. (Mitchell 26)

This is what happens to Dinah as well as to Hetty. In Hetty’s case it was a

submission intended from the very beginning she fell in love with Arthur. Dinah then

needed some time to think her decision about marriage over and finally she submits to

her husband as well. That Eliot does not see anything bad in physical beauty and sexual

attractiveness can be observed also when we consider that the end of the destiny of the

main heroines was not dependent on their exterior qualities.

20
2. The Mill on the Floss

There are many large and small themes and motives that tie the novel together

and create its whole image. One of the important themes is the position of the individual

in their community and the effect society has upon the individual. In this respect it does

not really matter if we consider male or female characters. Nevertheless, the female

characters tend to be more sensitive to the social pressure which distinguishes them

from their male counterparts. Inner struggles and the consequences of a conflict

between the individual and society is one of the crucial themes which influence also the

main protagonist.

2.1 The portrayal of the main protagonists in childhood and adulthood

In this novel the reader is provided with an excellent opportunity to see

Maggie’s development from childhood till adulthood and thus witnesses all the dramatic

events that shape her character. In the first part of the book we see that Maggie lives in a

complete family with both parents and older brother Tom. The relationships among the

members of the Tulliver’s family are different and worth of examination.

Maggie’s and Tom’s positions in their nuclear family are in some respects

different. Tom is considered a smart and clever boy who will definitely succeed in life

and he is admired mainly by the relatives from his mother’s side. However, these do not

like Maggie and claim she is too wild and takes too much after her father who

consequently protects her and gives her maybe more attention than he gives Tom. From

the first chapters describing their childhood the reader can see that Mr Tulliver is an

important figure in little Maggie’s life. To him she goes back in her memories when she

is an adult person and does it with the greatest love and to him she escapes when she

needs to be protected. That she treats him with the greatest love can be also observed in

21
the scene when he lies almost dying and the family has to be deprived of almost all their

property: “Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving

remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or

bear anything for his sake” (MF 207).8 In this passage Maggie’s strong will to

overcome some troubles for the sake of others can be noticed. This decision will be

important in her life later.

Another reason why her mother’s family despises Maggie is her physical

appearance and her behaviour when she is a little girl. However, not only her relatives

but even her own mother struggles with loving her and accepting her as she really is and

she always compares Maggie to her cousin Lucy, who always looks neat and tidy. Mrs

Tulliver’s complaints about Maggie’s behaviour can be observed from the very

beginning of the story when Maggie does her first rebellious act and cuts her hair off:

“ ‘She’s too big a gell, gone nine, and tall of her age, to have her hair cut short; an’

there’s her cousin Lucy’s got a row o’ curls round her head, an’ not a hair out o’ place.

It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that pretty child; I’m sure Lucy takes

more after me nor my own child does’ ” (9). From this extract one can get the

impression that even being taller than it was usual was a reason why not to gain the

respect of the society. It seems to us that by putting this passage into the mouth of

Maggie’s mother Eliot might criticize this approach to the individual. As we will see,

being different is also the cause of Maggie’s suffering in the adulthood.

In addition, the passage quoted clearly shows how motherly feelings are not as

strong as they should be in a functional family. Alexander Welsh also points out that

Maggie’s relationships to her parents are not equal: “Note that Maggie is emphatically

the child of her father rather than of her mother; she is Mr Tulliver’s favourite, and he

8
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. London: Penguin Books, 1994. Print.

22
her favourite. Mrs Tulliver is not very effectual nor very colourful.” (George Eliot and

the Romance 251)9 Welsh thus comments on the different approaches Eliot has towards

the character of Mr Tulliver and Mrs Tulliver. Though I agree with him in that Mr

Tulliver is portrayed in more detailed way during Maggie’s childhood it seems

reasonable to argue that Maggie’s mother stays in the novel till its end though she does

not play a big role in the story. The reader notices the absence of mother’s feeling

towards Maggie and this is an important fact through which the author develops

compassion for her heroine.

Little Maggie is therefore a child despised by her relatives but with her own

imaginary world to which she escapes whenever she feels bad or in danger. The books

are thus a very important part of her childhood life that enables her to pretend that she

can be happy at least for some moments and to escape from her bad feelings:

The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a

world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and

that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for

Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s narrow

griefs – perhaps of her father´s heart-cutting childish dependence. (MF 238)

This extract from the novel was quoted not only because it presents Maggie’s books as

her only companions in difficult times of bankruptcy of the family but also because it

shows us that in her young age she was a creature desperately seeking love which the

world did not offer her after her father’s serious accident. This need of being loved also

shaped her character in her womanhood.

9
Welsh, Alexander. “George Eliot and the Romance.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 14.3: 241-254.

JSTOR.Web. 25 Feb 2014.

23
 The reader is provided with an opportunity to see Maggie’s inner life, her inner

feelings and struggles. However, this is not the case of Lucy Dean. It seems that Lucy is

described mainly from the outward point of view but this does not necessarily mean she

is portrayed only superficially. Her description rather seems to function in the whole

novel as a Maggie’s portrayal counterpart. Lucy is as an example of a good girl who is

obedient to her parents’ and relatives’ commands and good to everyone. We are aware

of the differences between these two characters from the very beginning of the novel

when their appearance is described:

It was like contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten.

Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed: everything about her

was neat – her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little straight

nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to

match her hazel eyes, which looked up with shy pleasure at Maggie, taller by the

head, though scarcely a year older. (MF 58)

It can supposed that Maggie does not like Lucy for all her perfectness and that this

might make her jealous. However, it is the other way round between them since we

know Maggie likes Lucy and considers her a friend in childhood as well as when they

are adults. Nevertheless, this fondness of Lucy can turn into jealousy when Tom’s

attention is concerned. That her family too much praises her good qualities is the reason

for Maggie to rebel against them and their values and she tries to “defend” herself in a

childish way when she cuts her hair. Not much there comes the scene where Maggie’s

pushes Lucy into the mud because she receives more attention not only from aunts and

uncles but even from her brother Tom. Tom is undoubtedly an authority for little

Maggie and this does not dramatically change till their adulthood.

24
 Nevertheless, the approach to her physical beauty is different. She is no longer

considered an ugly duckling and now the dark colour of Maggie’s hair and her brown

skin makes her unique. Men’s attention is drawn to Maggie and they appreciate her

darkness. Though she has dark hair and beautiful dark eyes which do not suggest

innocent kind of feminine beauty, Philip express his feelings towards her when he meets

her after a long time: “Her eyelids fell lower, but she did not turn away her head, and

Philip continued to look at her. Then he said slowly, ‘You are very much more beautiful

than I thought you would be’ ” (MF 307). We see that her eyes are admired most and

the reader is aware of their uniqueness as soon as Maggie starts becoming a woman and

Philip express his feeling about her beauty: “ ‘They’re not like any other eyes. They

seem trying to speak, trying to speak kindly. I don’t like other people to look at me

much, but I like you to look at me, Maggie’ ” (186). It seems to us that it is not just a

coincidence that Eliot emphasized Maggie’s eyes instead of another part of her body.

The reader can associate eyes with speaking, that eyes can tell something about the

personality. In the extract just quoted above it is evident that through her eyes Philip

admires her character though it is not explicitly said. Stephen Guest, the second man

interested in Maggie, becomes more specific when they are both mature people and he

also expresses his feelings about her uniqueness: “I am not sure that the quiet admission

of plain sewing and poverty would have done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they

made Maggie more unlike other women even than she had seemed at first” (387). In this

passage he hints that though they stand on different social levels, he is charmed by her

personality and appearance.

Concerning the physical beauty of the main heroines there is a sharp contrast. As

already mentioned in the first chapter, Eliot often uses two heroines in one novel on

purpose. Maggie is dark haired and Lucy is blonde. Alexander Welsh, in his study of

25
stereotypes in the portrayals of female characters not only in Victorian fiction pieces of,

claims that in this aspect George Eliot only continues in a tradition established long ago

before she started writing: “This close observation of the comparative fortunes of blond

and brunette was not, of course original to Maggie or George Eliot. By 1860, when The

Mill on the Floss was first published, even an unsophisticated reader might smile at the

old stock pattern of the romance” (George Eliot and the Romance 243). However, we

do not claim, like Welsh, that the reader is aware of this tradition or resemblance of

Eliot’s novel to other novels in this aspect. Attentive readers can still find a link to

literary heritage in the primary text. Maggie reads a lot and she is aware that not all the

heroines have happy endings waiting for them and she sees a resemblance to the real

world in it. She asks Philip to give her some books in which also dark-haired heroines

can be happy:

I’m determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry

away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice against them. If you

could give me some story, now, where the dark woman triumphs, it would

restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca, and Flora MacIvor, and Minna,

and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones. (MF 339)

The allusions to Walter Scott’s novels are evident in the passage just quoted. It can be

argued that by choosing this author Eliot presents Maggie and a girl who reads literature

a high quality as Walter Scott belongs to the first novelists who were famous also

abroad and widely read by the contemporary readers. Eliot continues in Scott’s pattern

and does not allow Maggie to end up in a happy marriage or similar optimistic life

situation. By the end of The Mill on the Floss Maggie is drowned. Eliot also

distinguishes between the two female protagonists when she portrays Maggie more

deeply considering her character qualities than she does in Lucy’s case.

