George Eliot’s Religious Morality In The Embodiment Of Middlemarch

George Eliot was born in1819in War wick shire England. Her original name was Marry Ann Evans, whose father was a devout Christian. Mary Ann showed great interest in the Christian as a child.In1832, she went to the Franklin girls’ boarding school, learning French, music and writing. In1836because of her mother’s death and sister’s marriage, she had to drop out of school to go home and take care of her father’s life. At home, she devoted to reading the Bible, daily prayer, who had almost become a devout Christian, In1841her father and she moved to the outskirts of Coventry, Mary Ann contacted liberals of Bray and Haina Er.Through them, she became acquainted with a number of free thinkers. Under their influences, she began to read a lot of new philosophical and theological writings, with the expansion of the knowledge, her growing awareness the irrational of traditional religious.After moving to London, Eliot translated D. F, Strauss "Jesus Christ"(1864), Feuerbach’s "Essence of Christianity "(1854) has laid a solid theoretical foundation on George Eliot’s religious morality, Feuerbach believed that Not God creates the image of a man, but a man creates the image of God.Therefore, God and a man are the same entity, the substance of the love of God is the love of mankind as a whole,(This is typical atheism, but it maintained the concept of God).God is the embodiment of love, in order to love mankind, to save mankind from disaster, his personal appearance in our own lives among human, Finally, his own live is sacrificed for human atonement。Since God can love, give the tolerance and compassion, prefer to self-sacrificed for human. Then, the best form of love of God is to love between people. Therefore, people should be "tolerance" and "benevolence" to each other.Eliot always has a hard to break away the religious complex because of being influenced by the family atmosphere. Under the influence of great thinker Charles Bray, she changed the attitude to the formalism religious beliefs, but she was still a deep understanding of all the devout religious sentiment.Eliot has gradually formed his own unique religious morality, in the process of critical formalism religion. Her religious morality is built on the basis of’love’as the core. This thesis put Eliot unique religious morality and her pinnacle of Middlemarch combine, which focus of George Eliot’s unique religious morality, re-interpretation of literary in this work.Firstly, comprehensive introduction to Eliot’s unique religious morality. Secondly, from its religious morality——four aspects of benevolent, tolerance, love and sympathy to the text-interpretation..Lastly, this thesis focuses on the era of Eliot’s cultural context.——The opposition of religious thought and scientific spirit and her own unique way of life, which reflect the causes of this unique religious morality.It’s another important way for us a deep understanding of George Eliot’s work’s connotation.