Name : Gond Asmita K.
Roll No. : 1st
Paper : 6th (Victorian Literature)
Topic : Is George Eliot a feminist or a champion of women's
liberation from her bondage to men?
liberation from her bondage to men?
Year : 2015-16
Class :
M.A. – 1 SEM -- 2
E-mail-Id : asmita.gond414@gmail.com
Submitted to : Heenaba Zala
Maharaja Krishna
Kumar sinhji
Bhavnagar University
Topic:- Is George Eliot a feminist or champion of
Women’s liberation from her bondage to
Men in Middlemarch
Middlemarch novel is
written by George Eliot was a Victorian novelist this novel is long and bulky
and it was known as the masterpiece of the novelist. This novel is written
during Victorian age which was very difficult age for women’s liberation and
novelist like George Eliot.
v About Victorian age
Victorian age is known as one of the
most glorious epoch in the history of England. It was an age of material
influence, scientific advancement, social unrest, education, expiation, imperialism,
empire building, humanitarianism, idealism and all pensive intensity of life.
Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880) wrote under
her pen name of George Eliot she was the youngest daughter of a farmer and land
agent. She was a lonely and emotional child. Devoted to her elder brother and
father. From the early age she showed the signs of wide intellectual interests.
She had a deeply religious temperament evangelical. It directed her action throughout life.
She spent the first 30 years of her
life at home, but after her father and mother’s death she went to London. She
joined The Westminster Review. She came to know some of the leading literary
figures of the day. George Lewes was one of them. The partnership proved greatly
fruitful. It gave her confidence that enabled her to become a major novelist.
v About the novel
of Middlemarch novel
Middlemarch
is highly unusual novel. Although it is primarily a Victorian novel, it has
many characteristics typical to modern novels. Critical reaction to Eliot’s
masterpiece work was mixed. A common accusation leveled against it was it’s
morbid, depressing tone. But many critics did not like Eliot’s habit of
scattering obscure literary and scientific allusions through the book. In their
opinion a women writer should not be so intellectual.
There
are two complicated stories intertwined in this novel. One is Dorothea Brook
and her two marriages. The other is about Dr. Laudgate and the Vincy family.
Middlemarch is a great novel, because of the solidity,
vividness truthfulness and comprehensiveness of the picture of provincial life
which it depicts. Middlemarch is also
called a complex novel because it is composed of four stories:
1.
Dorothea Casaubon story
2.
Lydgate—Rosamond story
3.
Mary Garth Fred Vincy story and
4.
Bulstrode and Featherstone story.
In George Eliot’s time women were thought to be physically
as well as mentally inferior to men and intended by nature for child bearing
and nurturing. Consequently they were denied opportunities for proper education
and independent action outside the domestic sphere. But Georg Eliot regarded
gender differences as complimentary and believed that male and female roles
could be adjusted gradually overall to the mutual benefit of both sixes. She
contended that the naturalistic
demarcation of women’s function in
society was fallacious because woman had a worse share in it’s
zoological evolution but she had an art which could mend nature in it moral evolution.
She liberated herself from the restrictive conventions of her society not only by mastering the
advanced thought of her age but also by writing novel after entering into a
lifelong partnership with the versatile center of interest in her novels and
dramatized their struggle for self-fulfillment in man’ s world with
understanding an sympathy.
v The position of women
During Victorian age women were not get the rite to getting education
they thought that a woman can not write novel or book also and for the t reason
Eliot has changed her name for
publishing her books. So that type of position we found to the women.
George Eliot has struggle throughout her position as journalist and
writer and for her right to love the man of choice. In all this, she had to
suffer opposition from her family and society at large, but she survived with
her prestige. In fact she was associated withstand other prominent women in
founding Girton College for women.
Although Middlemarch is not primarily a “feminist book” it reflects
strongly her concern for the emancipation of women and the restrictions society
places on them. This voice we found in the prelude itself when she states
ironically.
“Some have felt that the blundering lives are due to inconvenient indefiniteness with which
the supreme power has fashioned the nature of women, if there were no feminine
incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the
Social lot of women might be treated scientific
certitude
George
Eliot has portrayed female characters differently, Dorothea is shown rejecting the conventional
impression of a young “lady” as one who plays graceful tunes on the piano, just
as she is not “a women who lays herself out to please us.