26
 Adult Maggie has many of her characteristics which she had as a child. As

Welsh points out, the character of Maggie resembles the fictional heroines she reads

about: “Maggie Tulliver is repeatedly characterized by her ‘passionate sensibility’ and

vivid ‘imagination’ that alone suggest her likeness to the dark heroines of romance.”

(George Eliot and the Romance 247) The claim that she still partially lives in her

imaginative world even when she is adult can be supported as it seems that Maggie

cannot bear the weight of her life troubles and she still needs a place where she could

escape to. Nina Auerbach is convinced that there are some childlike elements even in

mature Maggie. “But it is part of Maggie’s nature that, like Peter Pan, she never grows

away from her capacity to plunge into the moment, to submerge herself exclusively in

what is near” (Auerbach 151).10 However, this part of her character seems to be seen as

a positive sign rather than negative. It is something that distinguishes her from all other

adults in her world. Though it makes her life complicated it protects her inner feelings

at the same time.

Her uniqueness continues in adulthood and again we are aware of that from

Philip’s points of view when he describes Maggie to his father saying: “ ‘She is very

tender and affectionate; and so simple – without the airs and petty contrivances other

women have’ ” (MF 439). Here we can see that she is presented as an outstanding

woman and again she stands in contrast to the description of Lucy. The narrator

provides the reader Stephen Wakem’s opinion on his lover Lucy: “A man likes his wife

to be pretty; well, Lucy was pretty, but no to a maddening extent. A man likes his wife

to be accomplished, gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and Lucy had all these

10
Auerbach, Nina. “The Power of Hunger: Demonism and Maggie Tulliver.” Nineteenth Century Fiction

30. 2: 150-171. JSTOR. Web. 25 Feb 2014.

27
qualifications” (MF 379). Although she is pretty and not stupid, the reader gets the

impression there is nothing strikingly interesting about her. So in this novel dark-haired

Maggie is put first and has much more attention from the author.

2.2 The approach to Maggie’s inward and outward conflicts

Eliot allows the reader to observe Maggie’s inner life and therefore we can see

that her feelings are very complicated and that she gets into conflicts very often. By this

claim I do not mean conflicts in a sense of being involved in the arguments of violent

scenes with other characters because her conflicts can be divided into two categories –

inner conflicts and conflicts with her surroundings.

There is an inner conflict inside little Maggie who wants to behave well and get

her family’s love and on the other hand she is ruled by the wild side of her personality.

She longs for mutual understanding and respect from her brother Tom and her family.

Another important inner conflict in Maggie comes when she is involved in a triangle of

lovers and has to choose one. Her heart and soul seem to be divided also in a conflict

between her longing for quietness and peace in her life and her longing for passionate

love. She knows that being in a relationship with her cousin’s suitor would hurt Lucy

and other people in her family. Thus the fear of suffering as a punishment for dishonest

behaviour comes:

‘Many things are difficult and dark to me, but I see one thing quite clearly: that I

must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural,

but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live

in me still and punish me if I do not obey them. I should be haunted by the

suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned.’ (461)

28
From this passage it can be also assumed that Maggie asks herself a question whether

the personal happiness can be and should be considered superior to the happiness of

other people. Thus we could claim that her inner conflict occurs on several levels.

Firstly, it is a conflict between her feelings to Philip and her obedience of Tom’s

wishes. She does not want to allow herself a friendship with Philip because she

promised Tom not to have any friendship with anyone coming from Wakem’s family.

Then after she meets Stephen and falls in love with him there is a conflict inside

her between hurting Lucy and other people and satisfying personal wishes. It can be

pointed out that in this case Maggie again connects her self-secrifice with religious

feelings. In this there is a slight similarity between her and Dinah Morris in the novel

Adam Bede. Maggie explains Stephen why she decided not to be with him: “We can

only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment or whether we

will renounce that for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us, for the sake of

being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives” (MF 489). We see that she decides

to become submissive to the “divine will” as well as Dinah though each of them has a

different reasons and actual life circumstances. Maggie’s decision might be interpreted

as a final resignation because the suffering she underwent inside was too painful and

she does not want to have any love in her life if it is related to suffering. On the other

hand, it can also be seen as a submission to the divine law in human being and the

reader can have a hope that this will lead Maggie to a quiet but happy life.

Maggie has to struggle also with the conflict in the external world. From the

very beginning the reader might get the impression that the fact she is not like other

girls of her age makes her an outsider in her own family and community. Ian Milner

suggests that inner and conflicts in Maggie mingle with her conflicts with the society

she lives in:

29
 George Eliot has stressed Maggie’s isolation from her society in another way.

Unlike Romola, or Dorothea, Maggie finds no social objective, no correlative in

practical life, that can answer to her aspiration. The whole drama of her struggle

is worked out within herself, torn by conflicting interpretations of her feeling

and their relation to the moral law. (Milner 32)11

It is possible to identify with Milner’s claim only partially. Though it can be observed

that Maggie’s inner conflicts are an important part of her character and allow us to get

to know her fragile mentality, claiming that Eliot emphasizes these inner conflicts at the

expense of paying less attention to the conflicts between Maggie and her surroundings

seems to be too courageous.

According to F. R. Leavis, Maggie has outstanding qualities which do not

enable her to live in peace with the people around her because their values and priorities

do not match with hers.

She has the intellectual potentiality for which the environment into which she is

born doesn’t provide much encouragement; she has the desperate need for

affection and intimate personal relations; and above all she has the need for an

emotional exaltation, a religious enthusiasm, that shall transfigure the

ordinariness of daily life and sweep her up in an inspired devotion of self to

some ideal purpose. (Leavis 53)12

This claim also implicitly suggests another related idea. That the community she lives in

does not provide her any support in the intellectual area can be also seen in the way in

which the education provided for boys and girls is portrayed. Though Maggie is much

11
Milner, Ian. The Structure of Values in George Eliot. Praha: Universita Karlova, 1968. Print.

12
Leavis, Frank R. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad.

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993. Print.

30
more interested in bookish knowledge than Tom is and she has more intellectual power,

he is sent to school and she has to be at home. Eliot shows double standards for the

education according to gender. It seems that she considers it unfair and thus pities her

heroine the more.

Definitely Maggie is an exceptional character among her fellows from St.Ogg’s

where they live. Her exceptionality has already been demonstrated on Stephen’s and

Philip’s opinions on her, that means from men’s point of view. In addition to this, we

see that Maggie is alienated from her own family since her early childhood as Milner

points out: “Maggie’s search for genuine values is made difficult above all by her sense

of alienation from the society. From girlhood she is an outsider, acutely conscious of

being different, indeed at time up in arms against decorum” (Milner 30). That Maggie

respects different values to those which members of her family respect is evident. She

longs for love and human understanding among family members. On the other hand, her

mother especially and the Dodson sisters emphasize just the importance of belonging to

the kin and are not willing to give a hand when it is the most needed. Though the

relatives provide some financial support we are aware that they could do much more if

they wanted.

2.3 The portrayal of relationships between female and male characters

As already indicated, Maggie, being an outsider, has a difficult position in her

childhood. Therefore it would not be surprising that her relationship with her older

brother Tom is described in details in the novel. On the ground of the fact that Tom

represents a person very close to Maggie since their childhood their relationship is

worth of examination first. From the very beginning of the novel Maggie and Tom are

portrayed as soul mates, as people who share the same ideas, dreams and cling to each

31
other. This is might be also caused by their father’s constant emphasizing the

importance of good relationship between a brother and a sister. And due to Maggie’s

over sensitivity she feels very miserable only when Tom makes a small joke on her

when his departure to school is drawing nearer: “Maggie was already so full of sorrow

at the thought of Tom’s going away from her that this playful exaltation of his seemed

very unkind, and she cried herself to sleep that night” (MF 130). This passage is an

example of similar ones in the novel where Maggie feels alone without Tom. She

suffers when he is sent away to school and the days when she can visit him or when he

comes home are the happiest moments for her.

In spite of their mutual love in childhood it cannot probably be claimed that their

relationship is equal. Not only that Tom is older but also in many other respects he is

portrayed as superior. He feels himself responsible for the family happiness in time of

his father’s absence and this might be the reason behind his superior behaviour towards

Maggie. In childhood it means a lot for Maggie when she is treated with love and

respect by him but when they are both adults and Maggie wants to be an independent

woman with her rights she dares to go into conflict with him. However, this does not

last long and she again becomes submissive to his will. She chooses Tom instead of

seeing Philip when Tom forbids her to do that. “ ‘I desire no future that will break the

ties of the past. But the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing

willingly that will divide me always from him’ ” (MF 455). From this speech we can

assume that it was not only Maggie’s tie to Tom that she was not willing to break. It

seems to us that Maggie implicitly comments on the importance of the ties to the

members of society in general. By this I mean the feeling of being part of a community

that causes the conflict in Maggie’s life as we discussed in the previous section.

32
 However, the close relationship based on a family tragedy in childhood does not

necessarily guarantee the same feelings between the siblings later. Ian Milner describes

Maggie’s relation to her brother in a following way: “Hungry as she is for affection, she

is always ready to give as well as receive. She imagines her brother is similarly

constituted, despite the buffets from his muscular self-righteousness” (Milner 29).

