The Thematic Study of George Eliot's Novels Abstract

CONTENTS

Chinese Abstract···························································································································Ⅰ English Abstract ···························································································································Ⅲ Chapter 1 Introduction...... 1 1.1 Literature Review of the Study of George Eliot...... 1 1.1.1 Review of the Study of George Eliot in Western Countries...... 1 1.1.2 Review of the Study of George Eliot in China...... 4 1.2 The Objective of This Thesis ...... 6 1.2.1 Review of the Achieved Thematic Study of George Eliot’s Novels ...... 7 1.2.2 The Objective and Significance of the Thematic Study of George Eliot’s Novels in This Thesis...... 7 Chapter 2 The Grief in Repression and the Relief after Regeneration as the Theme of George Eliot’s Works ...... 9 2.1 The Grief in Repression ...... 9 2.1.1 The Repressed Maggie in The Mill on the Floss...... 9 2.1.2 The Depressed Romola in Romola...... 14 2.1.3 The Repressive Dorothea in Middlemarch...... 18 2.2 The Relief after Regeneration ...... 22 2.2.1 The Regenerate Maggie in The Mill on the Floss ...... 22 2.2.2 The Revived Romola in Romola ...... 23 2.2.3 The Relieved Dorothea in Middlemarch ...... 25 Chapter 3 The Image of Water as a Way to Express Regeneration in George Eliot’s Novels..27 3.1 The Sources of George Eliot’s Thoughts about the Functions of Water as Symbols ...... 27 3.1.1 Water Can Purify Sins and Regenerate People...... 27 3.1.2 Water Can Give People Life and Hope ...... 29 3.1.3 Water Can Instill Power into People’s Lives and Cure People’s Afflicted Souls .....31 3.2 The Employment of Water as a Medium Moving Heroines from Grief to Relief...... 33 3.2.1 The Baptism of Flood toward Maggie in The Mill on the Floss ...... 34 3.2.2 The Salvation of Seawater toward Romola in Romola ...... 34 3.2.3 The Extrication of Rain toward Dorothea in Middlemarch...... 36 Chapter 4 Factors Influencing George Eliot’s Theme ...... 38 4.1 The Existing Society ...... 38 4.1.1 The Historical and Social Background under the Patriarchy System...... 38 4.1.2 The Requirements of Female Roles in the Victorian Period ...... 41 4.2 George Eliot’s Personal Experiences ...... 43 4.2.1 The Unrestrained Life of George Eliot in Her Youngster Days ...... 43

4.2.2 The Doleful Life of George Eliot during Her Grown-up Times...... 44 4.3 The Developmental Process of George Eliot’s Thought ...... 47 4.3.1 The Pious George Eliot as a Christian...... 47 4.3.2 George Eliot’s Firm Belief in Religion of Humanity ...... 48 Chapter 5 Conclusion ...... 52 Acknowledgements ...... 55 References...... 56 Papers Published in the Period of Master Education ...... 59

摘要

乔治·艾略特（原名玛丽·安妮·埃文斯 1819-1880）是英国维多利亚时期著名的现实主义小说家。乔治·艾略特的一生是不同凡响的一生，但是她的一生却饱受压抑。在她的一生中最值得提的两件事是 1842 年她宣布与官方基督教会决裂与 1853 年她公开与乔治·刘易斯未婚同居。这两件事给她带来的父女关系恶化以及随后的亲人与其断绝关系和巨大的社会舆论压力给她的余生涂上了浓重的忧郁、压抑的色调，所以乔治·艾略特的生活观是悲观的。反映在她的作品上，我们可以发现忧郁、悲伤、自我放弃是她的小说最独特之处。乔治·艾略特以严谨的写实大多反映中下阶级普通人物的生活、命运，她的小说以细腻的忧郁的心理描写最为突出。此外，她将深邃的哲学思辨融入小说创作之中，使她的小说上升到哲学高度。乔治·艾略特的早期小说多以儿时记忆中的英国乡村生活为背景，她早期小说《亚当·贝德》（1859）、《佛洛斯河上的磨坊》（1860）、《织工马南传》（1861）；中期小说是历史巨著《罗慕拉》(1862-1863)以及政治小说《激进者菲利克斯·霍尔特》（1866）；后期小说有《米德尔马契》（1871-1872）和《丹尼尔·德隆达》（1876）。本论文选取乔治·艾略特三个时期的代表作《佛洛斯河上的磨坊》、《罗慕拉》以及《米德尔马契》来论述贯穿乔治·艾略特小说创作生涯的主题，即压抑中的悲苦与重生后的释然。全文共分五章。第一章介绍了国内外关于乔治·艾略特的研究现状，提出了不同于以往的“压抑中的悲苦，重生后的释然”主题，还论述了此主题的目的和意义。第二章通过乔治·艾略特的三部代表作品《佛洛斯河上的磨坊》、《罗慕拉》和《米德尔马契》分别论述了“压抑中的悲苦”以及“重生后的释然”这一主题。“压抑中的悲苦” 这部分主要从《佛洛斯河上的磨坊》中压抑的麦琪，具体表现为家庭的变故使麦琪压抑和忧伤，面对选择的痛苦使麦琪压抑和悲痛以及归来后的压抑和凄苦；《罗慕拉》中抑郁的罗慕拉，具体表现为罗慕拉被深爱的人深深伤害所带来的悲苦，其中包括蒂托卖掉她父亲生前所有的收藏物使罗慕拉痛苦以及罗慕拉在发现蒂托还有一个妻子的事实时所遭受的痛苦，还表现为宗教精神上的巨大失望使罗慕拉悲痛；《米德尔马契》中的压抑的多萝西亚，具体表现为与卡苏朋的婚姻使多萝西亚压抑悲苦以及与威尔之间的爱情使多萝西亚受到的压抑；“重生后的释然”这部分主要论述了重生后的麦琪、重生后的罗慕拉以及释然的多萝西亚。第三章主要论述了水的意象在小说中人物命运转折中所起到的作用。由于乔治·艾略特是一位具有深邃哲学思辨的作家，所以第一部分是关于乔治·艾略特对水作为象征功能的思想来源，具体表现为水能净化人的罪恶，使人得重生；水能赋予人生命与希望；水能给人的生命注入力量，能治疗人饱受折磨的心灵。第二部分是在乔治·艾略特的小说中，水作为一种媒介的应用，它使得主人公从悲苦的心境转变为释然。 “压抑中的悲苦，重生后的释然”这一主题贯穿乔治·艾略特小说作品始终是与很多因素有关的。第四章是影响乔治·艾略特主题的因素。这一章主要从三部分来详细论述。第一部分是当时的社会背景，具体表现为在父权体系下的历史、社会背景，维多利亚时代对女子职能的要求；第二部分是乔治·艾略特的经历，具体表现为青年时代的乔治·艾略特和乔治·艾略特压抑的余生；第三部分是乔治·艾略特的思想发展历程，具体表现为从作为虔诚的基督

徒到她对人文宗教的坚信。最后一章是结论。乔治·艾略特小说中的悲剧很好地诠释了叔本华关于悲剧艺术的思想以及尼采关于悲剧诞生的思想。此外，她的小说平凡之中见伟大，平凡之中见真实。从她的小说中我们可以体会到平凡中的超越，绝望中的希望。

关键词压抑；悲苦；重生；释然

The Grief in Repression and the Relief after Regeneration ——The Thematic Study of George Eliot’s Novels

Abstract

George Eliot(1819-1880), whose original name was Mary Anne Evans, was the distinguished British realistic writer in Victorian times. George Eliot’s lifetime was extraordinary, but was stifled and full of sores. There are two things in her lifetime worthy of mention. One is she asserted her break with the official church of Christianity in 1842, the other is she openly cohabited with George Lewes in 1853. The deterioration of her relationship with her father and subsequently having her relatives cut off all relations with her and the tremendous pressure on her from public opinion resulting from these two matters applied a dense tone of melancholy and depression to the rest of her life. Therefore, George Eliot’s general view of life was pessimistic, which is reflected in the creation of her works. We can discern that depression, grief and renunciation are the unique characteristics of her novels. George Eliot mostly presented, with rigorous realism, the lives and destinies of the ordinary people of middle and lower classes. The most prominent feature of her novels is the minute gloomy psychological descriptions. In addition, she integrated her profound philosophical thinking into the creation of her novels, which made them ascend to the philosophical degree. George Eliot’s early novels were mostly based on the British rural life of her childhood. Her early novels include Adam Bede(1859), The Mill on the Floss(1860), and Silas Marner(1861); her mid-term novels include the great historical work Romola(1862-1863) and the political novel Felix Holt, the Radical(1866); the novels of her later stage include Middlemarch(1871) and Daniel Deronda(1876). This thesis chooses three representatives of her three periods, namely The Mill on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch, to expound the theme of “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration” running through George Eliot’s novels. The whole thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter of this thesis introduces the literature review of the study of George Eliot and her works. It puts forward the theme “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration” which is different from the previous ones and also discusses the objective and significance of this theme. Chapter Two respectively expounds the theme “the grief in repression” and “the relief after regeneration” through the three representatives The Mill on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch. The part of “the grief in repression” respectively takes the following characters as examples: The repressed Maggie in The Mill on the Floss is specifically displayed in the following ways, namely

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family changes made Maggie repressed and distressed, confronting options made Maggie suppressed and dejected and cruel treatment from the people of St. Ogg made Maggie depressed and painful; the depressed Romola in Romola is specifically revealed in the following ways, deep hurt by her beloved made Romola mournful and the immense disappointment in religion made Romola grieved; and the repressive Dorothea in Middlemarch is specifically displayed in the following two ways, her marriage between Casaubon made Dorothea grieved and the affection between Will and Dorothea made her depressed. The part of “the relief after regeneration” chiefly expounds the regenerate Maggie in The Mill on the Floss, the revived Romola in Romola and the relieved Dorothea in Middlemarch. Chapter Three primarily explains the image of water in the turn of characters’ destinies. George Eliot is a writer with deep philosophical thinking, thereupon, the first part is about the sources of George Eliot’s thoughts on the functions of water as symbols, concretely displayed in the following ways, water can purify sins and make people regenerate, water can give people life and hope and water can instill power into people’s lives and cure people’s afflicted souls. The second part is about the employment of water as a medium in George Eliot’s works for moving the mental state of the heroines from grief to relief, which is respectively displayed in the following ways, the baptism of the flood toward Maggie in The Mill on the Floss, the salvation of seawater toward Romola in Romola and the extrication of rain toward Dorothea in Middlemarch. The theme “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration” running through George Eliot’s novels is related to many factors. Chapter Four is about the factors influencing George Eliot’s theme. There are three parts in this chapter. The first part is the existing society, specifically presenting two aspects, the historical and social background under the patriarchy system, and the requirements of female roles in the Victorian period. The second part is George Eliot’s personal experiences and includes the life experience in her younger days and the repressed life in the rest of her lifetime. The third part is about the developmental process of George Eliot’s thought, specifically presenting the following aspects, the pious George Eliot as a Christian and George Eliot’s firm belief in humanity religion. The last chapter is the conclusion. One of the great points of George Eliot’s novels is the tragic element in her novels well interpreted Schopenhauer’s thought about tragedy art and Nietzsche’s thought about the birth of tragedy. Besides, George Eliot’s novels show the greatness in commonness and also show the true in plainness. We can perceive the transcendence in plainness and hope in despair.