Rosamond’s portrayal
is consistently unsympathetic, but she too is shown to depend for fulfillment
of her ambitions on marriage. Mary Garth is plain, intelligent and humorous –
is an aspiring woman she sympathizes with. Eliot has also depicts with sympathy
the plight of middleclass women without beauty or fortune in those time. It is
these women and others like Susan Garth and Harriet Bulstrode, who are shown to
combine great strength of character with warmth and sympathy.
Women’s
desire in the novel
In this novel we can find that
how women has many desires but because of some restrictions they cannot be able
to fulfill their desires. If we can see Dorothea Brook’s desire to do great
good to the world either by building
cottages for the tenant farmers
on her uncle’s estate or but participating in the intellectual life of her
society is opposed by everyone around her . Her younger sister Celia fins her
idealistic opinions out of tune with norms of a society which confined women to
dependency and inferior roles. Here women were expected to have weak opinions,
but great safeguard of society and of domestic life was their opinions were not
acted on. In Dorothea’s society the only vocation available to the girl is
marriage which describe as discipleship to a father figure like Hooker or
Milton. But understanding for the dreams of a girl whose notions about marriage took their
colour entirely from an exalted enthusiasm which was lit chiefly by its own
fire, and included either the niceties of the trousseau, the pattern of the
plate, nor even the honors and sweet joys of the blooming matron. In this way Dorothea consistently experiences
repressioin, deniel, in her society. Dreaming of doing rather than having, she
can find no suspense in a world that values only birth and wealth. Dorothea
Brook also desires to discover a binding theory of life which can relate the
particular to the general.
Vocational
marriage of Dorothea:-
George Eliot has described failed marriage system and also the
misunderstanding of a woman. We can see that how money is important thing than
the marriage and how a one misunderstanding can broke the whole life of women.
We can see that the female character like Rosamon who is the daughter of a
mayor who marries Lydgate because she has money power and good position in society
and she also she was an evil women also.
So we can see that how male
dominated society plays negative role into the society of Dorothea.
Dorothea’s marriage is described as
full of mistake done by her. She decides to marry the Elderly Clergyman
Casaubon in preference over the blooming Baronet Sir James Chattam, because she
believes that the scholarly Casaubon will be more helpful than dull brained
Chattam in realizing her intellectual ambition.
The two major choices
govern by the narrative of Middlemarch.
One is marriage and the other is
vocation. Eliot takes both choices very seriously. Short, romantic courtship
lead to trouble, because both parties entertain unrealistic ideas of others. They
marry without getting to know one another. Marriages based on compatibility
work better. Moreover, marriages in which woman have a greater say also work better,
such a marriage between Fread and Mary. She tells him she will not marry if he becomes
a Clergy man. Her condition saved Fread from a happy entrapment in an
occupation he doesn’t like. Dorothea and Casaubon struggle continually attempts
to make her submit to his control. The same applies in the marriage between
Lydgate and Rosamond. Dorithea ends with
a happy marriage, but there is some sense that her ends as merely a wife and
mother are a waste. Rosamond’ shrewd capabilities degenerated into vanity and
her stifled ambitions only results n unhappiness for herself and her husband.
Thus, We can say that George
Eliot has attack into the marriage system and the problems which were faced by
the women in to the Victorian society.
v Women and the society of Middlemarch
Celia is an interesting representative of the kind of women
who entirely happy with the feminine, nursery world. Their uncle, as usual
unconsciously expresses the conventional view with perfect exactness when he
says to Casaubon, Dorothea’s husband : “Get Dorothea to read few light things, Smollett;
Roderick, Random, Humphrey Clinker; they are a little broad, but she may read
anything now she’s married , you know.” Woman’s reading her public acts deepens
on the marital status. They are expected to obey and fall in line, as Mary
Evans herself was expected to do as a girl. This society was transitional; the
poor tenants raised their voice against their husbands. They demanded better
condition of live. Mr. Hawley regards Mr.