Indeed, the reader can observe that Tom becomes manipulative and when they both

become older, he influences Maggie and thinks more about the family pride and

property than his sister’s happiness. Maggie’s protest against this comes at the end of

the novel when she stands in front of a decision whether she should always obey Tom’s

commands: “ ‘I know you would do a great deal for me; I know how you work and

don’t spare yourself. I am grateful to you. But indeed, you can’t judge for me; our

natures are very different. You don’t know how differently things affect me from what

they do you’ ” (MF 402). Again, the last sentence from the passage just quoted almost

seems to be addressed to the whole society and not only to Tom. Obviously in this case

she was speaking to him but it could interpreted also as an exclamation of a young

woman in a desperate life situation who does not know whether she should follow the

voice of her heart and be with Stephen, or be grateful to Philip for all he did for her or

whether to obey the commands of her family and distract herself from any touch with

him.

In childhood Maggie is influenced mainly by her brother and father and in

teenage years and adulthood two important men of her life come. There is a triangle of

lovers in The Mill on the Floss consisting of Maggie Tulliver and Philip Wakem - her

childhood acquaintance, and Stephen Guest - her cousin’s suitor. The approaches to

these relationships differ in many ways and therefore each of them is examined

individually.

33
 Maggie’s relationship with Philip starts as a friendship which is not appreciated

by Tom who cannot get over the fact that Philip’s father deprived the Tullivers of their

mill. Maggie meets Philip when she comes to visit Tom at their private tutor where

Philip does his studies too. They have the feelings of friendship for each other and

because Tom becomes more distant with the years to Maggie, she finds her companion

and friend in Philip. That Philip has a hunch and therefore is an outsider from other

people’s point of view brings them even closer together. A few years later when they

are adults Philip falls in love with Maggie. Their meetings usually happen without any

passion in them and though Maggie and Philip show respect for each other there is

nothing sexual in it, as Barbara Hardy suggests:

He gives her music and books and talk, and a temporary resting-place and peace

which she mistakes for love. The friendly and relaxed gentleness of Maggie’s

relation with Philip meets its contrast in the uneasy embarrassment of the early

stages of her relation with Stephen – perhaps George Eliot’s only real portrayal

of sexual tension. (Hardy 5)13

The reader would probably agree with her that Philip means for Maggie the guarantee

of security and peace. However, his importance for her life lies probably elsewhere. As

also Barbara Hardy mentions, Philip is the friend who gives Maggie literature and talks

with her about books. Consequently, it can be seen as a symbol for Maggie’s opinion of

Philip. She admires him because he is educated and she cannot be sent to school. She

admires him because he has the knowledge which he is willing to share with her in

13
Hardy, Barbara. The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.

Print.

34
contrast to Tom. It can also be suggested that he replaces Tom in Maggie’s life in a

sense of being there for her when Tom is interested in other things.

Last but not least she likes him in spite of his handicap. When they are adults,

Maggie is decided to defend their friendship from Tom’s attacks: “ ‘Don’t suppose I

would give up Philip Wakem in obedience to you. The deformity you insult would

make me cling to him and care for him the more’ ” (MF 355). In this extract we can also

observe Maggie’s need to sacrifice for others. It seems that liking someone who is

despised by others is what she wants. However, her liking for the one whom she

admires for his intellectual qualities and pities for his handicap excludes the sexual

passion for the object of her feelings. Mitchell compares Maggie’s want for submission

which she feels to Stephen and her feelings for Philip: “Philip, by contrast awakens no

such response in Maggie, just as Seth awakens no such response in Dinah. The

configuration necessary for the domination/submission dynamic is composed of a

powerful male subject as well as a beautiful female object” (Mitchell 23). In this novel

there is only that beautiful female subject in this couple and the strong male is missing.

Maggie finds him in Stephen, whose power is manifested both economically and by

physical attractiveness.

Her attraction to Stephen is of a completely different kind. They meet as adults

and she knows that Stephen is her cousin’s suitor. They are mutually attracted to each

other and the relationship seems to be much more passionate for Maggie. The first

meeting with Stephen surprises her in her feelings: “It did not occur to her that her

irritation was due to the pleasanter emotion which preceded it, just as when we are

satisfied with a sense of glowing warmth, an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon

us as a sudden smart.” (MF 386) When Stephen falls in love with Maggie, the reader

has an opportunity to see another contrast in the approach to these two heroines: “He

35
was so fascinated by this clear, large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it

occasionally towards Lucy; but the she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Stephen

was proving Maggie how clever he was and that they would certainly be good friends

after” (MF 389). This passage seems to be a little bit ironic and Eliot tends to be much

more compassionate to Maggie than to Lucy whose naivety she mocks.

However, these two characters are not allowed to experience a long affair as the

story accelerates towards the end. The pace of the narrating seems to be much slower

during the first half of the novel than during the following parts, which indicates the

dramatic ending. Whereas Maggie meets Philip several times and there is time for their

dialogues and spending some moments together, when Maggie and Stephen find

themselves in love there immediately comes the need for a solution. Maggie struggles to

find a solution within herself and she feels that solving it somehow is urgent mainly

because other people’s feeling are concerned. The solution of this situation comes in the

form of flood and catastrophe. Before the flood comes, Maggie decides to sacrifice and

renounce her feelings for Stephen when saying: “ ‘If I could wake back again into the

time before yesterday, I would choose to be true to my calmer affections and live

without the joy of love’ ” (489). Although the reader expect a solution like this to come

because he or she knows Maggie’s delight in renunciation, this can still surprise us.

Now Maggie is not enjoying being sacrificed and only now she realizes how difficult it

is.

Overall it seems that the shorter her relationship with Stephen is, the more

intensively she is aware of her own feelings and the more suffering is brought by that.

We can also observe that Eliot supports her heroine in taking a moral decision and put

the happiness of others above her own. Maggie’s death in Tom’s arms seems to be a bit

controversial. Though Maggie is excellently developed character, the probability of

36
ending up with Tom in peace does not seem to be very credible if we consider all her

previous suffering.

It is not only the need of choice between the two men that love her but also the

bigger question of deciding about one’s future destiny that falls upon Maggie. Joan

Bennet provides an overall commentary on Eliot’s heroines:

George Eliot’s conception of moral choice required that her heroine should be

faced with a dilemma out of which there was no happy issue. She was to be

forced to choose between two alternatives, either of which would cause

suffering, and the decision she reached was to depend upon her own prevision of

the effect of her choice upon the other people involved in it. (Bennet 120)14

So far this seems to be the case of Hetty Sorrel, Dinah Morris as well as Maggie

Tulliver. We could perhaps mention that also Lucy Dean stands in front of a decision –

whether to forgive Stephen and Maggie or not.

In The Mill on the Floss the heroines who are neither shallow in character

qualities neither exceedingly pious can be found. The heroines have the power to make

the decisions on which their destinies and lives of other people depend and the author

provides her commentary on their actions mainly in a sympathetic voice. She seems to

understand their motives and therefore the understanding and praising the character’s

moral strength rather than economic abilities celebrated in the majority society seems to

be supported by the author’s voice. By focusing on the character of Maggie, an outsider,

Eliot seems to provide a completely different approach to the heroine and a notion what

a praised woman should look like to that she had in Adam Bede.

14
Bennet, Joan. George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1948. Print.

37
3. Romola

In this chapter the novel Romola, which was published first in monthly parts in

Cornhill Magazine during the years 1862-1863, is examined. Though there is the name

of one of the heroines in the title of the novel, we would not claim that it is a novel

about her. Some of the real personalities appear in the novel and Eliot studied the

background of her story set in the different time than her own very carefully. This

novel probably belongs to the most untypical ones written by George Eliot also because

it is her only historical novel. Though set in the fifteenth century Florence Victorian

values can still be traced in the novel, as critics point out. On the background of

political instability and great social changes Eliot presents the story of several

individuals and shows how they live their “ordinary” lives in time full of historical

events.

3.1 Eliot’s approaches to the heroines and their life ambitions

Two main female characters will be analysed in Romola. The main heroine

Romola and the young peasant girl Tessa have many similarities and finally they are

united because they are both Tito Melema’s wives. However, each of them is different

in her nature and appearance and each of them comes from a different social

background.

Romola and her characteristic features will be examined first. The reader is

aware of her existence from the very beginning of the novel when she is mentioned as a

daughter of a widely known scholar Bardi. “... his daughter Romola, who is as fair as

the Florentine lily before it got quarrelsome and turned red” (R 39).15 The passage

quoted from the novel shows how Romola is seen in her city. Comparing her to a flower

15
Eliot, George. Romola. London: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.

38
- lily suggests the innocence in her and mentioning the city of Florence in relation to her

might be interpreted as a sign of high respect for her and her family in Florence. In fact,

she comes from a good family and her blind father is a scholar taking care of his huge

library to which he devoted his whole life and as he is blind and cannot work

independently, also his daughter’s life. Romola is used to live only with her father and

helps him with his scholarly work. The reader can presume she is also interested in it as

Romola and her father can be often seen sitting in the library together. Her intellectual

work and good education belong to her characteristics that distinguish her from other

Eliot’s heroines. Neither Maggie, nor Lucy or Hetty is well-educated. Romola shares

something of the noble nature Dinah Morris in Adam Bede has but differs from her in

her religious approach which will be discussed in due course.

