On The Design Of The Plot And Psychological Description

George Eliot (1819～1880)is one of the greatest Victorian writers in the nineteenth century. She is famous for her full-length novel Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, which has been the focus of concern to various critics past and present. By studying the details, the thesis analyzes the tight arrangement of the plots and psychological description throughout the novel.Eliot adopted the stealthy convergence in arranging her plots as well as relationship among people, which elevates the artistic and aesthetic meaning of the novel .The emphasis was on the almost imperceptible, or unperceived, process by which apparently independent lots turned out to be related. She adopted the traditional artistic technique to concatenate the similar or contrastive plots. Thus all the characters in the novel became related to give the story a structural unity. It is very rare for a Victorian novelist to conceive the story as an organic whole in which every incident and character forms a contributory and integral part.Eliot broke through the traditional criteria that represented realistic literature. She concentrated on her characters'interior worlds and mental activities while analyzing them. She made great progress in psychological description, especially in wholeness, complexity, variability, and narrative perspective. She was highly skillful in creating characters and in penetrating into their inner thoughts. Eliot is outstanding in her attempt to integrate the psychological elements into her works. All of these skills not only draw the reader's attention, but also vitalize the characters, emphasize the theme, and enrich the text. It makes great contribution to the development of British literature, and even world literature.Eliot, instead of lacking in structuring ability, has gone far beyond her time and the Victorian literary traditions. The concluding part summarizes the features of Eliot's narrative techniques. By researching her works we can not only know the writer and her works very well in Victorian era, but also grasp the history of the literary development. It also has great significance for contemporary female critics to learn the origin of female literature.