| The Victorian era (1837-1901) was an age of great charm and power in the whole history of English nation. During this complex and paradoxical time, Victorian England saw great expansion of wealth, power, and culture. However, this overwhelming economic boom and radical social changes brought about unprecedented spiritual and ideological strife. Moreover, the whole array of Victorian religious and moral assumptions was called into doubt by Darwinism and the rising new science. The unexpected hurly-burly reality startled each individual soul of this great nation. The flourishing literature of the period began to reflect this shift by focusing on characters of less lofty social standing. Such celebrated writers as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, and William Thackeray, etc probed amid the tumult of ordinary Victorian families. The erratic heart and the solitude born of the collapse of traditional value system became the crux of the Victorian literary consciousness.Among these splendid Victorian writers, George Eliot stands out as a most intelligent and artistically accomplished author. Her psychological and moral insight perfectly portrays the emotional and intellectual isolation in this transitional society. From the outset, she intended to closely examine human conflicts, frailty and emotions just as Spencer, Lewes and Darwin had done with empirical and investigative process. Under the influence of Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach and Benedictus Spinoza, she used her fiction to dramatize the conflicts and develop an idea of the religion of humanity, which advocates self-giving love and duty for a reciprocity and harmony of each individual and the society at large.In view of the above-mentioned unique significance of Victorian era and the well-known empirical and psychological depth of Eliot's writing, this dissertation focuses on three of her frequently-read early novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss(1860) and Silas Marner (1861) to elaborate on the shifts and strife brought by the radical industrialization of early Victorian age. In the analysis, the approach of the newly-rising ecocriticism will be brought in to interpret the great works from three perspectives, namely, Natural Ecology, Social Ecology and Spiritual Ecology, which respectively reveals the complexity relationships of man-and-nature, man-and-man and man-and-self.The analysis of Adam Bede concentrates on the novel's ecological consciousness and the sympathetic attentiveness to non-human nature revealed through the lines. The symbolic significance of the heroine Hetty is discussed to explore Eliot's foresight of Social Darwinism and human being's responsibility to non-human nature. Chapter three attempts to elaborate on the heroine Maggie's spiritual and emotional struggle with the hypocritical society and her final emblematic rebirth by self-sacrifice in the novel The Mill on the Floss. The profit-driven social development nibbled away individual soul's complete self and vitality. The conception of Genius Loci theme, which is called the"spirit of place"presenting a countryside with an essence of its own is studied about the river running through the whole novel. The indispensable river symbolizes the purifying function of nature as well as the final punishment of God. Finally, the psychology of Silas Marner is probed to reveal the unvoiced loneliness of the outcast in Victorian age. The degradation of Social Ecology leads to the unrecoverable breach between individual and community. Only by returning to the outside world through true love, can human being get a complete and harmonious life.To conclude, this dissertation interprets George Eliot's three famous novels by the approach of ecocriticism. By analyzing Eliot's empirical description of the inner struggle among self, nature and society, this dissertation aims to trace the gradual change of ideology and structure of feelings in early and middle Victorian age, and to appreciate Eliot benevolent idea of"religion of humanity".
|
PDF Full Text Request