Brook to be a “Damned bad
landlord”
Their feelings changed though the old order still continues.
Dorothea’s education
As we know nothing about Dorothea’s childhood
before she looses her parents at the age of 12. Attempting the “remedy the
disadvantages of her orphaned condition”, her uncle has her educated along with
her sister.
So it is
Important to recognize that Dorothea’s story has an education or vindication
pattern. Even as she glorifies Dorothea, George Eliot also presents her as an
immature young woman who must undergo.
In George Eliot’s novels,
there are three basic ways in which individuals related to the world. They may
relate to the world subjectively or egoistically, seeing themselves as the center
of the world and the world as an extension of self. They may overwhelmed by an
encounter with harsh realities, leading them to see the world as alien and
themselves as insignificant. Or they may relate to the world objectively,
accepting it’s autonomous of relations that make up the human order.
George
Eliot has portrayed Dorithea’s life as being caught between the fear of
crushing Casaubon and having to devoted her life to his meaningless work. These
are not greatest fears, however As we have seen, she is going to say yes to her own dooms because
she has to “too full of dread at the
thought of inflicting the keen – edge below on her husband to do anything but submit completely.
After the
marriageDorothea was forced to relinquish her dream of helping a great man with
his work, but once she becomes aware of Casabaund’s frustration and sorrows.
The Prelude prepares us to approve of Dorothea’s search for glory. Saint
Theresa had a passionate glory. Saint Theresa had a “passionate, ideal nature”
that demands “an epic life.” Chivalric romances and “the social conquest of a
brilliant girl” meant nothing to her: “her flame quickly burned up that light
fuel;
So we can say that a woman should not
free from the society for education also and for self- development also
Dorothea’s sad sacrifice:
As earlier we have studied that a
woman should not get chance for developing their self because a woman have to
always scarifies which we will find in this novel and the character like
Dorothea.
After death of
Casaubon, Dorothea’s story focuses on her relationship with Will Ladislaw and
her continuing effort to find something worthwhile to do with her life. These
two strands come together at the end when, in what George Eliot describes as “a
self subduing act of fellowship’ (ch-82), Dorothea overcomes her anger at
finding Will with Rosamond and acts in a way that makes possible her marriage,
finally giving her a life filled with “beneficent activity which she had not
the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.” Dorothea
becomes a mother, and Will becomes an “ardent man” to whom she gives “wifely
help’’ in his struggle for political reform.
Despite the fact that Dorothea is presented as having found emotional
fulfillment and meaningful life with Will, the novel concludes on a mournful
note. Eliot continuous to bemoan the social conditions those are responsible
for Dorothea’s lapses and her inability to do something of historical
importance. Dorothea always feels there was
“something better which she might have done,” and George Eliot has described
her fate as a sad sacrifice. Many who knew Dorothea “though it is a pity that
so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of
another, and be only know in a certain circle as a wife and mother?”
As self - effacing person, Dorothea, blames
herself rather than others. George Eliot places the blame on society, however,
arguing that “there is no creature whose
inward being is strong that it is not gratly determined by what lies out
side” The claims for Dorothea’s heroic
stature to be excessive and at odds with the mimetic portrait of her character.
Dorothea craves an epic life, but she has no special calling or ability, unlike
Lydgate, or, for that matter, George Eliot. Her story is what Eliot’s might
have been had she not been able to become a great novelist. It is certainly
true that, as a woman, Dorothea had opportunity to develop her talents and
discover a calling because a good education and a choice of vocation were
denied to her. It does not necessarily follow, however, that under different
conditions she would have been to do something great.
Since
Dorothea does not have a chance to develop her abilities, we can guess about
her potential, but she seems to have the desire but not the capacity to do something
of world—historical importance. What distinguishes Dorothea from ordinary
people is her ardor and the loftiness of her aspirations, but it takes more
than ardor and ambition to make memorable contribution to the world, even a
female in patria in patriarchal society. George Eliot was criticizes the
society because it will not honour Dorothea’s claims. A more appropriate
criticism is that society has frustrated a number of Dorothea’s basic psychological
needs, partly because of her gender, leading her to develop a search for glory
that dooms her to feel discontented with herself and her life. So we can say
that Dorothea is the better illustration of the ills of a patriarchal society.