Key words grief; repression; relief; regeneration

Candidate: Li Zhicai Speciality: English Language and Literature Supervisor: Prof. Li Xiaolan

Chapter 1 Introduction George Eliot is a legendary figure. She possesses erudition as well as deeply philosophical thinking ability. The novels she created prompt people to think deeply and are loved by people. She is good at portraying characters with distinctive dispositions; meanwhile, she is adept in describing vividly and dramatically the emotional fluctuation and contradictory psychology of characters. Her novels are noted for the audacious experiment, realistic technique of writing, noble morality, rich social and political thought as well as the profound comprehension of interpersonal relationship, complicated individual psychology and philosophy of life. George Eliot enjoyed a distinguished reputation when she was alive. She is not only loved and admired by the British but also respected by the cultural academia worldwide. As a writer, she kept exploring and innovating unceasingly, and never stopped researching and exploring new materials, thoughts and styles. Owing to her uncommon life experiences and industrious work during her lifetime, George Eliot left a great heritage in the British literature history. When she died in December 1880, she was already a legendary giant in that period. “She was not the only successful woman writer of her day, but the particular nature of her achievement—its broad perspectives, its knowledge of the world, its accuracy of detail, its historical sweep—depended on a freedom to concentrate, a freedom to move, and a freedom from domestic obligation that her female contemporaries were denied”(Classic: Pix). 1.1 Literature Review of the Study of George Eliot

1.1.1 Review of the Study of George Eliot in Western Countries When George Eliot was alive, there had already been a lot of articles in western countries researching her works. However, after George Eliot’s death, her fame was not as high as when she lived. She was not gradually recalled until the 1940s. The reason for this is that from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1920s and 1930s, people did not like the description of social morality and realism from the Victorian age. They were enthusiastic about modernism and the corresponding techniques of writing at that time. Although on the centenary of George Eliot’s death, Virginia Woolf wrote an essay in the Times Literary Supplement to praise George Eliot, George Eliot’s works, except the early three novels, did not attract more interest. Another factor influencing George Eliot’s reputation is the George Eliot’s Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals published by her husband John W. Cross. He collected letters, diaries and journals of her life and gave a lot of explanations and illustrations, which offered a great many materials for people to know more about George Eliot. Maybe because he loved his wife eagerly, he tried hard to embellish George Eliot, made a great number of modifications to the materials George Eliot left, and altered and cut off some of her radical and rebellious remarks. What he presented to people was a Victorian lady with a brilliant image, but lacking her original sincerity and cordiality, which made

people judge her as just an intentionally serious person who was addicted to sermonizing and lacked humor. Nevertheless, George Eliot’s artistic value was confirmed by later generations. Once Henry James was on her track and commented on several of her works. He said he even began to love this female writer after knowing more about her. In 1902, Leslie Stephen also made a unique criticism, tinted with prejudice. D. H. Lawrence, Ivy Compton-Burnett, American writer Edith Wharton also had works and commentaries on George Eliot and her works. There appeared lots of biographies and commentaries during this period, such as George Lewis and George Eliot by Anna Kitcher (1934), The Early Victorian Novelists by David Cecil (1935). After the Second World War, a group of Cambridge scholars, including V.s. Pritchatt, Basil Willey, George Levine, U.C. Knoepflamcher, etc, began rehabilitating George Eliot’s reputation. The great critic F. R. Leavis, in his The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, emphasized George Eliot’s maturity, knowledge and reason. He put George Eliot in the list of six healthy and positive writers, including Jane Austin, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence, who represented the great British tradition and could resist the modern commercialization and the cultural tendency of mediatization. Joan Bennet’s George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art started the monographic study on George Eliot’s literary art. The greatest accomplishment of the research of George Eliot in the twentieth century is the nine volumes The George Eliot Letters by Geordon S. Haight (1954-1978) and his publication of George Eliot: A Biography in 1968. The nine volumes The George Eliot Letters collected the important letters between George Eliot and her family, friends and relatives from the pious Evangelical Christian Mary Anne Evans in her childhood to the mature writer George Eliot during her whole writing career. Most of the letters had never been published before. Although Geordon S. Haight also deleted some of the original materials, yet compared with Cross’s edition, The George Eliot Letters is much more accurate than the former one. These letters not only displayed a versatile and erudite scholar but also restored the fresh image of the writer who also endured grief and enjoyed pleasure in her lifetime. As the correction for Cross’s edition, Height adopted a large number of original documents to attest to George Eliot’s developmental process, and her place as a cultural figure in the late Victorian period. These also revealed that George Eliot occupied an important place in the research of the nineteenth century non-belles-letters research, such as British politics, science, philosophy and society. In terms of biographies about George Eliot, there are Karl Frederick’s George Eliot: Voice of a Century (1995) and Kathryn Hughes’s George Eliot: The Last Victorian (1999), etc. In addition, there are also references, such as John Rignall’s Oxford Reader’s Companion to George Eliot (2000) and George Levine’s The Cambridge Companion To George Eliot (2001), which offered convenience for doing research on George Eliot. Since the 1950s and 1960s, there have been a lot of academic articles and monographs researching George Eliot and her works from the perspectives of Marxism, post-constructionism, deconstructionism, psychoanalysis, narratology, etc. The Marxism critic, Arnold Kettle, and other

critics first began to find a great quantity of historical and social materials from George Eliot’s works. They felt sorry about George Eliot’s conservative and mechanical historical value as well as that George Eliot could not supply a comprehensive theory for social reform. Professor Barbara Hardy of Harvard University gave a penetrating analysis of the artistic form of George Eliot’s novels from the constructionism perspective in The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Formal (London: Althone Press, 1959). Mr. W. J. Harvey exhaustively inquired into the complicated roles of the omniscient narrator in George Eliot’s works from the narratology angle in The Art of George Eliot (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961). J. Hillis Miller, in Narrative and History (1974), made a research of the structure of Middlemarch and concluded the meaning of deconstructionism. In addition, there are Suzanne Graver’s George Eliot and Community: A Study in Social Theory and Fictional Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 ), Daniel Cotton’s Social Figures: George Eliot, Social History, and Literary Representation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), Nancy Praxton’s George Eliot and Herbert Spencer: Feminism, Evolutionism, and Reconstruction of Gender (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991),Bernard Semmel’s George Eliot and The Politics of National Inheritance ( Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), etc. Concerning the feminism critics, the important articles and monographs of feminism critic include Lee Edwards’s Women, Energy, and Middlemarch, (Massachusetts Review 13, 1974), Elizabeth Ermarth’s Maggie Tulliver’s Long Suicide (Studies in English Literature 14, 1974), Mary Jacobus’s The Question of Language: Men of Marxisms and The Mill on the Floss (Critical Inquiry 8, 1981), etc, also include Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) Gillian Beer’s George Eliot (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986), and Susan Frainman’s Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), etc. 1980 was the centenary of George Eliot’s death. Nineteenth-Century Fiction edited a special issue to commemorate George Eliot and collected many articles that restudied and commented on George Eliot’s works from different perspectives. We can conclude that owing to George Eliot’s works being rooted in reality, giving attention to life and society and containing rich and profound thoughts, therefore they could stand the tests of time and last forever, so that contemporary and modern commentators could continuously discover new meanings from her works. For example, Hugh Witemeyer’s George Eliot and the Visual Arts (1979) studied the influence of George Eliot’s works on painting art. David Carroll’s George Eliot and the Conflict of Interpretations: A Reading of the Novels (1992) and Andrew Thompson’s George Eliot and Italy: Literary, Culture and Political Influences from Dante to the Risorgimento (1998) researched George Eliot’s works from the perspective of influence. While Gillian Beer’s Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin. George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1983), Sally Shuttleworth’s George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning (1984) and Catherine Gallagher’s The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction: Social Discourse and Narrative Form (1985) studied George Eliot’s works from the perspective of the relationships among literature,

industry and science. These researchers broadened and advanced the area of research on George Eliot. 1.1.2 Review of the Study of George Eliot in China George Eliot’s works are very serious and her works’ tint of reason is profound and comparatively dense, which is inconsistent with Chinese people’s preferences, which attach more importance to practice. Therefore, the research on George Eliot and her works was started quite late. There was only one translation of one of George Eliot’s novels in 1930s. In the 1950s, there were translations of her early five novels, however, these translations are seldom seen nowadays. Mr. Zhang Bilai’s translation of Adam Bede was published in 1950. After the reform and opening, there appeared many translations of George Eliot’s works, such as Cao Yong’s translation of Silas Marner (1982), Zhang Ling’s translation of Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story (1983), Wang Leyang’s translation of Romola (1988). Concerning the translation of Adam Bede, there are two editions, one is Zhou Dingzhi’s edition in 1984, the other is Ning Yuxin’s edition in 2000 respectively. Meanwhile, there are three translations of The Mill on the Floss. They are Zhu Qingying’s edition in 1999, Sun Fali’s edition in 2000 and Wu Houkai’s edition in 2008 respectively. Not all of George Eliot’s works are translated, for example, there are still no translations of the two novels Daniel Deronda and Felix Holt, the Radical. In addition, there are no accomplishments of research on George Eliot’s poetry and essays, even no translation of them. George Eliot is a versatile writer, and if we research her poetry and essays, we can supply refreshing aesthetic enjoyment and philosophical thinking to Chinese people. In recent years, there have already been five monographs on George Eliot. Zhang Jinfeng’s George Eliot: Harmonizing and Synthesizing Idealism and Realism (Henan University Press, 2006) filled in gaps where there were no monographs on George Eliot. Zhang Jinfeng adopted a unique way to explore the possible reasons for George Eliot’s idealism element under the background of the battle between realism and idealism in the Mid-Victorian period. In this book, Zhang Jinfeng analyzed the Mid-Victorian realism and George Eliot’s personal life and experiences and indicated that George Eliot was an inborn idealist but as well displayed realistic aesthetics. She demonstrated her opinions with protagonists in George Eliot’s three novels. She chose the perspectives of political idealism, embracing ideals and a feminine ideal in Felix Holt, the Radical to demonstrate her standpoint. She analyzed Middlemarch from the perspectives of moral and social idealism, intellectual idealism and a tragic hero, marriage of moral idealism and aesthetic idealism. She also selected the perspectives of ideal of sympathy, cultural idealism: separateness with communication as well as ideal combination of feeling and intellect in Daniel Deronda to prove her viewpoint. Du Jun’s Ethical Criticism on George Eliot’s Novels (Xuelin Press, 2006) offered full and accurate materials for researching George Eliot more deeply as well as enriched the new content for developing the research of Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story and Romola. What is special is that the author employed the literary criticism of ethics, which was just developed in recent years, and it revealed

