The Narrative Techniques Of George Eliot's Middlemarch

George Eliot (1819-1880) is known mainly for her full-length novel Middlemarch. She is highly skillful in creating characters and in penetrating into their inner thoughts. Her tight arrangement of the plots and her authorial intrusion throughout the novel give the novel much room for research.This thesis analyzes George Eliot's writing techniques in three parts. Part one analyzes her artistic ordering-the stealthy convergence in arranging her plots as well as human lots. The emphasis is on the almost imperceptible, or unperceived, process by which apparently independent lots turn out to be related. Part two analyzes Eliot's constant and obvious presence in the novel. She frequently breaks the narrative flow to step directly into the novel and formulate some generalization which plays a crucial role in creating the understanding and compassion that she demands of her readers. Part Three analyses in detail the "sign-interpretation-expectation" chain going throughout the novel. In almost all the relationships among the characters, each perceives the other as a cluster of signs, more or less equivocal, which he or she interprets and their interpretations influence their expectations. Thus all the characters in the novel became related to give the story a structural unity. The concluding part summarizes the features of Eliot's narrative techniques.