Gorge Eliot has great
feeling to introduced her internal feeling and her thought over the society and
the people and so she has do it threw her art means threw her mimetic character
Dorothea Brook. George Eliot’s characters are not just illustrations of her
ideas, but they are real human beings who are fascinating in their own right though
not always in harmony with their formal and thematic functions. George Eliot’s
mimetic achievement is great and has brilliant psychological intuitions. There
is need to distinguish between her representation of a character, which is
usually complex, accurate and enduring her interpretation which is often
misleading, over- simple and confused.
One of most serious
deficiencies of George Eliot’s philosophy is her emphasis on living for others
as the means by which we give value to our lives. Since our life has the
meaning that other people give it, we may be driven to satisfy their needs at
all costs or to try living up to their values. There is no way in George
Eliot’s thinking in which we can discriminate between the legitimate needs of
others and their neurotic claims. Her characters can reply defend themselves
when other people make irrational demands, and she tends to glorify their compulsively
self—sacrificial behavior.
There are two striking
examples of this in Middlemarch. Dorothea and Lydgate. George Eliot presented
them as contrasting characters, with Dorothea’s problems being caused by
deficiencies of her society and Lydgate’s by his flaws of character. But they
are more alike than she realizes. Lydgate is destroyed by his compulsive
submission to Rosamond and Dorothea would have been destroyed by her compulsive
submission to Casaubon had she not been saved by his death.
So we can say that Eliot’s
characters were the medium of convey her message to others about herself.
o
George Eliot’s use of irony
into her characters
Critics have charged George Eliot with too much personal involvement in
her characters especially her female protagonists like Dorothea. While the
involvement cannot denied, her omniscient irony tempers the portrait. This
coupled with the many different persons through whose eye the reader is made to
view a character gives a more complex viewpoint.
This irony is
much harsher in the case of Rosamond, Who “never showed any unbecoming knowledge,
and always that combination of correct sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, “Loveliness
which made the irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date. It is also
biting when referring to Lydgate.
Eliot has described
relationship with men and women ironically.
The stereotype of women doing what the men tell them to do seems to
exist through out the novel. Even when there appears to be a female character
who stands on her own and to whom the male characters listen and go for advice.
Eliot writes the characters in such way that she turns around and does what
she’s told because of her emotions. At the same time, Mr. Farebrother seems to
possess a better understanding of women than most of the others men in the
novel. His mother, aunt and sisters live with him, and the four appear to get
along in harmony.
The novel appears to revolve around
the society. Even though Eliot shows the characters as inhabiting different
social spheres, the people have the same difficulties and know about each
other. The Lydgat proud when Dorothea Casaubon visits and yet, their marital
problem s provides a foil the problems that she had with her husband before his
death. Also, within these circle, the people have distrust for outsiders. Plus,
even through they live in the same area, the characters refer to places by
names of estate or house, name of parish, etc. rather than the overall country
name.
Thus we can say that George Eliot is related with feminism and she has more kindness towards women which she has portrayed into her novel. She has also described the character Dorothea Brook differently who is searching for her real identity. As the title suggests, the novel gives us a realistic, vivid and comprehensive picture of provincial life of England. The picture is such that if there is any hero in the novel it is the society of Middlemarch. The novelist remembers her early girlhood and this gives the picture of truthfulness and vividness of her portrait of provincial life. We can also find that Rosamond is the daughter of a Mayor and was attracted towards Lydgate because of his Northumberland connections. The idea of professional status is not fully developed. There are also honest workmen who devoted themselves to their own trade this classification of human employments was rather crude. She has also described that men and women yoked together by needs, passions and prejudices, but she values interdependence above independence on account of it's threats and burdens. She wants men and women to live with on onther on a footing qualities and with full freedom to realize their potential. But she is of feminist who wants women to renounce their domestic responsibilities for the sake of their emancipation.
good
ReplyDeleteAsmita ! Women were really suppressed by men in the Victorian era and George Eliot indirectly showed women condition of that era.
Nice topic and good point and images are used in your assignment so also fine description in your work..,
ReplyDelete