the profound ideological connotation of George Eliot’s novels. Du Jun made George Eliot’s works as an ethical system to be investigated from the beginning to the end and also analyzed and expounded meticulously and penetratingly the ethical theme and ethical ideas expressed in George Eliot’s works. She scrupulously packed up the internal logic of the ethical thoughts in George Eliot’s works. She profoundly researched a series of important ethical problems such as religious morality, female ethics, the morality of love and marriage, family ethics, political morality, selfishness and altruism. Ma Jianjun’s George Eliot Studies (Wuhan University Press, 2007) introduced and talked about George Eliot from the aspects of George Elliot’s career, thought and art and a case study of Middlemarch as well as a survey of George Eliot criticism. In the case study of Middlemarch, Ma Jianjun discussed the background of the creation of Middlemarch and the story of Middlemarch, the concept and value of science and history, and the narratological features of Middlemarch. In this part, he expounded the narratological features from the perspectives of net structure, omniscient author and multi-perspective narration and remarks, as well as analyzing the characters in Middlemarch. From the introduction in Ma Jianjun’s monograph we can know more about George Eliot’s other works, including The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob, The Spanish Gypsy, The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems and The Impressions of Theophrastus Such, which are seldom seen and studied in China. Long Yan’s monograph George Eliot’s Feminism: Ideality and Reality (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2008) probed into George Eliot’s feminism from the double angles of radical religion and conservatism, which is very creative among the criticisms on George Eliot and broadens the horizon of feminism criticism. Liao Changyin studied George Eliot’s later three novels specifically in his Paradoxical Narration (Chinese Social Science Press, 2007, 5). This monograph took the Marxist dialectics and drew lessons from cultural theory and inquired into the paradoxical issue of political modernization in George Eliot’s later novels. The research papers on George Eliot in China are mainly theses. From reading the theses on CNKI of China Journal net, we can see the following characteristics. First, the importance of researching and analyzing George Eliot by using different literary criticism theories and means, such as feminism, psychoanalysis, narratology, new historicism, archetypal criticism, constructionism, determinism, consumerism, eco-criticism, etc. Second, there are a great number of research articles about Middlemarch, and The Mill on the Floss , not as many about Adam Bede and Silas Marner, fewer about Romola; and because there are no translations of Daniel Deronda and Felix Holt, the Radical until now, the research articles on these two novels are even fewer. Third, the research articles are mainly on the facets of the novels themselves, the writer’s thoughts as well as the religious and moral thoughts displayed from her works. Wang Xiaoying published her article The Religion of Love and George Eliot’s Early Works in Nanjing Normal University Journal (Social Science Edition) in 1988. The thesis analyzed the influence of Feuerbach’s humanity religion on George Eliot’s Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. In the main part of this article, Wang Xiaoying expounded benevolence, philanthropy, friendship and love among the protagonists Adam Bede, Dinah, Maggie and Marner in the above novels. In the last part, Wang Xiaoying

indicated the limitations in George Eliot’s works. She thought that in order to create characters filled with love, the images of the characters created by George Eliot were incomplete. For example, the image of Adam is fully the ideal character orchestrated meticulously to represent benevolence and the standard of morality, while Dinah is a character like a hermit above the material attractions of the world; Wang Xiaoying also thought that in the first part of The Mill on the Floss, Maggie was such a naive, rustic and passionate girl, while in the end she abandoned her affection and died in the flood, hugging her brother Tom, which was a kind of snuffing out of humanity. Wang Xiaoying stated that the deep influence on George Eliot made her works have artistic and idealistic limitations. Since the publication of this article, there have been many articles about humanity religion, the religion of love and humanism in all of George Eliot’s novels. Fourth, there are few articles comparing George Eliot’s works with those of other writers. There are only two dissertations until now. One is Bai Tana’s Jane Eyre and The Mill on the Floss—A Comparison of the Two Heroines, in which Bai Tana compared the two female protagonists from the aspects of motif, writing skills and the writing influence and from the perspectives of different social rules for women, different techniques in heroine characterization as well as different influences and hence different successors. The other is Zhang Wenyi’s A Comparative Study of the Woman Question in The Mill on the Floss and My Antonia, in which Zhang Wenyi mainly focused on the two writers and the female protagonists they created from the angles of the woman question and gender conflict which are embodied in women’s living state, self and society, education, economy and vocation, love and marriage. There are only two articles of comparative analysis, only one of them is about the comparative analysis of George Eliot’s works and Chinese writer’s works, that is Lin Lin’s “ I “ and Authority—A Review of Novels by George Eliot and Bingxin from the Perspective of the feminist narratology. Fifth, there are few conclusive dissertations about seeking the common points from George Eliot’s many works. The innovative points are few and they are just focused on the perspectives of eco-criticism, moral concept and humanity religion. There are only seven dissertations of this conclusive kind until now. They are Yang Ting’s Tension and Reconciliation: An Ecocitical Study of George Eliot’s Three Novels, Shi Lifeng’s The Continuity of the Female Characters in George Eliot’s Three Novels—The Image Development in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, Liao Hui’s On the Archetype of Initiation Rite in George Eliot’s Early Works, Du Jun’s George Eliot and Morality of “ Humanity Religion”, Ge Xiaoling’s Renunciation, Regeneration and Religion of Humanity—On George Eliot’s Morality, Huang Hong’s George Eliot’s Ideas on the Relationship between Man and Nature---An Ecological Reading of Her Three Early Novels and Xie Lin’s Harmony in Nature, Society and Man: An Ecological Reading of George Eliot’s Three Early Novels.

6 1.2 The Objective of This Thesis

1.2.1 Review of the Achieved Thematic Study of George Eliot’s Novels Previous research into the theme of George Eliot’s works are mainly on the following subjects: the initiation theme, for instance, Liao Hui’s On the Archetype of Initiation Rite in George Eliot’s Early Works, Shi Lei’s The Mill on the Floss: A Balanced Bildungsroman, Shi Lei mainly discussed about the growing up of Tom which was different from previous angle of analyzing Maggie, Liu Xinlei’s Dorothea’s Illusion and Bildung in Middlemarch; the theme of morality and humanity religion, such as Du Jun’s George Eliot and Morality of “Humanity Religion”, Liu Shujun’s An Analysis to Moral Themes in The Mill on the Floss, Ge Xiaoling’s Renunciation, Regeneration and Religion of Humanity—On George Eliot’s Morality, Yang Fanglin’s Moral Experiment in Life—On Maggie Tulliver’s Life Choices in The Mill on the Floss, Yin Jingyuan’s George Eliot’s Religion of Humanity in Adam Bede and Silas Marner, Ai Zhilan’s Essential Elements of Happy Life: Impact of Sympathy and Prudence on Individual Happiness in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss; and the theme of the concepts of women’s marriage, such as Guo Mengyuan’s Peculiar Marriage Under the Veil of Complex—Analysis of Dorothea’s Marriage Choice in Middlemarch; and the theme of feminism, such as Zhang Ye’s The Silent Voice—A Feminist Analysis on George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Ma Lili’s Reflection of Morality and Characterization in The Mill on the Floss, Wang Huixia’s Construction and Dispersion of the Feminine Authority—On the Feminine Narration of George Eliot’s Novels, Wang Huixia combined feminist narratology, classical narrative theories and feminist criticism to expound the narrative features of George Eliot’s novels, Liu Xia’s Challenge and Compromise—A Feminist Study of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. 1.2.2 The Objective and Significance of the Thematic Study of George Eliot’s Novels in This Thesis However, the writer of this thesis deems that the embodiments of grief in people’s lives and the ease, and the freedom of the soul from afflictions and tribulations are very serious and profound in each of George Eliot’s novels. Such as in Adam Bede, Adam loved Hetty so much, but Hetty was a vain person seduced by Athur who was the son of a rich family. When Adam knew their relationship, he endured the mental torment in depression. When Hetty was sentenced to death because she had abandoned her baby resulting in its death, Adam suffered tremendous agony. After experiencing his father’s death and attacks from love, Adam gradually understood the meanings of life and his spirit did not shoulder the heavy psychic burden any more. In Silas Marner, Marner was framed as sneak thief by his good friend and he left his hometown to go to the small village of Raveloe. From then on, his thinking was occluded and his emotions withered. He lived his desolate life in gloom all day. When his savings of golden coins was stolen, he was attacked seriously again in spirit. However, after he began to raise the abandoned infant Eppie, he found the hope of life anew and extricated himself from the spiritual predicament. This thesis chooses The Mill on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch as the research subject,

because these three novels represent the early, middle and late periods of George Eliot’s writing career respectively. They are very typical for researching George Eliot’s works. This thesis puts forward that the theme of George Eliot’s works should be “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration” which is different from the thoughts of previous thematic studies. This thesis explicates the theme of George Eliot’s works from two aspects. One is that many protagonists in George Eliot’s works underwent internal inhibitions and sufferings in their lives, the other is that after enduring torments and afflictions, the protagonists obtained the inner transformation and a kind of regeneration in spirit and achieved the relieved state of mind. George Eliot had every confidence in the power of water. There are many applications of the functions of water in her novels, which helped move the heroines from grief to relief. She deemed that water could purify sins and regenerate people, which was displayed in the baptism of the flood toward Maggie in The Mill on the Floss. She also believed that water could give people life and hope, which was embodied on the salvation of seawater toward Romola in Romola. Besides, George Eliot thought that water could instill power into people’s life and cure people’s afflicted souls, which was revealed in the extrication of rain toward Dorothea in Middlemarch. Therefore, this thesis also tries to explore the employment of water as a medium that moved heroines from the grief in repression to the relief after regeneration in George Eliot’s works. In addition, this thesis also endeavors to analyze the factors influencing George Eliot’s theme. The theme put forward in this thesis is different from the previous thematic studies of George Eliot’s novels and also this thesis opts heroines of the three representative novels to better expound the theme, which enriches the research of George Eliot’s novels. In this dissertation, there is analysis and research about the theme of Romola, which is seldom chosen as the subject of research. So this thesis enriches the research of Romola.

