PATTERNS OF NARCISSISM IN GEORGE ELIOT'S FICTION

This psychoanalytic study of George Eliot's fiction focuses on four novels: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. The dissertation builds on existing literary criticism of all perspectives and adds insights supported by the writings of Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut to the psychoanalytic criticism based on Sigmund Freud, Karen Horney, and Melanie Klein. Kernberg's and Kohut's theories about narcissistic disorders help to illuminate Eliot's portrayals of psychological growth or failures to grow in her characters; they also help to explain the blind spots which sometimes prevented Eliot from seeing her favored characters as they come across to the reader.;The dissertation argues that Eliot is not always aware of the aggression she portrays, particularly in her idealized characters, whose inner conflicts possibly reflect her own; it confirms other critics' perceptions that Eliot's struggle toward self-development is reflected in the progression of her novels; it hypothesizes that Eliot achieved through the writing of her last novel, Daniel Deronda, a resolution of conflict that is reflected both in the character of Gwendolen and in her own increased sense of well-being.;Eliot's fiction portrays many characters who suffer from disorders of the self. The first essay in the dissertation, "Scapegoating in Adam Bede," shows how the low self-esteem of the characters in the community of Hayslope results in their scapegoating of Hetty. The second essay, "Narcissistic Rage in The Mill on the Floss," shows how Maggie's childhood rage, which results from her sense that she is mistreated by her family and society, is transformed into her adult misuse of sexual power in her relationships with men. The third essay, "Murderous Wishes in Eliot's Fiction," places the aggressive impulses of four characters in Middlemarch in the context of the interplay in all of Eliot's fiction among murderous wishes, oedipal fantasies, and feelings of abandonment. The fourth essay, "The Pattern of the Myth of Narcissus in Daniel Deronda," shows how Gwendolen can be seen as a pre-psychoanalytic literary representation of a narcissistic personality who is cured of her disorder through her transference relationship with Deronda.