Romola’s place in society gives her some dignity which can be observed even in

the face expression described by the author. Many of her character qualities are revealed

to the reader in the passage when she meets her future husband Tito Melema for the first

time. This happens when he comes to the library to offer his education and service to

her father:

At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola’s face, in which pride and

passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and

intelligence, was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity

and affection: it was evident that the deepest fount of feeling within her had not

yet wrought its way to the less changeful features, and only found its outlet

through her eyes. (R 59)

This extract signifies how Romola will change after meeting Tito and falling in love.

From the woman for whom only intellectual life with lonely father existed she will turn

39
into a loving wife full of affection for her husband. However, another change awaits her

when she finds out her husband’s betrayal later on.

These are the first impressions of Romola the readers can get from the narrative.

Thoughtful, intelligent and devoted daughter as she is makes her a good counterpart to

Tessa, a little “contadina” (an Italian expression for a peasant girl or woman used in the

novel) who comes to the scene even earlier than Romola.

Tessa meets Tito during his first moments in Florence and gives him some milk

because he is hungry and does not know the city at all. Unlike Romola, nothing is

hinted about her by the narrator and the readers only come to know her during her

interaction with Tito and they are presented the way he sees her. That she is naive and

very simple can be shown when they are married in a mock ceremony at the market and

she considers herself his lawful wife. The readers are aware that she has not that dignity

Romola has and no one takes her seriously. Even for Tito she is just a substitution of

Romola when he is afraid of losing her affection and his social position: “He was

thinking that when all the rest had turned their backs upon him, it would be pleasant to

have this little creature adoring him and nestling against him” (R 147). Tessa is not

more than a toy for Tito which will never go against his own will and will be

submissive in many ways.

Her opinion about him also illustrates her simplicity and childishness. She sees

her protector in him and adores him the more the more he gives her his attention.

However, she tends to see her in an unrealistic way and attributes saintly qualities to

him. Eliot describes one of their first meetings in the following way:

She turned her head and saw Tito’s face close to her: it was very much more

beautiful than the Archangel Michael, who was so mighty and so good that he

lived with the Madonna and all the saints and was prayed to along with them.

40
 She smiled in happy silence, for that nearness of Tito quite filled her mind. (R

145)

This extract depicts not only her naiveness but also the tendency in her to cling too

much to the people who behave kindly to her. Tessa tends to see also Romola as an

angel or a saint who came to help her and save her from danger. Tessa’s exaggerated

affection for Tito has also its root in her childhood and family background. She was

beaten by her step-father and Tito seems to be the first man who does not treat her

rudely. In addition, he is extraordinarily handsome so falling in love with him seems

very natural for a peasant poor girl like Tessa who knows nothing about the world. She

does not suspect him of any bad things even later when he does not visit her as often as

before. “No guile was needed towards Tessa: she was too ignorant and too innocent to

suspect him of anything” (423).

It can be observed that these two women who become the wives of the same

man live in two different worlds. Though the similarity between them is their

limitations with which they exist in the same society. Though Romola is portrayed as a

serious, educated and noble young lady she is also ignorant in a sense of knowledge of

the real world. Bookish knowledge seems not to be enough to prepare her for the real

life and the betrayal that can come from other people. This might be another factor that

helps the union between these two protagonists at the end of the book.

Though finally united in one family, these two female protagonists do not share

the same values and life ambitions. Concerning Tessa, it seems to us that her aim in life

is just to have a good shelter, be safe without starving and beating. When she meets

Tito, she wants to be with him as much as possible but finally she is hushed by his

arguments and she is satisfied with his occasional visits.

41
 However, this is not Romola’s case. Though she is in love with Tito, she seems

to be searching also for something else in life. She dedicated her life to her father’s

library and she wants to become not only a good wife but also a good daughter:

“I will become as learned as Cassandra Fedele: I will try and be as useful to you

as if I had been a boy, and then perhaps some great scholar will want to marry

me, and will not mind about a dowry; and he will like to come and live with you,

and he will be to you in place of my brother ... and you will not be sorry that I

was a daughter.” (R 54)

In this passage Romola expresses her wish for being useful to her father not only

professionally but also on the emotional level. She tries to decrease his longing for a son

who abandoned him. The notion that having a son means more for a father than having

a daughter is evident here. In addition, as we can see Romola starts to think about her

future. She knows that she needs to be married and that a husband who is economically

independent would be much help for her and her father. Interesting is the fact that from

the very beginning when she thinks about her future husband she supposes that he

would be a scholar. This might be caused by the fact that she lived only with a father

and godfather, who were both scholars, and consequently no other option was shown to

her and therefore it can be claimed she lived in a kind of mental isolation from the

outward world.

Romola does not only want to be helpful and useful to her father but to her

community and society in general, especially in time when Florence is divided due to

the political conflicts. As Mary Gosselink De Jong points out, marriage is definitely not

the only ambition which George Eliot puts into Romola:

Eliot is more interested in Romola’s awakening to her membership in the human

community and to moral ambiguity. The alienated heroine owes both discoveries

42
 to her relationship with Savonarola, her second patriarch. It is he who persuades

her that marital vows are sacred as symbols of social obligations and that a

daughter of Florence has no right to leave the city while it is suffering from

plague and famine. (Gosselink De Jong 77)16

Savonarola seems to be a crucial character for Romola when we think about her

religious feelings and belief in general. What was pointed out in the previous passage

can be supported with an extract from the novel. Here Savonarola, the Dominican priest

uses his influence on Romola to persuade her to come back after her husband’s first

betrayal when she wants to leave him and escape from Florence:“ ‘If you forsake your

place, who will fill it? You ought to be in your place now, helping in the great work by

which God will purify Florence, and raise it to be the guide of the nations’ ” (R 360).

These words might have the intended effect on Romola and consequently she decides to

repress her grief by doing good and helping others. That at that moment she is alone,

her father is dead and Tito sold his library must be taken into account too. Romola has

been brought up with no religious education and as she has no relation towards God, her

turn to the Church and Savonarola seems to be an attempt to escape her own grief rather

than following her inner longing for God.

However, Romola’s relation to religion and belief in God is based mainly on her

personal trust and inclination towards Savonarola. When Savonarola later refuses to

save Romola’s godfather from the execution, she parts with him and it means the end of

her religious activities for her. Barbara Hardy comments on the paradoxical nature of

the mutual relationship between these two characters:

16
Gosselink De Jong, Mary. “Romola-A Bildungsroman for Feminists?” South AtlanticReview. 49. 4: 75-

90. JSTOR. Web. 30 Mar 2014.

43
 When she breaks with him it is a revolt of feeling. Her moral progress is based

on a paradox: she learns self-denial from Savonarola and then comes to reject

what she sees in him as self-interest. She accepts his ideas in the warmth of her

ardour, then rejects him in the same passionate loyalty which made her despise

Tito’s rational defence of his betrayal of Bardo. (Hardy 60)

That Romola’s actions towards Savonarola are often passionate can be also related to

what happens inside her after one of their first meetings: “The chill doubts all melted

away; she was subdued by the sense of something unspeakably great to which she was

being called by a strong being who roused a new strength within herself” (R 362). It this

passage Eliot confirms Savonarola’s strong influence on Romola. Her religious

awakening is what calls her back to Florence to her mission and consequently, when she

rejects the ideals personified in Savonarola, she continues in her caring service to her

fellow citizens.

Each of the main protagonists has also a different experience with male

characters which is another aspect worth of considering. It has been mentioned that the

family background is different for each of them and a figure of mother is missing in

both families. Though Tessa has a mother, no evidence in the text can be found which

would suggest that her mother played motherly role towards her. Therefore we may

presume that Tessa’s step-father has the stronger influence on her. She was beaten and

she had a different position than Romola, who was appreciated by her father as his only

companion and, after the departure of her brother, his only child.

The approach towards the male influence represented by Tito seems to be more

crucial for the author as she pays him much more attention than to the other male

characters’ influence on her heroines. Eliot presents Tito as a handsome young man

whose main interest is to live well and have a good social position. It seems to be very

44
easy to become easily manipulated for the characters that did not have a moral example

in their fathers. Old scholar Bardi, Romola’s father seems to be well-read scholar useful

for Florence but when it comes to the experiences with the real world which exists

outside the books, he is not much help for her daughter.

Tito is a main character of the whole novel and therefore it seems logical that we

get to know much more about his inner monologues and hesitations. Carole Robinson

compares Tito’s important life decisions with Romola’s most important choices: “Tito’s

choices are simple; between obvious good and obvious evil he consistently chooses evil.

Romola’s choices are difficult because she herself has to determine anew the value of

established sanctions, or else determine whose authority she may accept” (Robinson

30).17 It is true that Romola seems to be more responsible than Tito is and therefore she

is more aware of the consequences her choices will bring. However, we do not have the

impression that his decisions are simple. From this passage it is evident that he struggles

against himself internally and he sometimes regrets his deeds:

Nay, so distinct sometimes is the working of a double consciousness within us,

that Tito himself, while he triumphed in the apparent verification of his lie

wished that he had never made the lie necessary to himself - wished he has

recognized his father on the steps - wished he had gone to seek him – wished

everything had been different. (R 352)

This inward hesitation comes just after the moment when he secured his position in the

eyes of Florentines and for a while shook off the danger of losing his public image. So it

seems that Eliot did not create a simple manipulator but a man who has troubles within

17
Robinson, Carole. “ ‘Romola’: A Reading of the Novel.” Victorian Studies. 6. 1: 29-42.

JSTOR. Web. 2 Apr 2014.