Chapter 2 The Grief in Repression and the Relief after Regeneration as the Theme of George Eliot’s Works Among George Eliot’s immortal masterpieces, there are huge discrepancies in many aspects, such as the selection of materials, the style of stories, etc. The Mill on the Floss was like a gentle essay, with leisurely rhythm; Romola was like musing over things of the remote past and was brimming with exquisite feelings. While, Middlemarch was magnificent and splendid as if an epic. Although the writer unfolded the totally different life scenes before our eyes, yet we find that “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration” was still the theme running through the writer’s different works. 2.1 The Grief in Repression

George Eliot portrayed the nearly vague female images neglected by society for thousands of years with the minute painting peculiar to women writers, and expressed women’s voices repressed and ignored over a long time. George Eliot’s general view of life was pessimistic, thus a lot of images of protagonists she molded were all with a tragic characteristic and their lives all experienced endless repressions, sufferings and struggles. 2.1.1 The Repressed Maggie in The Mill on the Floss The Mill on the Floss was written by George Eliot in 1860. The backcloth of this novel is the British village life in Victorian times. The novel is filled with clashes and conflicts: the incompatibility within families, disputes between families, the disbandment of lovers, the inter-harm between friends, strife between personal enemies, the litigation in court, the replacement of property as well as the inner struggles of individuals for love, desire, ideals and freedom. The novel is mainly about the misfortune of Mr. Tulliver, the miller of Dorlcote Mill, and the psychological changes of his daughter Maggie. The Mill on the Floss is a story tinted with tragedy. The heroine Maggie had a short life, during which she experienced various deep distresses and tribulations brought on by family affection, friendship and love. George Eliot meticulously described Maggie’s attitudes toward life changes and her mental afflictions during her suffering of self-repression. 2.1.1.1 Family Changes Made Maggie Repressed and Distressed Maggie had innate intelligence and preeminent memory. She loved reading and was a self-taught girl. After she had learned some basic words, she would read as soon as she caught sight of books, and this was her biggest pleasure. Her father, Mr. Tulliver, was semi-literate and proud of her brightness and he doted upon his daughter. Although Maggie often received reproach from her mother and her maternal aunts, she enjoyed a happy and cheerful childhood. She often played with her brother Tom on the riverbank and enjoyed the unconstrained days.

Mr. Tulliver lost his lawsuit when Maggie was thirteen years old. The Tulliver family was much troubled by bankruptcy. From then on, her family began to live sparingly. The decline of her family’s economic situation was the initiation of mandatory submission for Maggie. The repression on Maggie was not only displayed in the aspect of material privations, but also in the internal sufferings. Maggie had been deprived of all of her life’s pleasures and she had to forsake her beloved studies, music and books. Tom was also forced to stop his learning. In order to maintain the livelihood of his family, Tom had to go off in the early morning, not returning till late at night each day, to earn money to repay his family’s debt. He became indifferent and disconsolate. From then on he never had time to care about his sister’s mental sensations and emotional needs. Mr. Tulliver was scanty of words and fell into a trance in spirit after he suffered a serious illness. He was not in the mood to be concerned about his daughter. Finally he died of apoplexy because of momentary excitement after his retribution for Wakem’s actions. While, for Maggie’s mother, tears were bathing her cheeks all day, and she was inextricably bogged down in sorrow and full of grievances. What Maggie saw from her mother was nothing but misery. Maggie could not get mental consolation from her mother; on the contrary, her fragile mother needed her comfort even more. The loss of her biggest spiritual pillar, her father’s love, debarred her from the joy she had experienced in the past. She could not adjust and accustom herself to all these family changes. She underwent inner solitude and loneliness she had never experienced before. Maggie began to ponder over life, hoping to find the source of a happy life. Then she found a large, old book written by Thomas Kempis. She got a great deal of spiritual comfort from this book. She thought “Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets; here was a sublime height to be reached without the help of outward things; here was insight, and strength, and conquest to be won by means entirely within her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a problem” (The Mill on the Floss: 295). She perceived that the root of her anguish rested with her selfish desire. There would be neither solitude nor relief from agony, except by abandoning the inner self-centeredness and being more concerned about others as well as letting the heart be occupied with the love of self-sacrifice. Henceforth, she was strict with herself, suppressed her sensual passion, remained where she was, no longer followed her own will, adopted the strictly religious morality to repress her own vigor and intelligence, and escaped contradictory feelings in order to stand the disturbance brought by the inner heart. However, this was only a temporary constrained numbness. With extreme behaviors, Maggie adhered to asceticism and completely denied her individual rights, but it was impossible for her to coordinate the various intense feelings and violent contradictions deep in her heart. 2.1.1.2 Confronting Options Made Maggie Suppressed and Dejected The natural affection between Tom and Maggie and emotional entanglement among Maggie, Philip and Stephen interwove in the novel in a complex way. Whether confronting her affection for Tom, or her emotions for Philip and Stephen, Maggie had to make choices among them. The hard

choices forced Maggie to rely on forbearance and restraining herself to shake off her anguish. This is also the intersection point between two emotional lines. Maggie did her utmost to achieve psychological balance by means of self-repression. She chose the ascetic practices of forbearance and thought that she had found the root of the question. Therefore, Maggie lived in the ascetic practices of restraining desires from beginning to end. This kind of forbearance is actually the self-repression. The self-repressed mood dominates in the whole novel. The appearance of Philip was at the time of Maggie’s emotional ebb. Philip was the only person who could give Maggie understanding and show solicitude for her. After a long-term of self-repression, Maggie’s spirit and soul were extremely dried and void, which left her at a loss as to what to do about Philip’s presence. However, Philip’s appearance instilled vigor into her monotonous life and moistened her dry heart. It was described like this, “Here suddenly was an opening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow valley of humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote, unfathomed sky; and some of the memory-haunting earthly delights were no longer out of her mind had not yet lost its sense of exile” (The Mill on the Floss: 332) Out of Maggie’s solitary world, she had retrieved a mental comfort that she could repose her trust in. This attraction was irresistible. Only when she was with Philip could her nature be displayed and could she recover her true self. She regained the beauty of the world and the value of life. Nevertheless, Maggie’s emotion toward Philip was just like an oscillating scale, which could not be stopped from swinging from side to side. Because Philip was the son of her father’s foe, Tom would never allow them to have association with each other. If Tom knew about their association, he would be angry. It would hurt her relatives’ feelings and cause indignation and suffering. Once she said to Philip, “I wish we could have been friends…But that is the trial I have to bear in everything…I must part with everything I cared for when I was a child. And I must part with you; we must never take any notice of each other again.”(The Mill on the Floss: 307) But because of Maggie’s concern about Philip since her childhood and Philip’s insistence, they kept in contact for a period. Philip, whose character was sensitive and whose soul was tormented by his deformed body, had already considered Maggie as his source of happiness in his whole life. Although he clearly understood there were obstacles, he expressed his love for Maggie. Philip’s expression made Maggie re-examine her emotions for Philip. She felt that if her emotion toward Philip was love at this moment, there must be the implication of sacrifice and devotion in this love. But she acquiesced in Philip’s love and she considered this as a kind of testimony of conviction. At last Tom found out about their secret dates. Facing this emotion, Maggie had to make a decision: continue association or give up forever. If they continued their association, it meant that Tom would be hurt deeply. Disobeying Tom’s will is what Maggie is least willing to do. She tried hard to extricate herself from the predicament and finally gave up being together with Philip. From the description of Maggie’s mood on the road to the red deeps with Tom, we can perceive Maggie’s deep agony, “Not a word was spoken as they walked along. Maggie was suffering in anticipation of what Philip was about to suffer and dreading the galling words that would fall on him from Tom’s

lips, but she felt it was in vain to attempt anything but submission”. (The Mill on the Floss: 351) Tom rudely interfered with the relationship between Maggie and Philip and peremptorily separated them, which made Maggie’s life return to the narrow and small family circle and become dim and dark again. But the appearance of Stephen became the new source of Maggie’s inner struggle. Stephen, the son of the richest family of St Ogg town, was young, handsome and unconventional. It was well known that Stephen had fallen in love with Maggie’s cousin Lucy. But, since Stephen met Maggie, he was attracted by this different girl who had black eyes, black hair and was unable to restrain himself from loving her. Meanwhile, he also detected that there was the same feeling in Maggie’s subconsciousness. They both restrained themselves only because they adhered to morality. After Stephen confessed his love toward her at the charity bazaar, Maggie’s previously obscure love for Stephen became clear. Then vexation occurred. The intrapsychic conflict between vanity and honesty was very fierce. Perhaps in her inward depth, she already had her own answer—her involuntary reply of “I must go” (The Mill on the Floss: 446) to pastor Dr Kenn revealed her internal choice. Thereupon, Maggie decided to renounce all desires and hopes in order to escape the emotional entanglement. She planned to go to other places to teach. But Stephen started his strong love offensive toward Maggie. He even pursued her to the home of Maggie’s aunt and ardently beseeched her to accept his love, but Maggie still had her determined attitude and she refused his love again. Maggie lived in her aunt’s home less than a week before returning to St Ogg. She suffered the intrapsychic struggle all during this time. She moved with quiescence and in a torpid manner. It was depicted like this, “But under this torpor there was a fierce battle of emotions such as Maggie in all her life of struggle had never known or foreboded; it seemed to her as if all the worst evil in her had lain in ambush till now and had suddenly started up full-armed with hideous, overpowering strength! There were moments in which a cruel selfishness seemed to be getting possession of her; why should not Lucy-why should not Philip suffer? She had had to suffer through many years of her life, and who had renounced anything for her? And when something like that fullness of existence—love, wealth, ease, refinement, all that her nature craved—was brought within her reach, why was she to forgo it that another might have it, another who perhaps needed it less?”(The Mill on the Floss: 470) But Maggie’s mental pain did not stop here. One chance opportunity enabled Stephen and Maggie to go boating together. They were immersed in the happy moment, forgetting how far their boat had drifted. As a result, they could not return the same day, which caused the appearance of elopement. Stephen tried hard to persuade Maggie to marry him, but Maggie insisted on going back. They had several disputes about whether Maggie should leave. Maggie also bore the internal struggle. If she chose Stephen, she could get social position and wealth, and fulfillment of the passionate love between her and Stephen accorded with her emotional demand for romantic, legendary and ardent love, but it would make Lucy in torment, make her beloved Philip live in misery the rest of his life, and would also betray her moral faith and make her have an uneasy conscience. Even if she got married with Stephen in the future, it would cast a shadow upon her.

