A Study Of Women's Rebellion Strategies In George Eliot's Middlemarch

George Eliot,one of the most influential English female novelists,is active in the nineteenth century and famous especially for her accurate descriptions in episodes,situations and characterizations.The masterpiece Middlemarch created on 1871-72 deals with a mass of social questions,including political elections,medical advances,inheritance law,women' s education and so on.It describes that the female characters suffer from the patriarchal suppression for pursuing ideals and the right to speak in the male-dominated society,but they successfully achieve their aims through rebellion strategies called “hysteria”.Based on Elaine Showalter's feminist theory about female malady,this thesis thoroughly analyzed women' s different ways of rebellion from the person to the collective to reveal that women fighting against patriarchal suppression through “hysteria” is a creative tactic to win self-expression,which helps women act out against demanding expectations and free from the punishments of the patriarchal society.The thesis is primarily divided into three parts.The first part is the introduction.The second part is the body of this thesis,which is composed of three chapters.The first chapter analyzes the first way of rebellion against patriarchal confinement,which is primarily used by Dorothea whose resistant strategy successfully helps her change from an imprisoned victim to an empowered rebel.The second chapter discusses the second way of rebellion.Rosamond and Laure are both brilliant strategists who escape from the punishments under the “gracefully vicious” disguises and they are also the “daemonic centers” who successfully enact their “murders”.The third chapter presents the third way of rebellion,that is a union among the female characters with self-consciousness,including George Eliot herself,based on their sisterhood of complicity.The third part,the conclusion can be drawn that “hysteria” diagnosed as women' s disease is a mode of protest for women who are deprived of self-expression.