45
himself and while trying to escape from it he manifests his power on weaker ones.

Romola and her father’s library are source of money for him and Tessa provides him

firstly joyful company and later on the emotional self-realization.

3.2 The approach to marriage and traditional roles

Concerning marriage, this novel offers two different approaches towards it

because in fact there are two marriages – one between Tessa and Tito contracted in a

mockery celebration and the other between Romola and Tito which is considered

lawful. Since Tito does not live with Tessa and visits her only occasionally we do not

know much about their relationship after their wedding. Tessa is just waiting for him to

come to her and he relaxes in her presence without taking her seriously as a woman

equal to him. In fact he loves Romola and just after his flirt with Tessa Eliot presents us

his point of view of the situation among them:

But Tito’s mind was just now thoroughly penetrated with a hopeful first love,

associated with all happy prospects flattering to his ambition; that the future

necessity of grieving Tessa would be scarcely more to him than the far-cry of

some little suffering animal buried in the thicket, to a merry cavalcade in the

sunny plain. (R 196)

Comparing Tessa to an animal exactly expresses the impression what the reader can get

of her in the novel. She is not presented as someone equal to Tito on the social and

mental level. The passage just quoted also contrasts Tito’s approaches to both of his

wives. It is Romola to whom he dedicates his affection and their marriage is depicted in

a more detailed way.

Though Romola and Tito fall in love with each other from the very beginning of

the novel, there are some doubts in Tito caused by Romola’s dignified air: “Tito was

46
used to love that came in this unsought fashion. But Romola’s love would never come

in that way: would it ever come at all?” (R 95) Again in this extract Eliot suggests the

difference between Romola’s and Tessa’s feelings – a noble woman could not give the

same kind of love that a peasant girl could. However, both kinds of love given to Tito

are destructive for the wives at the end.

Even though Tito does not treat Romola honestly and shows his manipulative

nature, it cannot be claimed that he liked her only for her position from the beginning.

“And he cared supremely for Romola; he wished to have her for his beautiful and loving

wife. There might be a wealthier alliance within the ultimate reach of successful

accomplishments like his, but there was no woman in all Florence like Romola” (R

118). Here Eliot suggests Romola’s uniqueness which will be later on confirmed by her

courageous deeds. Though their marriage is portrayed in more details than Tessa’s

marriage, still we do not have an explicit author’s comment on it. In his study,

Alexander Welsh claims that:

George Eliot refuses to give much of an idea of what it is like for Romola to me

married to Tito. The marriage, from the heroine’s point of view, is the series of

discoveries about her husband, who is even more terrified of being exposed for

his desertion of Baldassare than he is of the man’s dagger. (The Later Novels

59)18

Though Eliot mostly presents their marriage in simple facts and discoveries Romola

makes about Tito’s former life, we can find some of her reflections of the situation in

the novel. One of her reflections illustrates her disappointment after struggling to face

the truth about the end of their relationship: “She could be submissive and gentle, she

18
Welsh, Alexander. “The Later Novels.” The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Ed.

George Levine. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 57-75. Print.

47
could repress any sign of repulsion; but tenderness was not to be feigned. She was

helplessly conscious of the result: her husband was alienated from her” (R 400).

The previous extract from the novel opens another theme important for us when

we examine these two heroines in the role of wives. It suggests that a wife should be

submissive to her husband’s will. For Tessa being a wife is a secret that she must not to

tell anyone. Therefore she can wait for her husband patiently and does not have any

duties or joys coming from the status of a married woman. Simple as she is, it does not

seem to bother her much.

Unlike Tessa, Romola has to take her role of Tito’s wife seriously and she is

publicly known as his wife. “Daughter and wife – this is her identity, and within these

limits she must find her work. She cannot cease to be the daughter of Bardo or the wife

of Melema, whether they are dead or alive, honourable or criminal” (Greenstein

500).19This Greenstein’s claim confirms how important Romola’s role is. It suggests

that a woman in the novel cannot do what she really wants without her husband’s or

father’s approval.

Although Eliot does not make so many general statements about marriage in

general as she did for example in Adam Bede, still there are some hints that suggest the

division of roles in a marriage: “Romola was labouring, as a loving woman must, to

subdue her nature to her husband’s” (R 247). In this extract we are aware of Tito’s

dominance in the marriage but it comes to its climax when he actively behaves against

her will and locks Romola in the room: “In an instant Tito started up, went to the door,

locked it, and took out the key. It was time for all the masculine predominance that was

19
Greenstein, Susan M. “The Question of Vocation: From Romola to Middlemarch.”

Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 35. 4: 487-505. JSTOR. Web. 1 Apr 2014.

48
latent in him to show itself” (R 285). It seems that the superiority of a husband over his

wife could not be more explicit than in this scene. It also confirms the assumption that

the atmosphere in the relationship between Romola and Tito culminates and ends up in

Romola’s resignation and disappointment.

The fact that Eliot presents both heroines as completely different wives does not

prevent her from showing her compassion with both of them. Susan Schoenbauer

comments on a different approach to the heroine which distinguishes George Eliot from

Charles Dickens:

For all the shortcomings of this romantic alliance – the lack of intellectual

equality and the dissimilarity in social levels of the pair – it still has some

positive emotional force, which Eliot handles sympathetically. She understands

that Tessa has become a victim of her own sensuality as well as a set of values

which subjugate her to male prerogatives, themes that Dickens treats

unsympathetically. (SchoenbauerThurin 221)20

In Tessa’s case it is probably rather sympathy than compassion expressed by the author

because she does not comment on Tessa’s behaviour or thinking about Tito explicitly.

However, she does show her compassion when she comments on Romola:

“There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life

has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human

blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then for ever passed her by” (R 500). In

this passage Eliot shows not only her compassion with her heroine but also Romola’s

resignation when all her hopes in Tito and her life as his wife are torn down. Showing

compassion more explicitly for intellectual heroine than for Tessa seems to be going

Schoenbauer Thurin, Susan. “The Madonna and the Child Wife in Romola.” Tulsa Studies in
20

Women’s Literature 4. 2: 217-233. JSTOR. Web. 2 Apr 2014.

49
along with George Eliot’s tendency to idealize Romola. There we see a similarity

between Romola and Dinah Morris.

Division of traditional male and female roles is closely related to the topic of

marriage in Romola and Eliot approaches it in an unconventional way. Both of the main

female protagonists form a kind of family at the end of the novel because Tito dies and

Romola offers her help to Tessa and her two children. As mentioned above, Romola

was surrounded only by male guardians and advisors for the whole of her life and

therefore it might not be surprising that instead of becoming a mother, she substitutes a

man in Tessa’s family. By helping her in her troubles and appearing when Tessa needs

her, she becomes her protector; as Schoenbauer points out: “These episodes cast

Romola’s acts of charity in the mold tradition reserved for men: protector, rescuer,

advisor, provider. They indicate the nature of the bond that exists between the two

women at the end of the novel and question the traditional description of sex roles”

(Schoenbauer Thurin 224). It also suggests not only the reversion of traditional roles

between men and women but also Romola’s need for being useful and helpful although

she herself cannot become a mother. Therefore maybe the situation described in the

passage from Schoenbauer’s article can be interpreted also as the idea of Romola’s

becoming not a man in Tessa’s family but another mother for her children.

In general it seems that the final alliance between the two wives can be

interpreted as an attack on patriarchal values presented in the novel mainly in the

passages concerning marriage and relationships between men and women. Tito might

be considered an embodiment of these values and his violent death only supports the

assumption about attacking patriarchal values ruling the society.

50
 In Romola, then, George Eliot portrays the two heroines different in social and

family background. Though only simple Tessa becomes a mother, it seems that the

author is more compassionate towards Romola despite the fact that she gives more

suffering and much harder lot on her. Both of the heroines seem to suffer under the rules

of patriarchal society but finally though they do not explicitly rebel against them, they

find a peaceful life together with no male superiority above them.

51
4. Middlemarch

This last chapter deals with the novel Middlemarch that was published in years

1872-1873 and is often considered George Eliot’s masterpiece. The main reason behind

it might be several topics she included in this extensive novel as well as a large number

of characters that create a large net of social relations among themselves. Middlemarch

as a portrayal of a town in Victorian England presents the reader a wide range of people

with their positive and negative qualities. It also shows hypocrisy and money being very

influential powers in the small community of people living in a small town. Showing

the mediocrity of the inhabitants of Middlemarch is a central theme of the novel.

4.1 The portrayal of the heroines with consideration of their life expectations

Dorothea Brooke might be considered the main female protagonist of the novel

and the reader follows her life experience from the very beginning of the book and Eliot

does not leave her till the end. As well as her younger sister Celia, she lives with her

uncle Mr Brooke who has been supporting them since their parents’ death. In the early

chapters the reader gets to know Dorothea in contrast to Celia and learns about her

liking in plain life and clothing and from the very first impression the two sisters make

upon us it can be observed that Celia is the one who enjoys her life without any worries.

However, Dorothea’s life approach is different in many respects; she wants to devote

her time only to the meaningful things in life and she is not interested in her physical

appearance though she is also very good-looking and certainly interesting for men’s

desire.

