On The Archetype Of Initiation Rite In George Eliot's Early Works

George Eliot (1819-1880), a great Victorian writer, is famous for her profound philosophical thoughts about humanity and society. By depicting the tension and conflicts between the individual and the community, she emphasized the necessity of subordination of self-interest to altruism and general welfare, and the importance to stimulate moral energy or will, for the achievement of social justice through the development of humanitarian feelings.This thesis is an attempt to present George Eliot's pursuit of a principle of coherence and order in a world without the support of the traditional religion, by analyzing the archetype of initiation rite in her two early works, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner. The thesis is composed of introduction, the main body, and conclusion.In the main body, Chapter one is an introduction to the archetype of initiation rite, which is originally a rite of passage popular in the prehistoric tribes that the protagonist has to go through before acknowledged as an adult. The archetype of initiation, as the manifestation of the long accumulation of universal and mental experience from generation to generation since the primitive society, has found its expression in religion, art, literature, dreams, and fantasies.Chapter two attempts to analyze the first stage of initiation rite—separation, as presented in the two works by George Eliot. Initiation rite always begins with the individuals' isolation from their old lives and dreams. The initiation rite can never be accomplished without severe injury to the original sense of wholeness. Both Maggie and Marner are involved in the desperate feeling of extreme loneliness and bewilderment with their separation from the familiar world. Their sufferings mirrored the ironies and paradoxes of the Victorian era when God ceasing practically to function for a sizable part of the population.Chapter three is an exposition of the two protagonists' attitude towards the initiation rite. The essential attitude toward promotion of successful initiation is submission. Only from this symbolic mood of death may the individual spring the symbolic mood of rebirth. Both Marner and Maggie are plunged into the mood of death in the process of separation from the original wholeness. The deadly blow in the Lantern Yard forces Marner to live a life of exile in which he learns a lesson in humility. Maggie's prosaic shock leads her into a new dream of self-renunciation, in which she becomes a rational being, correcting the instinctual and infantile urges in her early age. Only by such an act of submission can the protagonist experience rebirth, which marks his/her transcendence from youth to maturity. Chapter four is a detailed analysis of the third stage of initiation rite—recognition. The actual process of individuation generally begins with a wounding of the personality, as a form the suffering takes, and always ends when the conscious is in tune with one's own inner center (psychic nucleus) or the unconscious. The awareness of the disparity between the inward and the outward is frequently a source of moral growth, which renders the individual capable of the vision of the real relations of things and true sympathy necessary for the highest human fellowship, thus uniting the opposing forces within himself/herself and between him/her and the whole group of people and achieving an equilibrium in his/her life. It is in the process of assimilation into the life of Laveloe that the severe hurt in Marner is healed, who recovers the link between the past and present. And Maggie achieves full consciousness owing to her piety on past life, which determines the conditions of good in life and an ideal continuity in life in George Eliot's novels.The conclusion is that the initiation rite Tulliver Maggie and Silas Marner experience is of universal meaning, which mirrors the tension between the individual and community as well as the necessity of adapting the personal desires to the inescapable surrounding conditions represented by an organic society. The moral and ethical value system Eliot attempts to establish in her works values human feelings such as love, sympathy, tolerance, responsibility and self-sacrifice, which are the key to the wholeness and welfare of any civilization.