Their marriage would never be happy or sacred, because the images of Lucy and Philip would keep lingering in her mind. If she returned, what awaited her would be cruel reprimand for her morality and questions or even slander from the whole town, because people would never believe that she had made self-sacrifice. After unceasing intrapsychic battle, Maggie conformed to her innermost conscience and returned to St Ogg. 2.1.1.3 Cruel Treatment from St. Ogg Made Maggie Depressed and Plaintive Maggie returned to St Ogg with disgrace and remorse. She went to the Dorlcote mill to find her brother, because she thought only in being by Tom’s side could she seek the natural asylum. But Tom shut the door upon her. According to Tom’s opinion, Maggie’s behavior was injurious to morals and unforgivable. He did not contemplate how mournful Maggie’s inner heart was and how much Maggie had endured from her internal battle. Maggie had no physical strength to refute his position. She was full of despair. She nearly fainted with pain. Maggie had to live with Bob’s family temporarily, being with her pathetic mother. The town of St Ogg was suffused with tattling and prating. People fiercely criticized Maggie’s perceived elopement. But what Maggie was most concerned about was the situation of Stephen, Lucy and Philip, “anxiety about Stephen, Lucy, Philip, beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and injustice at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their worst, that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable since the words she had heard from her brother’s lips. Across all her anxiety for the loved and the injured, those words shot again and again like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread even into a heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never glimmered in her mind for a moment, it seemed as if every sensitive fiber in her were to entirely preoccupied by pain ever to vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one act of penitence” ( The Mill on the Floss: 504) During the two or three days after she was informed that Stephen was well, Maggie was still worried about Philip’s condition. She had no information about Philip, so her main agony became the solicitude about Philip. “Maggie sickened under this suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently in what Philip was enduring. What did he believe about her?”(The Mill on the Floss: 514) Maggie supplicated Dr Kenn to find a job for her to make an independent living. But no matter what kind of available position there was, when people heard that it was for Miss Tulliver, they declined to offer. Dr Kenn had to ask Maggie to be a nurse for his little baby who just lost its mother. However, after a short time, rumors were spread again. It was said that Miss Tulliver seduced Dr Kenn and Dr Kenn would marry Miss Tulliver quite soon. Finally Dr Kenn could not resist people’s protests, and had to persuade Maggie to leave St Ogg. Maggie had to reconsider her future, “thinking of that future and wrestling for patience” (The Mill on the Floss: 525-526). The social misunderstanding increased Maggie’s agony of giving up love. After she received Stephen’s letter asking for love, her heart suffered an intense conflict again. Finally she chose to

refuse. She experienced suffering to the extreme point and felt that she would shoulder the sacred and heavy cross until she died. Through Maggie’s short life, what we see is the endless intrapsychic conflict—letting her heart go unchecked or choosing self-repression, pursuing her ideal or yielding to reality, choosing true love, or undertaking responsibility, opting friendship, or betraying her family. Maggie had to confront choosing but it was difficult for her to make a decision. This kind of predicament made it hard for her to achieve the calmness and stillness of her heart. She could not get an entire and balanced acceptance of herself. She once tried to seek extrication through self-sacrifice, but she failed; she betrayed her family to give friendship to Philip secretly, but Philip wanted her love; she gave up Stephen’s love and shouldered the responsibility toward Philip and Lucy, but destiny pushed her to the appearance of elopement. Her self-repression did not bring happiness to her, but pushed her to the abyss of affliction again and again. 2.1.2 The Depressed Romola in Romola Romola was a novel that required a considerable amount of George Eliot’s time and painstaking work and marked the remarkable turning point in her writing career and even in her life. Romola was her only novel based in a foreign land. Many years later when she read it again, she sighed with emotion that none of her novels was like this one and that she could swear each word of Romola was written with her painstaking care. In order to write this book, George Eliot specially went to Italy twice with Lewes to do practical investigation and collect materials, which cost her much time. She expended all her energies. She once said that she was still young when she began to write this novel in 1860, but after she finished it in 1862, she had become an old woman. Romola was a historical novel in the genuine sense. It was based in Florence, the cultural center of Europe and even the world of the Renaissance period, at the end of the fifteenth century. It recorded the turmoil of the transition period between the barbarous society and the moral civilized world of Italy. The general scene of the story was so grand, the concerned aspects were so wide-ranging that it could rival those of Middlemarch. In this great historical novel, the inquiry of many significant issues in society, politics, economics, religion, philosophy, gender and psychology, etc, were all naturally integrated into the main or minor plot and the description of characters, which added an imposing historical sense. The novel was chiefly on the thread of the development and forming process of Romola’s individual morality and displayed the different impacts on her from Tito’s earthly morality and Fra Girolamo’s religious morality. And at last, through self, inner-reflection and experiencing the lessons and afflictions of various events, Romola gradually achieved the process of forming herself. The story was mainly about the poor Greek young man Tito whose family background was obscure and whose life had just been regained after escaping the danger of shipwrecks. He roved to the foreign land of Florence. Depending on his handsome appearance and profound knowledge, he became acquainted with the famous scholar Bardo and married his daughter Romola. After starting

their marriage, as a joke he cohabited with Tessa and had a daughter and a son with her. He was not willing to pay ransom money to save his foster father Baldassarre. Baldassarre hatched a plot of revenge after he arrived in Florence. After Bardo’s death, Tito sold all of Bardo’s volumes of books and cherished antiques, which caused Romola to run away from home. But on the way she was persuaded by Fra Girolamo to return, was then converted to Christianity and served the people suffering from the plague. Tito acted as a spy for different political and religious groups to achieve his ambitions and interests. Finally the truth was revealed, and he was caught and throttled by his foster father. But Romola voluntarily shouldered the responsibility of raising Tessa and Tessa’s children. 2.1.2.1 Deep Hurt by Her Beloved Made Romola Mournful Romola in the novel was an intellectual lady, who lost her mother when she was very little. Her father Bardo was a scholar of great erudition and an atheist. Bardo firstly placed great hopes on his son Dino. However, contrary to his expectations, his son betrayed his will, discarded him and devoted himself to Christianity after Bardo lost the sight of both eyes. Consequently, there occurred the irreconcilable conflict between the father and the son. They even, at last, repudiated any connection with each other. Bardo had to turn all of his hopes to his daughter Romola. Romola was very meticulous. She was very considerate of her father. In order to console her father, she lived with few social contacts and rarely came out. She threw herself into the insipid work of helping her father sort out materials. She filled her brother’s position and became her father’s excellent assistant on account of her diligent work as well as her intelligence and love. Meanwhile, she also undertook the responsibility of taking care of her father’s daily life. This kind of study life isolated her from the world and restricted her from knowing any of the world except her family. She knew quite little about men. Therefore, when the handsome, well-educated, learned, eloquent young Greek Tito appeared in front of her, she was quickly attracted by Tito’s bright, good-looking face as well as his nimble, resourceful thinking. Romola fell in love with Tito, which planted the unhappy seed for her later marriage. Bardo was an industrious scholar and a collector of books and antiques. He did not want his cherished books and antiques that he had accumulated all his life to fall into the hands of foreigners after his death. But his only child who could inherit these collected books had left him. At this moment, owing to his likeable extrovert character, quick-witted mind, erudite knowledge, and his concern about and enthusiastic assistance with Bardo’s engaged academic studies, Tito won Bardo’s unfaltering trust and was treated as a son by Bardo. Bardo placed great hopes on Tito and allowed his daughter to marry Tito. Bardo even expressed in his testament he would grant all of his collected things to Tito to take care of. Tito once also swore to Bardo that he would be in charge of these collected things and would never let them fall into foreign people’s hands. But after receiving the trust of Romola and Bardo, he gradually displayed a totally different attitude. In order to pursue a bright political prospect and get a higher position and a better life, Tito often had social

intercourses with various politicians and party groups and felt bored with the dull academic work of helping Bardo arrange old materials. In the several months before Bardo died, Romola stayed with her father by herself and felt quite agonized in her deep heart. Although she was very sad after her father died, at the moment that her father went away forever, a kind of thought preoccupied her mind, that is, she thought she and Tito would converge into a warm current which would not be cut off by anything. However, this thought made her have a sense of guilt toward her father, so she wished even more to accomplish her father’s will as soon as possible. She wanted to place her father’s collected books in the name of a monastery where they would always retain the name of Bardo. These books would be owned by the Florentine people. To achieve this had become her holy obligation. But the hypocritical Tito broke his promise and shirked responsibility in order to evade his foster father Baldassarre’s vengeance and to avoid the moral judgment. He did not solicit Romola’s opinions and sold all of Bardo’s collected things, planning to begin his new life on the basis of such money. Romola was grieved and filled with indignation. “Her eyes were flashing, and her whole frame seemed to be possessed by impetuous force that wanted to leap out in some deed. All the crushing pain of disappointment in her husband, which had made the strongest part of her consciousness a few minutes before, was annihilated by the vehemence of her indignation”( Romola: 268). She knelt down in front of her father’s portrait and sobbed incessantly. Nearly three weeks were spent packaging all of the books and antiques and delivering them. Romola witnessed these collected things being carried away batch by batch with pain from the recollection of her father as well as with disappointment toward her husband. But she could not adopt any action to prevent this, which grieved her very deeply. She completely lost confidence in her husband. “And in her bitterness she felt that all rejoicing was mockery” ( Romola: 296). The comparison between the present and the past made her feel as if a knife were being twisted in her heart. She found herself in the extremely dangerous condition that her beloved husband was a hypocrite and that her father had not taught her the skills to deal with the emotional crisis in her life. This left her with such an instinctive impulse of emotion that she began to possess a kind of revengeful power. Her pure love for Tito was turned into disdain and exclusion against him. She did not have the outside force at that moment which could direct her moral emotion, so she had to make a response toward the crisis by her instinct and decided to betray and renounce her marriage. She ran away from home. But on the way she was persuaded by Fra Girolamo to go back home to fulfill her responsibilities toward Florence and her husband. She was converted to Christianity and served the Florentine people suffering from the plague. Later Romola met Baldassarre. Baldassarre told her that Tito had another wife. When she heard this news at that moment, “The first shock that passed through Romola was visibly one of anger” (Romola: 419). The shock from the news made her numb. “It seemed to Romola as if every fresh hour of her life were to become more difficult than the last” (Romola: 419) Tito having another wife caused a serious trauma to her proud-hearted nature. Romola’s exasperation revealed her internal true feeling. Although Tito had betrayed her, actually she cared about the sentiment