Concerning Rosamond Vincy, a daughter of Middlemarch’s major, Eliot

emphasizes her feminine beauty. Unlike Dorothea, she is not dark haired, she is blonde

and represents the ideal of female beauty of her time and place of living:

52
 Only a few children in Middlemarch looked blond by the side of Rosamond, and

the slim figure displayed by her riding habit had delicate undulations. In fact,

most men in Middlemarch, except her brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the

best girl in the world, and some called her an angel. (MM 104) 21

In this extract Eliot comments on Rosamond’s angelic look but she does not connect it

with the innocence of her character as she did in Lucy. This might suggest that the

reader can expect some negative qualities hidden in Rosamond which will appear later

in relation to her husband.

Despite the fact that both heroines are beautiful we cannot deny that Eliot seems

to emphasize Dorothea’s qualities by attributing her also certain uniqueness which

Rosamond does not possess. Eliot points out that Dorothea is not like other women in

her surroundings and that also men are forced to behave to her exceptionally: “She was

not a woman to be spoken of as other women were” (203). This passage taken from

Lydgate’s inward monologue presents us the men’s point of view of Dorothea or better

to say the point of view of some men because we will see that Casaubon treats Dorothea

in a different way despite her outstanding attention given to him.

These two women differ also in their life interests and life goals. Uneducated

Dorothea longs for knowledge and being useful to her husband and consequently to her

community. From the very beginning of the novel the reader knows that she wants to

improve living conditions of poor cottagers and she starts the project for building them

new homes for which she needs to gain certain knowledge:

I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen it by.

And then I know what to do, when I got older: I should see how it was possible

21
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.

53
 to lead a grand life here – in England. I don’t feel sure about doing good in any

way now: everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language

I don’t know; - unless it were building new cottages – there can be no doubt

about that. (MM 27)

On the example of this passage we can observe Dorothea’s need for being useful to her

community which Eliot attributes her. In addition, something about her character

qualities seems to be suggested in this extract. Her doubts if she can do any good for the

world show us that she is not probably a mature person yet and using the phrase “when I

got older” proposes that she does not think about herself as an adult person. She rather

seems to be a little bit childlike and inexperienced though she is old enough to get

married. Eliot seems to treat this with irony and in the following chapters Dorothea gets

married almost immediately, though her “getting older” is questionable.

In spite of her lack of life experience Dorothea’s life ambitions are directed

higher than to just being a good wife and a woman with whom everybody would be

content. Rosamond’s ambitions are at first directed to marriage and she calmly accepts

her traditional female role ascribed to her, as Gilbert and Gubar point out: “Rosamond’s

sewing is in some ways a sign of her acceptance of her role as a female. In this respect

she contrasts markedly with most of Eliot’s heroines, who must struggle with her

distaste for what they view as a secondary and decidedly compensatory art” (Gilbert and

Gubar 520).22 If the reader accepts the idea that sewing and doing this kind of domestic

work belong to the feminine attributes, Dorothea can be considered having masculine

qualities when it comes to life aims.

22
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale UP,

1979. Print.

54
 In fact, Dorothea’s longing for education and lack of knowledge is approached

with irony by Eliot when she describes educational standards females were provided

with. That real education as missing in their lives is evident from the following passage

describing Rosamond’s physical virtues and other skills: “But these things made only

part of her charm. She was admitted to be the flower of Mrs Lemon’s school, the chief

school in the county, where teaching included all that was demanded in the

accomplished female – even to extras such as the getting in and out of the carriage”

(MM 89). This ironic commentary related to the education of women in a provincial

town might be interpreted as an excuse for Dorothea’s obsession with getting

knowledge that might be applied on more intellectual problems than getting in and out

of the carriage.

However, concerning life goals, the biggest difference between Dorothea and

Rosamond is that while Dorothea is excited about becoming educated after she meets

the man of her life, Rosamond is excited about her social position when she meets a

suitable stranger who would be an ideal person to marry.

The character of Dorothea also seems to be more thoughtful than Rosamond is

and as Barbara Hardy claims, this ability is crucial for the development of this

character: “Dorothea is given the ability to see herself – and more or less as her author

sees her. This makes her tragic ordeal one which ends in a kind of catharsis within the

heroine” (Hardy 65). Some doubts about her marriage come to Dorothea when she is

looking at the old family picture of Will’s family: “Was it only her friends who thought

her marriage unfortunate? Or did she herself fin it out to a mistake, and taste the salt

bitterness of her tears in the merciful silence of the night? What breadths of experience

Dorothea seemed to have passed over since she first looked at this miniature!” (MM

55
258) This passage also suggests the growth of Dorothea’s personality by coming to self-

reflection and becoming a more experienced woman.

4.2 The approach to marriage and struggling for independence

There are several female characters interested in marriage and finally married

but for some of them this decision turns to be wrong. In relation to marriage Eliot

deepens her portrayal of female protagonists. It can be seen that Dorothea’s and

Rosamond’s expectations concerning marriage and the consequent duties of wives are

different. Eliot also shows that not every woman has an inborn ability in her to become

a good wife in the Victorian society. From the very beginning of the novel Celia

comments on Dorothea’s stubborn character which might be a disadvantage for her in

the future marriage: “Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not

make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things; and stifled in the

depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too religious for family comfort”

(MM 19). From this passage it seems that a wife was not expected to have her own

ideas and to interfere to her husband’s business. In this respect therefore Dorothea

cannot be considered a typical and obedient wife.

However, she still admires her husband and really wants to marry him. That she

puts her hopes into the idea of marrying him is evident from this extract. She sees the

marriage as an outstanding change in her life which will bring only happiness and

positive changes mainly for her self-development and realisation:

Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before

her: she was a neophyte about to enter on a higher grade of initiation. She was

going to have room for the energies which stirred uneasily under the dimness

56
 and pressure of her own ignorance and the petty peremptoriness of the world’s

habits. (MM 41)

This passage suggests that there are good things offered to Dorothea in this

marriage and that she probably wants to be married more because it enables her to reach

her own life aims than because she really loves Casaubon. Kathleen Blake interprets

Dorothea’s reasons for marrying Casaubon in her essay: “But Dorothea has too much

spark to be extinguished, and she wants anything but the haze of undirected energy, so

she grasps at the closest objects of enthusiasm Mr. Casaubon and his work.” (Blake

292)23 It might seem that according to Blake, Dorothea approaches to Edward Casaubon

just as an object which will help you in her tasks. The reader can agree that from this

point of view there might be some selfishness in her, but on the other hand, Dorothea’s

claim about marital issues can persuade us that she is willing to sacrifice a lot for her

husband and that she sees a higher vocation in marrying someone. Eliot shows that from

the very beginning of her thinking about marriage she thinks about it in a wider social

context. “ ‘I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties. I

never thought of it as mere personal ease,’ said poor Dorothea” (MM 38).

From what was just said, it might not be surprising that Dorothea does not have

any problem marrying an old scholar Casaubon instead of someone who is more

perspective and of the same age. Her opinion on this matter is stated in the first chapter:

“The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father,

and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it” (10). Again, a slight irony can be

observed from the extract when Eliot probably aims to show us that the real delights in

23
Blake, Kathleen. “Middlemarch and the Woman Question.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 31. 3: 285-

312. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr 2014.

57
marriage lay elsewhere then in a man teaching his uneducated wife ancient languages.

Nevertheless, scholarly husband is a priority for Dorothea and represents her longing for

knowledge and education which create male character qualities in her.

Unlike Dorothea, Rosamond does not want to have a scholarly husband. Her

criteria are different; she wants a successful man with good social position and noble

family background and she strongly prefers a stranger, who does not come from

Middlemarch. In all these respects, Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor with promising

career seems to be an ideal choice at least until she becomes disappointed from his

declining career and increasing debts.

Both of these marriages end up in disappointment and there are different reasons

for it. The marriage of two young people (Rosamond and Lydgate) and the marriage of

an unequal couple (Dorothea and Casaubon) differ in more than one aspect, men’s

approach to their wives seems to be crucial for the understanding of the relationships

between men and women in these unions. Casaubon’s behaviour to Dorothea changes in

the course of their marriage dramatically. Though he was glad he found a wife who

does not mind to help him with his work, this interest of hers is what irritates him more

and more. As Gilbert and Gubar indicate in their study, Casaubon’s interest in Dorothea

as a woman decreases because of his work: “The book is Casaubon’s child, and the

writing of it is his marriage, or so Dorothea believes as she realizes how completely

textuality has been substituted for sexuality in her married life.” (Gilbert and Gubar

505) It is true that studies replaced Casaubon’s feeling to his wife, but in addition there

is something more why he is no longer a loving husband. It seems that he feels his work

will not be of a good quality even if he manages to finish it. Eliot expresses his feelings

of desperation and his attitude to Dorothea: “Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a

personification of that shallow world which surrounds the ill-appreciated or desponding

58
author” (MM 189). Association of the word “shallow” with his wife suggests the reader

that his feelings are quite cold already in the twentieth chapter.

