George Eliot's Feminism Awakening

George Eliot is one of the most important writers during the development of women literature. She is highly estimated by Elaine Showalter in A Literature of Their Own:"in the atlas of the English novel, women's territory is usually depicted as desert bounded by mountains on four sides: the Austin peaks, the Bronte cliffs, the Eliot range, and the Woolf hills."George Eliot could get a place in man-dominant literature because people could see Eliot's concern for women issues in her works.By studying the heroines in her early works, this thesis aims to explore George Eliot's development of feminist consciousness. George Eliot's early works went through two phases of the women's literature: imitation of the prevailing modes of the dominant tradition, and internalization of its standards of art and its views on social roles; protest against these standards and values, and advocacy of minority rights and values, including a demand for autonomy. The great work The Mill on the Floss established her position as a feminist writer in English literature.The first chapter of the thesis mainly introduces George Eliot and her women images in her early works and women literature in the Victorian period. Chapter two discusses George Eliot's imitation of the traditional writing in Scenes of Clerical of Life in which women are all"Angels"or accessories to men. Chapter three studies the women images in Adam Bede in which George Eliot challenges to the old tradition of writing by depicting her female characters as self-centered, courageous and independent. Chapter four studies the heroine in The Mill on the Floss in which the character is considered as a completely unconventional and rebellious woman. It can be seen as a protest against the traditional standards and values. Thus, George Eliot finally becomes a real feminist woman writer. The last chapter is a conclusion which explains the significance of this thesis.