A Study Of Feminist Narrative Discourse In George Eliot's Novels

Structuralist narratology is the objective account of fiction via abstract and structuralmodels of narrative analysis, very specific, semiotic, and technical, while feminism evokessubjective experience and gender politics, very general, mimetic, and political. With therevival of narratological theories in the 1990s, the critics began to realize the important role ofhistorical context and readers' response in narrative and then combined the investigation ofnarrative form with ideological, historical, and social contexts of fiction. Feminist theoriesbrought into narratology have enriched narratology and have formed a necessary element ofnarratology. Feminist narratology, an interdisciplinary approach, is a combination of narrativeform and gender politics.This thesis studies George Eliot's ambivalent feminist ideas after analyzing narrativediscourse in George Eliot's novels, based on the latest research findings on her novels. GeorgeEliot is one of the greatest English women novelists in Victorian Age. The studies on hermainly focus on structuralism, archetypal criticism, psychological realism, feminist criticism,and moral and religious analysis, etc. However, there are no systematic researches on herfeminist narrative discourse in her novels in terms of feminist narratology. This thesis tries tocontribute its share to the study of George Eliot's works by locating George Eliot's ambivalentfeminist ideas and potential tragic fate of women characters after analyzing the narrativediscourse in her three masterpieces Adam Bede (1858) and The Mill on the Floss (1860) inearly period and Middlemarch (1871-1872) in late period from the perspective of feministnarratology.In feminist critics' eyes, George Eliot is a very controversial figure. George Eliot withextraordinary intellectual powers becomes a well-known novelist in the patriarchal culture,and has a "love adventure" with George Lewes which transgresses Victorian convention, butshe never writes about it. Her feminist ideas, like herself, are very ambivalent. On the onehand, her heroines are always struggling between their desires and their traditional identity asa woman, and finally they are either reduced into sacrificing wives or forced into tragic fate ofrenunciation. Eliot criticizes this embarrassing reality of women's marginal status, breaks thesilence of the female for their subverting the patriarchal culture, and expresses that they haveno other way but to submit the patriarchal culture. On the other hand, she emphasizeswomen's self-sacrifice in marriage to fulfill men's ambition instead of the absolute equalitybetween men and women. She defines women as men's assistants. Eliot, as a particularwoman, experiences an emancipated life, but is obviously conservative in depicting herheroines in the novels. This reflects her ambivalent feminist ideas, which leave the trail notonly in the stories but also in her devious road of adopting narrative discourse in the processof claiming narrative authority.Thematic analysis is introduced into narratological study to locate the same narrativepattern that displays the potential tragic fate of women characters. Meanwhile, the samenarrative discourse (FID) to depict the inner world of characters, direct contact with readers,and authorial intrusion in Eliot's novels are examined. By close reading, this thesis studiessubtle and gradual shifts of narrative discourse in Eliot's novels from early period to lateperiod: from overt authoriality to indirect narration;fluctuation of narrator's gender stance;the adoption of epigraphs in late novels. Meanwhile, the aesthetic effect of the narrativediscourse is studied, and historical and social contexts the writer belongs to are explored toaccount for Eliot's narrative discourse and to have a detailed analysis of how George Eliotdevelops feminist narrative authority and of feminist gender politics reflected in the narrativeform. The research findings of George Eliot's devious strategies in adopting narrativediscourse reflect George Eliot's ambivalent feminist ideas and show that George Eliot,as amiddle-class woman novelist, goes through a devious road in the process of claimingnarrative authority, which accounts for the hardship of literary creation of women writers inthe historical context of men-dominated literary world.This thesis provides a new method by which we can acquire a fuller understanding ofGeorge Eliot's feminist ideas and opens up our view of what is possible for Victorian womenwriters to achieve in terms of narrative strategic resistance and compromise to the dominantpatriarchal culture.