Casaubon’s self-pity also demonstrates his weakness and we see that though

work on his book is put in the first place, he is not indifferent to his marriage:

Poor Mr Casaubon was distrustful of everybody’s feelings towards him,

especially as a husband. To let anyone suppose that he was jealous would be to

admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let them know that he did

not find marriage particularly blissful would imply his conversion to their

(probably) earlier disapproval. (354)

This extract describes the atmosphere which the reader can feel in the whole

Middlemarch and in which personal matters are made public and everybody feels they

can interfere with other people’s life and business. Casaubon doubts about his role of a

husband but what worries him most is how he is perceived by the public. For this and

his general weakness Eliot shows her compassion with him. Casaubon first thinks about

Dorothea with respect and certain positive feelings but after a while he sees her as his

enemy and when she starts to interfere in his works there is some rivalry between them.

While the change in Casaubon’s feelings towards a particular woman happens

gradually, Lydgate’s opinion on women is described in more general terms and it is

going in the opposite direction. We realize that unlike Casaubon who admires

Dorothea’s intellectual skills, Lydgate sees intelligence and personal opinions as

negative qualities in women: “The society of such women was about as relaxing as

going from your work to teach the second form, instead of reclining in a paradise with

sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven” (88). It seems that women

should provide comfort that men need after coming home from work and during the

difficult time of building their careers. And that is why Lydgate does not choose

59
Dorothea but Rosamond as his wife. His opinion what a good wife and a woman in

general should be is supported by Mr Brook:

But there is a lightness about the feminine mind – a touch and go – music, the

fine arts, that kind of thing – they should study those up to certain point, women

should; but in a light way, you know. A woman should be able to sit down and

play you a good old English tune. (MM 60)

Allowing women to do only domestic kinds of work and providing them with poor

educational opportunities is typical for Middlemarch. Mr Brooke’s opinion supports the

assumption that a woman can have a certain space for her self-realization but only when

she does not supreme her husband’s success.

Rosamond’s marriage cannot be happy because of her unrealistic ideas about

her future husband as well as because of Lydgate’s unfortunate estimation of women

and their value. Dorothea’s marriage is also unhappy because of the disappointment in

her husband and her future prospects by his side. When his feelings become cold, Eliot

shows her heroine in a state of complete resignation: “Like one who has lost his way

and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all the paths of her young hope which she

would never find again” (399). The crisis ends but Dorothea never feels the mental

unity with her husband to whom she gave her hopes and energy for worthwhile work.

For the rest of their life they stay alienated and it is mainly because he sees her as a

rival. Oldfield comments on the effects of the lack of communication between these two

characters. As we can see, it does not have harmful effect only on the marriage but also

on his social position which is so highly valued in Middlemarch. “His powers of

communication have completely atrophied. In his researches, he cannot publish; in

meeting other people, he cannot seek for a common idiom, and we watch him grow

60
even more isolated” (Oldfield 72).24 It seems like with losing his social connections the

person becomes completely redundant in the town of Middlemarch and it will not

surprise the reader that soon after this growing isolation Casaubon dies and leaves the

scene for ever.

The lack of communication and appreciation of her personality as an equal

human being is one of the factors which lead Dorothea to the close relationship with

Casaubon’s cousin Will. With him she finally reaches both important life aims. She

becomes a wife and a mother and she can continue with her work with his support.

Different approaches to marriage show that there is also a difference between the

female characters in their relationship to men in terms of dependence or independence

on them. Almost all relationships in the novel can be seen as a struggle for power.

However, sometimes it is not easy to say who is more dependent on his or her partner

and we will demonstrate this on Dorothea’s marriage. According to Gilbert and Gubar,

Dorothea’s example is the way in which women can be seen in general terms and they

show Dorothea’s dependence on her husband. “The eroticism of inequality – the male

teacher and the enamored female student the male master and the admiring female

servant, the male author and the acquiescent female scribe or character – illustrates both

how dependant women are upon male approval and how destructive such dependence

is.” (Gilbert and Gubar 506) The claim can be agreed with up to a certain point. Surely,

Dorothea is dependent on her husband emotionally as she imagines a great future for

them both in a mutual cooperation. However, there is a large amount of independence in

24
Oldfield, Derek. “The Language of the Novel: The Character of Dorothea.” Middlemarch: Critical

Approaches to the Novel. Ed. Barbara Hardy. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.

63-85. Print.

61
the character of Dorothea. From the very beginning we see that she has her plans for

building new homes for cottagers and these plans are made without any dependence.

Eliot seems to emphasize women’s superiority also in relation to building new

homes for cottagers. That is true that this Dorothea’s plan can work only upon the

mutual cooperation with Sir James Chettam, Celia’s future husband, but in this case

Eliot expresses her fellow feelings with female active power: “Certainly these men who

had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good

feminine direction, if they were fortunate enough in choosing their sisters-in-law!”

(MM 32) This seems to be a protest against male opinions of women’s duties and

abilities which appear throughout the novel in the thoughts of different characters.

Concerning the female independence in relation to education that women were

allowed to achieve, a short extract from the novel is described. Here Eliot shows

Dorothea’s admiration of knowledge personified in her husband: “Those provinces of

masculine knowledge seemed to her a standing-ground from which all truth could be

seen more truly” (59). This passage suggests that only in union with an educated man

the heroine is able to see the world from the right perspective and consequently it leads

us to the assumption that without him she would be lost. As her heroine develops from a

vulnerable girl into a mature woman Eliot shows that Dorothea is no longer a passive

person who needs man’s guidance to accept the reality truly. She has her aims that are

not dependent on a husband and she states that she will never marry again: “ ‘Not

anybody at all. I have delightful plans. I should like to take a great deal of land, and

drain it, and make it a little colony, where everybody should work, and the work should

be done well. I should know everyone of the people and be their friend’ ” (517). Though

these plans might be difficult to realise they represent Dorothea’s need and ability to act

62
independently. Ellin Ringler believes that Dorothea’s growing maturity contributes to

deepening her social dependence:

But Dorothea’s psychological growth is purchased at the expense of her social

independence. Believing it to be a ‘grand path’, Eliot’s heroine enters the narrow

labyrinth of marriage to Casaubon and is spiritually transformed from a child to

a woman, from dependent to protector. Still, she remains as socially limited as

she is psychologically strong. (Ringler 58)25

This claim can be supported by the fact that Dorothea’s plans without her husband are

unrealistic and Casaubon’s isolation influence also her life because a woman was

expected to share her husband’s lot. When Casaubon’s social connections become

weaker she is expected to be on his side and defend him in other people’s eyes.

Although Rosamond is portrayed as Dorothea’s counterpart in a sense of

feminine virtues and approach to female submission in marriage, she also behaves

independently when Lydgate has a lot of debts and she does not renounce their property

which must be sold. She explains her behaviour in the following way: “ ‘I think I has a

perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me at least as much as you’ ” (MM

620). She does not rebel against their condition dramatically but in these words she

expresses the need for a woman to be treated equally.

However, one more example of feminine independence and power can be found

in the novel. The relationship between Mary Garth, Rosamond’s friend, and

Rosamond’s brother Fred, is the only relationship that leads to a happy marriage. The

portrayal of these characters similarly unequal as the portrayal of Dorothea and

Casaubon, but now it is Mary who has their future in her hands. As Gilbert and Gubar

25
Ringler, Ellin. “Middlemarch: A Feminist Perspective.” Studies in the Novel. 15. 1: 55-61.

JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr 2014.

63
point out, she can manipulate Fred in a positive way and with positive results: “By

shaping Fred’s life and values, in fact, she demonstrates, the elevating effect of a

woman’s influence, even as she reminds is of the deceit practised by the woman who

functions as a power behind the scenes.” (Gilbert and Gubar 513) This is the only

relationship in which Eliot allows a woman to be a leader and direct her spouse.

Consequently, it ends up happily and creates a sharp contrast to the lot of women who

had to or submitted themselves to their husbands out of their own will.

In Middlemarch Eliot emphasizes the topic of social dependence which can be

observed on the example of town inhabitants who are dependent on their money and

social relations with their rich relatives. This dependence leads her to examine

dependence inside the families and married couples. In both of the heroines in this novel

their relation to the protagonists we have examined in the previous novels can be seen.

However, attributing a new husband to Dorothea after Casaubon dies, Eliot allows her

protagonist to have a completely new experience for the woman of her time.

64
Conclusion

After the examination of the selected novels it can be observed that Eliot always

uses two main female protagonists in her portrayal of womanhood. However, these

characters are not just black and white counterparts and cannot be considered

counterparts in a sense of good and evil. Instead of that, George Eliot creates the

heroines who complement each other and create a detailed picture of womanhood in her

novels. The fact that the author sometimes treats the characters with compassion and

sometimes approaches them with a slight irony only contributes to the characters’

credibility. It seems that in each of the novels, Eliot approaches the female subjectivity

from a different point of view and puts the emphasis on different issues related to

femininity while a strong tie between the heroines can be traced showing the

development of Eliot’s female protagonists. By dealing with the heroines in pairs she

shows how complicated the female’s feelings and intellectual life can be.

In Adam Bede one of the heroines becomes a convict and the other one becomes

a wife and mother; which is regarded as a reward for patient life attitude and moral

qualities. The patient moral being Dinah ends up in happy family surroundings while

the immature Hetty leaves the scene after being punished for her mistakes. It seems that

this novel celebrates the ideal partnership of people equal in birth as well as in character

qualities and life ambitions. Being a wife taking care of her husband seems to be in

congruency with the general notion what a woman should be in the 18th and 19th

century. In her first novel Eliot also does not seem to show a stronger liking for her

female characters than for male characters.