between them. At first she could not accept the truth that her initially beloved Tito had deceived her. So she wanted to go to prove it. When she saw Tessa and Tessa’s two children with her own eyes, her eyes were almost empty, she could not see anything that was surrounding her. Then, she found that Tessa was an ignorant woman who did not know about Tito’s behaviors and his nature, but just obeyed him and fell in love with him. From Tessa’s narration, Romola knew Tessa was Tito’s illegal wife and her issue with Tito would not be solved through the external law. She decided to talk frankly with Tito about living apart. Unexpectedly, her godfather Bernardo’s death made her suddenly full of anxiety and she was no longer in the mood to consider the issue of the other wife. 2.1.2.2 The Immense Disappointment in Religion Made Romola Grieved Under her father’s education and influence, Romola had inherited her father’s atheistic thought and never followed any authority blindly and even had an intense inclination towards rebellion. But during her first time of running away from home, the distressed Romola was held back by the vigorous power represented by Fra Girolamo. Fra Girolamo was the representative of religion and morality. He was used to and good at adopting remarks to incite people’s religious sensation. As Romola was fleeing from her home for the first time, Fra Girolamo pointed out that her behavior was unreasonable and was the manifestation of subjective sentimental impulse. He wanted to prevent her from committing this kind of mistake caused by an instinctive emotional urge. He criticized her for discarding her marriage and disguising herself to flee from Florence. Fra Girolamo told her that since she knew her marriage with Tito would be unhappy and unreliable from the vision her brother foreboded before her marriage, she had chosen it by herself and that she should abide by the vow and pledge of matrimony. He also indicated that marriage was not only sensual desire that was just for her selfish pleasure, but also a divine promise and vow that could only be renounced by God. He persuaded her to accept her matrimonial misery as a sacrifice to God and to bear the wretched state of grief for the sake of helping the Florentine people. Under the guidance of Fra Girolamo’s religion and morals, Romola’s inner heart was summoned and called by an inexplicable power, and finally she submitted to the authority of the church. Fra Girolamo’s religious teachings enabled her to get a clear understanding of the responsibilities that she should shoulder as a wife and as a member of society. After she went back to Florence, Romola put all of her energy towards fulfilling the religious morals. She provided relief to the poor, helped those who needed help and engaged in the charity work of Florence. Romola’s immense grief came from the fact that the death of her godfather Bernardo made her see Fra Girolamo’s nature clearly, that is, his conduct was at variance with his words and he exploited religion just to serve his own interests. Romola lost confidence and trust in him. In order to achieve his wishes in his religious cause and get a higher position in politics, Fra Girolamo excluded those who held different views from his. He used people’s allegiance to religion and his usual passionate remarks and speeches to stir up people’s religious fanaticism. He also used the

superstitious means of religious vision to sentence five people to death, including Romola’s godfather Bernardo, for crimes that were incomprehensible to Romola. When Romola interceded with Fra Girolamo for her godfather, Fra Girolamo refused ruthlessly. According to Fra Girolamo, opposing evil with wicked means was the right way to attain his own objective. She recognized the disgusting and contradictory details in his preaching. She saw so clearly and miserably that she even exaggerated the weight of those details. In her wretchedness of disappointment, she said to herself that Fra Girolamo’s efforts for restoring the church and renovating the world were just for one meaning, which did not exceed that of what a book could tell people, and was also meant as a means to strengthen his position in Florence. Not only this, in order to remedy the negative influence caused by his own fault, he often did something that was contradictory to his words. The influence of Fra Girolamo’s religious authority on Romola’s individual emotion was so much that she repressed her own judgment that was based on her own sensation. However, after she denied Fra Girolamo, Romola felt that she lost nearly all the moral form of her life and she could only walk back and forth within her individual emotional whirlpool. She was befuddled and was caught in disappointment and despair. 2.1.3 The Repressive Dorothea in Middlemarch Because of its abundant content, unique narration means and the minute psychological analysis of characters, Middlemarch was George Eliot’s peak work. Middlemarch, as the representative of George Eliot’s works, mainly portrayed characters of great variety and diversity and their life condition in the Middlemarch town. It gave a brief account of British provincial life circumstances and one side of the whole society of that time. In Middlemarch, George Eliot profoundly shared her overall views on the female condition, experience and life, praised a life like the epic of Saint Theresa and with poetic description portrayed the heroine Dorothea like a frustrated Theresa—her embarrassment about being unable to release her ideal and individuality as well as her redemption of herself after she met with refusals and returned to where she was. Besides, it also described Dorothea’s emotional misery in her marriage and her love life and how she finally attained relief. 2.1.3.1 The Marriage between Casaubon Made Dorothea Grieved The heroine Dorothea in Middlemarch was enthusiastic by nature. She was full of energy and expected sublimeness too much. However, her educational background in religion made her choose asceticism and the road of a self-denying believer, which caused her to deceive and repress herself. She paid no heed to the handsome, considerate young Sir James Chettam, but favored the decrepit, monotonous old pedant Casaubon who was ugly and twenty-seven years older than she was. When she received the icy proposal letter from Casaubon, she accepted the proposal without vacillation. But after she really trod on the matrimonial road, the reality was much crueler than she imagined. During her honeymoon in Rome, when she was left alone in the Roman palace ruins and

historic traces by her bridegroom who was immersed in the Vantican library all day, tumultuous ideas pressed Dorothea and innumerable visions formed an incongruity in her innocent and ignorant soul. In those several weeks, although there was no concrete and adequate foundation, she distinctly conceived that her fond dream of a happy marriage had been shattered, “the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by ante-rooms and winding passages which seemed to lead no whither” (Middlemarch: 179). When she was clad in grey drapery, standing against a pedestal and not far from the sculpture of Ariadne, in the eyes of Ladislaw and the artist Adolf Naumann who was Ladislaw’s friend, she seemed to portray the delight of Saint Theresa mingled with carnal desire. Dorothea was worried about her youthful vigor, felt puzzled and disappointed about the sensual desire and the flaunting culture diffused everywhere in Rome and was also deeply despondent about the husband she once adored and yearned for. She was in grief and now all of her strength had been turned into a burst of agitation and struggle. She began to realize her error. She gradually perceived that in the beginning she was in an excited expectation and had assumed, as a matter of course, that Casaubon felt the same way. She began to realize her previous assumption about marriage was just the illusion of an ignorant maiden, Casaubon was not her ideal image and he was really his own distinct entity. The husband she originally hoped to marry was one who exceeded her in scope and all knowledge. However, Casaubon was not that kind of person. She wanted to become her husband’s assistant with wholehearted enthusiasm in his work, but was refused; she tried to arouse her husband’s sensation with her love, but what she received was an icy response. Her honeymoon in Rome caused Dorothea to feel her marriage was just like an immense disaster, which altered all of her imaginations beyond recognition. Something even more lonely and dreary happened after her arrival at Lowick from her honeymoon. Dorothea once looked forward to climbing the mountain of brightness jointly and intimately with her husband, and giving full scope to the initiative of a wife; she planned to assist her husband in academic work, which could also improve the meaning of her own life. But unexpectedly, what awaited her was the pressure of idling away her time, living just like a lady of an eminent family lived. There was no way to use the youthful vigor of her body. Her steadfast belief in the midst of this calamity was just a desolate cry. All of her noble goals withered and disappeared one by one. She wanted to do something meaningful, and then she thought about the orphan Ladislaw. The innocent young Dorothea proposed that Ladislaw should own a portion of his inheritance to Casaubon, which made Casaubon unhappy. Out of her kindness, she urged her husband to begin his book as soon as possible, but this touched Casaubon’s sore spot beyond her imagination. Once when Dorothea, out of her good will, wanted to support the ill and faint Casaubon with her arms, Casaubon refused her coldly. Harboring infinite grievances, Dorothea had to return to her bedroom and remain sitting alone from afternoon till evening. Notwithstanding, she still did her utmost to change her matrimonial situation. She was prudent and followed what her husband liked as much as possible. Everything, if her husband just agreed to it, but did not participated in it, was seen as a denial. After

she got married Dorothea fell from the high clouds of fantasy down into reality; she nearly lost her independent self. Although she kept resisting and yet still doing things as she did before her marriage, she was always restricted by Casaubon and was confined in spirit. The failure of her marriage with Casaubon was actually the disillusionment of her ideal. To a great extent, the anguish of her marriage also included her grief over the fact that her ideal could not become true. Dorothea’s error, and she had no alternative, rested in her ignorance about marital life as well as her placing her own ideal on men and paying no attention to other people’s advice. In her opinion, marriage meant undertaking higher obligations. Her mind, stuffed with puritan rules, made her consider self-devotion as a kind of exalted virtue and ideal; she imagined she could save Hooker from his unhappy marriage and she could also be the light in John Milton’s dark world; she placed ideal, enterprise and belief on a par with marriage. Nevertheless, with the limitless misery brought about by her marriage, she could not realize her lofty aim. Consequently, her sublime ideal was shattered quite soon. Even though the author obviously evaded the question of sex, because the system of literary inspection in Victorian times was very strict, yet from the description of the scene where Dorothea was solitary and sobbing, we could, undoubtedly, see a sad bride who was renounced and was treated coldly by her husband during their honeymoon. Her sexual repression was mainly displayed in that she was on the verge of mental breakdown again and again after she got married. Although the novel did not directly tell us one of the main reasons for the failure of their marriage was the lack of their sexual life, unquestionably, Casaubon could not satisfy Dorothea’s thirsty physiological and psychological needs. His sexual incompetence was mainly revealed through the images of dried peas, “exceedingly shallow rill”, locked drawer, mummy, grave and “For this marriage to Casaubon is as good as going to a nunnery” (Middlemarch: 51). Dorothea’s solitariness and disappointment during her honeymoon in Rome, her fidgety lingering at Lowick and her wail in her bedroom all demonstrate her perplexed, uneasy and upset heart resulting from her unconscious sexual desire and sexual repression. This continual emotional inhibition made her exhausted. She needed to portray her own sadness in front of her uncle without much restraint just as usual. Nevertheless, she had to constrain the revelation of her own natural feelings after she married, and tried to be peaceful and humble in front of her husband. Her oppressive marriage with Casaubon concealed her soul in a grave and trapped her in endless misery. She had to live a weary life filled with extreme depression and hopelessness. 2.1.3.2 The Affection between Will and Dorothea Made Dorothea Depressed Will Ladislaw was Casaubon’s cousin. He once formed the theory that a girl who would like to marry Casaubon had no emotion. However, Will began to fall in love with Dorothea at first sight of her. Every time when he heard other people evaluating Dorothea, he would be irritated, because he thought that Dorothea was the kind of lady who should not be given random assessment. He once gave his heartfelt praise to Dorothea through a poem saying she already had the most important

