George Eliot's Negotiations: A New Historical Analysis Of The Mill On The Floss

George Eliot is the famous Victorian female writer. Her novels are famous for her profound philosophic thoughts, her fervent concern with ethics, religion and social politics and the detailed description of her characters' psychology. The Mill on the Floss is one of Eliot's earlier novels, which sets in a countryside town — the St. Ogg's. This study intends to analyze Eliot's negotiation consciousness embodied in The Mill on the Floss from the perspective of New Historicism's literary function.This thesis is composed of five parts.The first part is introduction. This part introduces Eliot and her novels' status, the researches on her and her novels home and abroad and the main problems existed, the research angle, research purpose and research problems of this study.Chapter One has an elucidation of New Historicism's literary function and the concept of "negotiation" claimed by Stephen Greenblatt. New Historicism stresses the subject's motile ability. A writer is actually a negotiator, who negotiates everything through literature. Negotiation is realized between two dynamic social functions: subversion and containment. Subversion is the rebellion of social ideology representing the order of ruling classes; whereas containment is the rebellion of the subversion forces. The two functions interact with each other in social and political fields and form an absurdity.Chapter Two analyzes the negotiation consciousness penetrated in The Mill on the Floss. Eliot's negotiation of social ideology is analyzed from four respects, they are: the negotiation on social moral standards, the negotiation on religion, the negotiation on maleauthority discourse and the negotiation on social class discrimination.Chapter Three illustrates the author's humanistic ideas directing her negotiation. First of all, this chapter illustrates the developing process of Eliot's humanistic ideas. Then begins the analysis of Eliot's main humanistic ideas embodied in The Mill on the Floss, which include: her sympathetic consciousness, her view of memory's role in moral direction and her Law of Consequences.The last part is conclusion, the author of this paper points out that the negotiation consciousness, which is pervasive in this novel, is rightly consistent with the New Historical theorist Stephen Greenblatt's idea of literary function. Negotiation is not compromise but the embodiment of the author's responsibility and the works' complexity. An excellent writer is always reflecting social complexity from multiple aspects rather than simple judgments. This explained the reason why Eliot was not a feminist. It is not because she was unable to see the social restraints inflicted on women, but because, besides seeing the social unfair treatments upon women, she also saw the social suppression inflicted on men, which originated from traditional social ideas.New Historicism's literary function has a deep historical origin. Both Plato's "literature should serve politics" and Chinese Confucius idea of "writings are for conveying truth" emphasize literary function. But since both ideas served for the rulers, there is mainly containment and less subversion in the works they praised.Since Eliot's works are famous for exquisite psychological description, but analyzing the works from the perspective of New Historicism easily ignores the author's psychological description. The neglect of details and psychoanalysis is no doubt the deficiency of NewHistoricism.Peng has summarized the research on Eliot in China and indicated the researches on Eliot were mainly in the twentieth century. Although many achievements have been gained, there still exist many problems: one problem is the research on Eliot is not in an all-around way; the other is the monograph on Eliot in China has not yet been produced up to now. The author of this paper hopes this study will have some elicitation to the expansion of the research on Eliot, no matter how insignificant it is.