Concerning the inner life of the heroine, in The Mill on the Floss the author

dedicates more attention to the heroine’s inner struggle and emphasizes the importance

of female’s decisions. The reader can trace Maggie’s growing maturity which is also

65
shifting Eliot’s approach to the heroine closer to the portrayal of an independent

woman. The significance of this novel can be seen in Eliot’s approach to education.

Though neither of the heroines is well-educated, Maggie at least longs for knowledge

which makes her life path more difficult but on the other hand it makes her unique. Eliot

shows that also a woman can make an important decision using her brain and heart as

well as men can. However, she does not go far enough to allow both of her heroines end

up happily according to their own views. Comparing and contrasting the sensitivity to

the social pressure of male and female characters she also seems to have a liking for

women.

Romola, having according to scholars dealing with George Eliot many of her

autobiographical features, represents a revolutionary heroine in Eliot’s novels. After

dealing with the first rural novels, the first educated and ambitious female character

comes. As mentioned in the particular chapter, the novel as a whole seems to attack

patriarchal values in the contemporary society and Eliot succeeds in showing the

difficulties of female’s lot though she chooses the location different to England.

As far as Eliot’s approach to femininity is concerned in the novels, it might be

reasonable to suppose that the growing independence of the heroines can be traced

mostly in Middlemarch as it is one of her latest novels and the previous ones can serve

as predecessors of an independent heroine. However, Middlemarch does not seem to

provide the reader with the most independent heroines. It can be argued that Dorothea is

given a great deal of independence when Eliot attributes her self-realisation at work as

well as in family life. At the same time it should be pointed out that this opportunity

comes only with the death of Casaubon and not with her deliberate escape from her

husband as in Romola’s case. In Romola Eliot emphasizes the idea of sisterhood and

female cooperation when she unites her heroines in one family and in this respect shows

66
female power. In the last novel examined the heroines are not united but Eliot shows

what possibilities there are for a woman in living with a husband.

To conclude, the growing independence can be seen in Eliot’s heroines and their

development in the ability of making decisions, trying to become educated and be

responsible for their own lives as well as men are. It can therefore be claimed that she

shows not only how difficult it is for a woman to gain independence and financial

stability without a man, but she also explores the difficulties on the emotional and

intellectual level. Eliot’s novels depict women in difficult life conditions which are

caused by male characters, society or both. By portraying them as real life characters

with all their weaknesses she draws attention to the issues related to female subjectivity

and unequal rights. She portrays the heroines who possess more independence than the

female characters in the preceding novels with the exception of Romola which can be

considered an outstanding character in Eliot’s work. It seems that locating the novel into

the different country and time seems to be a crucial factor for creating the heroine who

is free of oppression and subjection.

67
Bibliography

Primary sources

Eliot, George. Adam Bede. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1997. Print.

---. Middlemarch. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.

---. The Mill on the Floss. London: Penguin Books, 1994. Print.

---. Romola. London: Penguin Books, 1996. Print.

Secondary sources

Auerbach, Nina. “The Power of Hunger: Demonism and Maggie Tulliver.” Nineteenth

Century Fiction 30. 2(1975): 150-171. JSTOR. Web. 25 Feb 2014.

Beer, Patricia. Reader, I married him: a study of the women characters of Jane Austen,

Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. London: Macmillan,

1974. Print.

Bennet, Joan. George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1948.

Print.

Blake, Kathleen. “Middlemarch and the Woman Question.” Nineteenth-Century

Fiction. 31. 3(1976): 285-312. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr 2014.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale

UP, 1979. Print.

68
Greenstein, Susan M. “The Question of Vocation: From Romola to Middlemarch.”

Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 35. 4(1981): 487-505. JSTOR. Web. 1 Apr 2014.

Gosselink De Jong, Mary. “Romola-A Bildungsroman for Feminists?” South Atlantic

Review. 49. 4(1984): 75-90. JSTOR. Web. 30 Mar 2014.

Hardy, Barbara. The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form. New York: Oxford UP,

1967. Print.

---. Middlemarch: Critical Approaches to the Novel. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.

Print.

Homans, Margaret. “Dinah’s Blush, Maggie’s Arm: Class, Gender, and Sexuality in

George Eliot’s Early Novels.” Victorian Studies 36. 2(1993): 155-178. JSTOR.

Web. 26 Mar 2014.

Kalikoff, Beth. “The Falling Women in Three Victorian Novels.” Studies in the Novel

19.3(1987): 357-367. JSTOR. Web. 25 Feb 2014.

Leavis, F. R. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad.

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993. Print.

Lefkovitz, Lori. “Delicate Beauty Goes Out: ‘Adam Bede’s’ Transgressive Heroines.”

The Kenyon Review, New Series 9. 3(1987): 84-96. JSTOR. Web. 20 Jan 2014.

Levine, George. The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge

UP, 2001. Print.

69
Martin, Bruce. “Rescue and Marriage in Adam Bede.” Science in English Literature,

1500-1900 12. 4(1972): 745-763. JSTOR. Web. 22 Jan 2014.

Milner, Ian. The Structure of Values in George Eliot. Praha: Universita Karlova, 1968.

Print.

Mitchell, Judith. “George Eliot and the Problematic of Female Beauty.” Modern

Language Studies 20. 3(1990): 14-28. JSTOR. Web. 20 Jan 2014.

Oldfield, Derek. “The Language of the Novel: The Character of Dorothea.”

Middlemarch: Critical Approaches to the Novel. Ed. Barbara Hardy. New York:

Oxford UP, 1967. 63-85. Print.

Ringler, Ellin. “Middlemarch: A Feminist Perspective.” Studies in the Novel. 15.

1(1983): 55-61. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr 2014.

Robinson, Carole. “ ‘Romola’: A Reading of the Novel.” Victorian Studies. 6. 1(1962):

29-42. JSTOR. Web. 2 Apr 2014.

Schoenbauer Thurin, Susan. “The Madonna and the Child Wife in Romola.” Tulsa

Studies in Women’s Literature 4. 2 (1985): 217-233. JSTOR. Web. 2 Apr 2014.

Stevenson, Jane. Women Writers in English Literature. Burnt Mill: Longmann, 1993.

Print.

Welsh, Alexander. “George Eliot and the Romance.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction

14.3(1959): 241-254. JSTOR. Web.25 Feb 2014.

70
---. “The Later Novels.” The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Ed.

George Levine. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 57-75. Print.

71
English Resumé

This thesis examines the approaches of George Eliot, one of the most influential

British writers of the 19th century, to the female subjectivity in her novels. Though Eliot

was not a novelist who wrote the novels focused on the female heroines and her novels

show complicated plots and a lot of topics she was interested in, still it can be seen that

the female question plays an important role in her work. In this thesis Eliot’s approaches

to femininity are examined in four selected novels: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss,

Romola and Middlemarch which are analysed in the chronological order.

The novels are compared and contrasted from different angles and perspectives.

The thesis aims to show Eliot’s development from the point of view of portraying the

main female characters and describe the main similarities and differences in the

portrayals of femininity in the novels. All the main female protagonists are analysed

from the perspective of their character qualities and their life ambitions. Approaches to

marriage and relationships between male and female characters are taken into

consideration. It also analyses the male influence on women in the novels as well as the

question of female subjection. The thesis works with the notion what a woman could

and should be in the 19th century in England where these novels were created. As Eliot

usually portrays two main heroines, both are analysed with consideration to the

significance of the other one. The work shows a gradual change in George Eliot’s

approach to the female protagonists with regard to the setting and the characters’

development.

72
Czech Resumé

Tato magisterská diplomová práce se zabývá přístupem George Eliot, významné

britské autorky devatenáctého století, k ženské otázce ve vybraných románech.

Analyzuje romány Adam Bede, Červený mlýn, Romola a Middlemarch. Vzhledem

k tomu, že všechny romány vznikají ve viktoriánské době, je zohledněn i obecně platný

názor na práva žen v daném období a ten je porovnán se zobrazením ženské otázky

v románech. Práce se věnuje zobrazení ženství z několika různých pohledů, přičemž

perspektiva charakterových vlastností hlavních hrdinek, jejich vztahy s mužskými

protějšky a životní cíle tvoří nejvýznamnější skupinu sledovaných faktorů. Manželství a

mateřství jsou také témata, která jsou v této diplomové práci sledována. Romány a

především pak jejich hlavní hrdinky jsou v závěru porovnány s cílem vysledovat

postupný vývoj autorčina přístupu k dané problematice.

Práce analyzuje dané romány v chronologickém pořadí jejich vzniku právě se

zřetelem k postupným proměnám autorčina přístupu k ženství v jednotlivých románech.

Rostoucí emancipace hrdinek s každým dalším románem dovoluje zasadit romány do

kontextu doby viktoriánské Anglie a jejího sociálně-kulturního prostředí. Důraz je také

kladen na specifika každého jednotlivého románu, neboť v každém z nich jejich autorka

zdůrazňuje jiný aspekt ženské problematiky a tyto rozdílné pohledy umožňují pak

v závěrečném shrnutí širší pohled na vývoj hlavních hrdinek. Ty procházejí vývojem z

nepříliš průbojných a naivních žen až k silné a vzdělané protagonistce, která je na svou

dobu nadstandardně emancipovaná a má již mnohem lepší životní výhledy než její

předchůdkyně.

73