quality for being a poet, which was giving full play to her consciousness. Will also made a wonderful impression on Dorothea. With the increase of their meeting and talking as well as knowing about Will’s background, Dorothea was full of compassion for Will. Although Dorothea did not realize she liked Will or that love existed between them, yet we can see from her response when she encountered Will and Rosamond singing together, that actually Dorothea’s affection for Will occurred at that moment. Dorothea originally planned to ask Lydgate about the state of her husband’s illness, but Lydgate was not in, and Dorothea saw Lydgate’s beautiful bride Rosamond for the first time. Will had just been singing with Rosamond before he came out to talk with Dorothea. When Dorothea realized it was Will who had just been with Rosamond, “She coloured with surprise”(Middlemarch: 393). Will wanted to go to the hospital to inform Mr. Lydgate of Dorothea’s coming. At first Dorothea agreed that Will should tell the coachman to send the carriage to receive Lydgate, but her “mind had flashed in an instant over many connected memories” (Middlemarch: 393) and this made her change her mind—she’d like to go by herself. When she left the room and Will sent her to the carriage, it seemed that Dorothea had lost sense and consciousness, because “Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought” (Middlemarch: 393). Within five minutes of starting towards the hospital, she looked back over what had just happened. A kind of indistinct disturbance attacked her heart and Will’s singing reverberated in her mind. She was surprised as to why Will was entertaining with Lydgate’s wife in Lydgate’s home when he was out. As she was thinking, “the tears came rolling “(Middlemarch: 394), she was very upset and confused. She felt that the always clear image of Will had become dim now. Her tears and the complex psychological activities were just the embodiments of her love for Will, however, this love made Dorothea depressed. After Casaubon’s death, when Mrs. Cadwallader was requested to say to Sir James that Will was disreputable, although Dorothea responded with indignant energy, the scene of Will and Mrs. Lydgate singing together to Will’s piano accompaniment still emerged in her mind constantly, which made it difficult for her to get rid of her depression. The day before Will left Middlemarch, he went to the Tipton Grange to fetch his portfolio of his sketches, and there he met Dorothea. When Will told Dorothea he must leave Middlemarch because he could not get a lady, Dorothea thought Will was speaking of Mrs. Lydgate. She felt sad as if a knife were piercing her heart. But from Will’s last word she began to understand that the lady Will meant was herself and, “She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue” (Middlemarch: 580). But Will had already left. Several months later, Will came back, not only because he wanted Mr. Bulstrode to donate some money for a charity, but also because he missed Dorothea so much that he wanted to meet her again. In addition, Rosamond had written to Will that she was badly in need of comfort because she was on bad terms with her husband, who was involved in Mr. Bulstrode’s scandal. When Will returned, he first went to Lydgate’s home, where he was consoling Rosamond when Dorothea arrived. Dorothea saw the scene, “in the terrible illumination of a certainty which filled up all

outlines, something which made her pause motionless, without self-posession enough to speak” (Middlemarch: 709). Her heart was in turmoil; she could not find anything she could trust. When she was with Mr. Farebrother and he unintentionally spoke of Will, Dorothea’s heartbeat accelerated. After she returned to the Lowick Manor, the irresistible affliction assailed her continually, “the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought. She could only cry in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she had planted and kept alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome—after her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith to one who, misprized by others, was worthy in her thought— after her lost woman’s pride of reigning in his memory—after her sweet dim perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should meet with unchanged recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday”(Middlemarch: 719). Now she considered Will as a deceiver who failed to be loyal to his love, and all she had for him were just contempt, censure and resentment. She felt that her self-esteem was deeply injured. All she could do now was just pray for tenacity and mercifulness to save her and emancipate her from suffering the indefinable pressure. 2.2 The Relief after Regeneration

Once the heroines were full of fantasies about life and were perplexed when they sought and pursued their ideals, affections and marriages. Because of the lack of knowledge and understanding of the nature of love, marriage and life, their emotions overcame their reason and they went astray. But with the continual improvement of their self-understanding, they gained a profound perception of love, marriage and life and they dared to break through the realities that shackled them. Finally, through their enormous struggles, their reason triumphed over their emotions and they obtained their own happiness. Their characters actually experienced a process of changes and developments. The torments and disappointments all toughened them. When they walked away from adversities, their spirits were all regenerated and their mentalities all achieved relief. 2.2.1 The Regenerate Maggie in The Mill on the Floss In The Mill on the Floss, until the final chapter and the arrival of the flood, Maggie’s heart endured conflicts and torments all the time. The author used “The last conflict” to be the title of the final chapter. When Maggie first read Stephen’s letter, she felt the attraction begin again. If she let Stephen come, she would not have to bear the current condition of being cast aside and not being accepted by others; she would live a happy life without loneliness, and grief would be replaced by pleasure. However, thinking of Lucy and Philip, she wanted to regain a kind of more serene feeling like that of past days, and thereafter, she gave up Stephen’s love again. She was in so much excruciating pain that she felt she would bear the divine and heavy cross until her death. Her inner heart yelled with self-despair. But when Maggie recognized the flood flowing into the house under the door, her inner soul seemed quite calm, without fear. She hurried upstairs to wake Bob up.

When seeing a boat coming with a tremendous crash, she asked Bob to come down to get the boats. At this moment, Maggie, being as if a holy woman, guided Bob forward to save Bob’s mother, wife and his child. At first Maggie had no special feeling and idea, she just felt she had been suddenly cut from her fearsome life. What she thought about instantly was to save her mother and brother. The wet clothes clung to her body; her streaming hair was dashed about by the strong wind and storm. Maggie was not aware of any bodily sensation; she was dominated and overwhelmed by a mighty emotion. She had a kind of vague consciousness that her brother would be reconciled with her, so she did her utmost to paddle the boat toward home. But she encountered current and confronted a decision. If she went into the current she might be carried away very far down and not be able to guide her boat out of the current again, but if she did not enter the current, she would not be able to pass the Ripple to approach her family house. But Maggie floated into the current without hesitation. When she passed the Ripple, approached the Dorlcote fields and arrived at Dorlcote Mill, she experienced “joy that overcame all distress” (The Mill on the Floss: 532). When she met Tom, Tom was moved by her deep love, and it was described like this, “that the full meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with so overpowering a force—it was such a new revelation to his spirit of the depths in life that had lain beyond his vision which he had fancied so seen and dear—that he was unable to ask a question”( The Mill on the Floss: 533). When Tom uttered the old childish “Maggie” again, Maggie was caught in a long deep sob. But her internal heart was with “mysterious wondrous happiness that is one with pain” (The Mill on the Floss: 533). But a huge mass engulfed their little boat. Tom clasped Maggie in the tempestuous flood and they would never separate. Once Maggie bravely fighted for love, but for the interests of other people, she finally gave up the right of seeking her own love and gave up her potential happiness. Once Maggie solitarily endured anguishes, although the tempestuous flood pushed her to death, the final death was a kind of expiation and regeneration for Maggie. The flood washed the haste and misunderstanding among people and purged people’s sins. Tom and Maggie returned to the original natural affection in the flood. Thereupon, the flood rendered Maggie achieved her regeneration. 2.2.2 The Revived Romola in Romola The grief of initial awakening from dreams is often a foretaste of the next beginning of running away. The desperate Romola took a little boat and drifted away from Florence. She let the boat take its own course the whole night. Romola achieved regeneration on the sea. The next morning, the cry of a baby seemed to be a new life calling her. She was in too much of a hurry to wait and instead jumped onto the bank. Following the crying, she located where the baby was and then she found that the entire village was tormented by the plague. She decided to stay to save the people left alive. She took the baby in her right arm and held a kettle in her left arm to get water for patients. Her hair was flashing with a dazzling light under the sunshine, which scared a fifteen-year-old boy hiding himself back in the trees. He thought the beautiful Holy Mother was

coming to take care of the patients. When the priest also witnessed the scene, he held awe and veneration in his inner heart, too. Romola guided the priest and his assistant to help in taking care of the patients afflicted with despair. She found a forsaken house to be her abode. She picked a pile of dry straw to be her bed. Most of the time, she raised the little orphan with a woman who had lost her husband in the plague. The experience in the valley made her as if she renewed her life. After all things were in a stable state, Romola re-observed and reevaluated herself in the tranquil valley. She thought to herself that “she had been rash, arrogant, always dissatisfied that others were not good enough, while she herself had not been true to what her soul had once recognized as the best.” ( Romola: 524) She blamed herself for taking flight; she thought, “it had been cowardly self-care” ( Romola: 524). She thought it was the Florentine land that was more real and deeper. Therefore, she decided to leave this valley and go back to Florence. At the moment when she left, the villagers had an invincible attachment to her; they felt so sorry that they followed her and watched her go quite far. Afterwards, there were a lot of legends in this valley about this blessed lady who came from the sea. The responsibility to Florence called Romola again and she returned to her hometown. When she was informed that Tito had died, her first thought was for the lives of Tessa and her two children. She knew that the innocent and ignorant Tessa could not basically raise herself and her children. As Romola looked everywhere for Tessa and her children, she never had a thought that “it was heroism or exalted charity in her to seek these beings” ( Romola: 528), she just wanted to look after them out of instinct as well as from her heart. She thought she should attend to them according to her condition. She had a portion of the property Tito left. What afflicted her was that the money she got from Tito was not clean. Accordingly, except for leaving the equivalent value of her father’s cherished items and some property that could provide a simple and frugal life for her, Tessa and Tessa’s children, Romola donated all of the rest to the country. She thought Tessa was also a victim and this, “the third person”, had intervened in her marriage under the complete concealment of truth. Helping Tessa was also actually a kind of atonement she did for her husband to alleviate the suffering he had caused to other people. Consequently, even though she had already endured excessive grief, she voluntarily undertook the responsibility of taking care of Tessa and educating her children. Romola began her unrestrained and substantial life. In the final part of the novel, there appeared the serene scene where Romola earnestly inculcated upon Tessa’s son how to be a just man; she had become a mother with a placid heart, bearing a tender face. After experiencing the conflict between the internal and external morality, Romola finally combined the sense of responsibility (the requirement of the external religious morality), and love (the need of the internal moral feelings), and made them become a consistent power and her own moral concept, which caused people to regard her as worthy of respect and reverence. Romola’s endurance in distresses and tribulations helped her finish the transformation process of becoming a female Christ, of showing people morality and rescuing others. Despite Romola’s recognition of the nature of Fra Girolamo’s religion, she did not give up the responsibility of being a wife as

