Cultivating Humanity: Female Education In George Eliot's Novels

George Eliot is one of the most accomplished female novelists in the 19^th Victorian Age.Her works truthfully depict women of different classes in Victorian period and their various life experiences,which reflect her profound thinking of women's social status and predicaments at her time.This paper aims to analyze the female education demonstrated in three of George Eliot's most representative novels that are completed in her different writing stages,respectively,The Mill on the Floss,Middlemarch,and Daniel Deronda,so as to explore her feminist ideas and her educational philosophy.Chapter One examines the family education of Maggie Tulliver,Dorothea Brooke,and Gwendolen Harleth,explains different roles of fathers and mothers in family education and their influences on children's personality development.Fathers in three novels are either absent or tyrannical;mothers often appear to be conventional Victorian women who fail to understand their daughters'spiritual pursuits.The inadequacies of parents result in three heroines'defective characters and their faulty perception of reality,and thus fail to cultivate humanity.Chapter Two demonstrates the limited educational opportunities for Victorian women and the shallowness of that schooling.Schools in three novels are of little help for George Eliot's heroines to acquire true knowledge or achieve independency.George Eliot advocates a more sophisticated school system with improved teaching methods and contents that should satisfy women's multiple educational needs for intellectual,emotional and moral developments.Chapter Three explores the inclusive self-cultivation of George Eliot's heroines that happens beyond households and schools.For women in Victorian Age,self-cultivation first comes from Christianity.While Christian doctrine in three novels only restraints women's thoughts and actions.It fails to cultivate intellectually or morally.In the end,female characters in three novels are found to achieve humanity by transcending religion and learning sympathy through imagination and life experiences.By examining the female characters in three novels,this paper illustrates George Eliot's observation and thinking of female education in Victorian Age from three aspects:family education,school education,and self-cultivation.The study expounds George Eliot's unique views on how women's education affects their choices,even their fates,and her profound educational philosophy:Cultivating humanity should be the ultimate aim of female education;imagination and life experiences are two important approaches to cultivate“whole persons”.