instructed by religion. Finally she shouldered the responsibilities, with neither blame nor regret, of caring for Tito’s mistress Tessa, Tessa’s children, and Tito’s foster father Baldassarre, who had been betrayed by Tito. This plot reminds us easily of George Eliot’s own “marital” experience. Because Lewes could not get a divorce in the society of that time, George Eliot and Lewes had to undertake the obligation of raising the four children born by Lewes’ wife Agnes and Agnes’ lover. George Eliot projected her life experience into the character of the novel as well as into the development of its plot, which manifested, through Romola, George Eliot’s own development from atheist to religious believer, from blindly following religion to exploiting and recognizing religion’s nature and moral role, from renouncing the superstition and unfounded aspects of religion to voluntarily discovering the merits of religion and fulfilling its teachings of love and responsibility, from the individual self to the reflection and salvation of the greater self, from the individual improvement to thinking about the collective ones, to affirm the self-examination power of religion and the brotherhood effect of uplifting people’s moral cultivation and spiritual state and to meanwhile sing the praises of the power of humanity religion. 2.2.3 The Relieved Dorothea in Middlemarch Although Will’s love for Dorothea once brought depression to Dorothea’s inner heart, from another perspective, Will was indeed the only outlet and savior for Dorothea. Will’s ardent, stormy and tempestuous love for Dorothea, his praises toward Dorothea, which were just like beautiful poetry, as well as his steadfast loyalty to Dorothea, enabled her to attain her final extrication and to feel relieved. From her association with Will, Dorothea felt the true passion of love between them. There was an emotional foundation for Dorothea and Will’s love, which mainly lay in their common topics, thoughts and interests. Their love was not smooth. There was also a barrier between them, which was their earthly economic and social positions. It was indeed a realistic issue that Will had no social position or economic foundation compared with Dorothea. But Dorothea made a decision to renounce the right of inheritance of Casaubon’s property, which broke through Casaubon’s attempt to use his testament to control Dorothea’s whole life. Dorothea shook off the obstacle of the traditional marital customs for women and meanwhile, she also broke down the barrier between Will and her, which helped them achieve the economic equality. Her second marriage, particularly her giving up the inherited property and marrying Will who had no position, no possessions and no pure blood lineage, was completely wrong in the common concept of the Middlemarch people. But this time Dorothea was not befuddled. As to the confusions Dorothea had in her first marriage, the author pointed out in the final part of this novel, “They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion” ( Middlemarch: 765). As a talented, new period young man who was full of fantasies, passion and innocent feelings, but with sophisticated understanding of the world and society, Will did not belong to the provincial

world which clung conservatively to the old system; he belonged to the external, metropolitan London and he also belonged to the future of the British society. Gratifyingly, Will became a fervent socialist. When he walked onto the British political stage, he also helped Dorothea accomplish her long-cherished hope of serving society. She became the wife of the Member of Parliament and an obscure lady behind an eminent figure. She stood by Will silently and lived for Will wholeheartedly. To some extent, she appeared as an understanding wife and loving mother and she found a release. But her image of great sympathy and sublime morality still influenced people’s minds. Concerning Dorothea’s influence, it was described like this, “Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels, and which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistorical acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs” ( Middlemarch: 766). Dorothea’s marriage between Will made her obtain the relieved state. It was Will’s romantic love and his positive enthusiasm toward life filled in gaps in Dorothea’s inner heart and eliminated Dorothea’s sense of alienation. Will taught Dorothea to correlate the past with the present, the remote and grand cause with the trifling realistic life around ourselves. Dorothea’s marital life demonstrated that she had the ability of establishing an order based on the fragmental things. The combination of Dorothea and Will render her attained relief.

Chapter 3 The Image of Water as a Way to Express Regeneration in George Eliot’s Novels George Eliot was a pious Christian when she was very young, and although she later encountered a lot of radical and progressive ideals from advanced schools and proclaimed that she separated herself from Christianity, yet her thought was still profoundly influenced by Christianity. George Eliot translated Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity in 1854 and 1855. With regard to Feuerbach’s thought, George Eliot once expressed that she agreed with every sentence of Feuerbach. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach advocated re-adopting the Inonian theory, particularly Thales’ theory on water. George Eliot employed water as an image that repeatedly emerged in her novels. The appearance of water of different functions became an important background for the turning of her plots. 3.1 The Sources of George Eliot’s Thoughts about the Functions of Water as Symbols

Water has special meanings in western culture. The appearance of water in George Eliot’s works mainly functioned as symbols. Water can purge people’s sins and give people life and hope. People can attain the rebirth in water. Water can also instill power into people’s life when people are weak and alleviate people’s physical and mental sores as well as cure the afflicted souls and diseases. 3.1.1 Water Can Purify Sins and Regenerate People Baptism has a special meaning in Christianity. Baptism is like a kind of tool through which God bestows grace. It is as if there is a family in which the parents want their treasured little daughter, through the infantile baptism, to make a covenant and abide by the Bible so as to be blessed. Baptism can not only help her to be instructed according to the criteria of the Bible but can also aid to establish a moral standard consistent with God’s will and put it into the girl’s heart so that she will not stray for her whole life, from the One walking on the righteous road. This is the special station possessed by the happy ones portrayed in Psalms (1:1-2), “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night”. The baptism of Christianity originates from John the Baptist. At that time, John called on people to repent and mend their ways. John purged sins from people. In fact, this betokens Jesus’ actions. Baptism is the ceremonial law and symbolizes our sins are eliminated. It shows that only through the baptism of the Holy Spirit can our salvation be achieved. Baptism is for the remission of people’s original sin, as well as later sins and guilt, and is the inception of a new life. The

meanings of baptism in Christianity are the following. Baptism is to be baptized into Jesus’ death. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3). Israelites crossing the Red Sea were to be baptized into Moses, “and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (Corinthians 10:2). Moses foretells Christ Jesus. Israelites being baptized into Moses foretold that “we” would be baptized into Jesus. “We” being baptized into Jesus means into his death. When Jesus was crucified on the cross, our past selves were also put to death with Him at the same time. “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans6:6). The crucifixion of Jesus became the death of our earthly selves. We believe in Jesus and accept His death as “our” death. Baptism demonstrates “we” are into His death. Baptism indicates our earthly selves are buried with Jesus. “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Burying means covering up something so that it cannot be seen any more. Once a person has died, it behooves others to bury the body and no one wants to put the body on the floor for several days without burying it. If a person possessed a last gasp of breath, others would not bury him. If he had really died, his dearest ones would also bury him and would not like to put him in front of them. “He said to them, ‘If you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and entreat for me Ephron son of Zohar’ ” (Genesis 23:8). “Our” old selves have died and we must bury them. “We” bury them through baptism, so the implication of baptism is the burial. Baptism means having clothed ourselves with Jesus. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Galatian3:27). All baptized people have Jesus on. Having clothed oneself with Christ means being dressed in Christ, which is equal to all baptized people going inside of Christ—into Christ. People who have clothed themselves with Christ are those whose actions are a testimony of Jesus Christ. Thus, the meaning of baptism is testimony—testifying that we have gone into Jesus’ death, were buried with Him and united with His Resurrection. The baptized people are those giving testimony to God, to the earthly people and to Satan—publicly acknowledging the name of God, extricating themselves from Satan and being in Jesus. Only like this can people achieve the eternal life, for “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Romans 6:9). There are two means of baptism—the sprinkling ceremony and the immersion ceremony. The water of baptism is certainly from nature. But in Feuerbach’s opinion, the water of baptism is different from ordinary water, because it doesn’t have the physical power or physical meaning, nevertheless, it has super-physical power—it is the regenerative bath that can cleanse all of the filth of people’s original sin, drive the innate evils out and help people make a compromise with God. Like this, genuinely speaking, it just looks like natural water, while actually it is the supernatural water. In other words, the water of baptism has the supernatural role only in presentation and

imagination. But things playing a supernatural role possess the supernatural essence. Therefore, the water of baptism is a kind of water that can eliminate sins, guilt, evils, death and all misfortunes and help people enter the paradise and achieve immortality. In The Mill on the Floss, the final flood not only buried Maggie’s afflictions, adversities and all of what she had done, but also engulfed and washed away dissensions between the brother and the sister. As a matter of fact, Maggie’s death was a kind of salvation and regeneration. She was saved by the flood and did not have to bear the earthly agony any more. She also obtained the regeneration. So Maggie was baptized by the flood. She was the lasting spiritual source and spiritual power for Philip to live and she always lived in people’s hearts. 3.1.2 Water Can Give People Life and Hope In the macroscopic investigation into all the world's cultures, we find that nearly every nation possesses a mythology about water. A lot of myths indicate the theme of “water creating everything” basically and directly. In ancient Egypt, the Creator God, Ra, was formed in the body of Nu. Nu was the original water. Ra emerged from water in the shape of an egg and flower bud and created everything, including disasters. In The Open Epic of the Near East, it philosophically deemed that the world and everything were the products of the struggle between the clear water Apsu and the turbid water Tiamat before the formation of sky and earth. In the very first part of the Bible, it was written, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters”(Genesis 1:1-2). Thus water existed before heaven and the earth. God asked water “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures” (Genesis 1:20) and then there appeared great sea monsters and various living creatures in the sea and filled the seawater. Similarly, in the divine song of the Saman religion popular in northeast China, it was said that the goddess Abukaihehe traveled in the dark wind and filthy wave on the muddy and boundless sea and made the sea generate bubbles which, like hop toads, bred more and more and became bigger and bigger. Innumerable bubbles assembled together and became a huge ball, floating back and forth, and nourished the ancestors of the gods of the Manchu nationality. An Indian myth was poetically narrated like this—there was only water in the world at the earliest time and nothing else except water. But often water liked to reproduce other things, gradually, making everything appear on the earth. In all accounts, the most essential meaning of this mythological world, with various kinds of explanations from different regions, conveyed primitives’ philosophical thinking of “No water, no life or anything”, which was the most fundamental, most directly perceived and simplest truth coming from the empirical world. In Genesis in the Bible, it was recorded that when there was nothing on the earth, only a stream rising from the earth, the Lord God created man from the dust of the earth and breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils and then he became a living man. Just because the stream

moistened the earth, God could create a living human. It was water that provided the foundation of life for people. Moreover, water also symbolizes the hope of life. There are stories that could prove it in the Bible. In Genesis, Hagar and her son were driven away by Abraham. When they arrived at Beer-sheba, Hagar lost her way in the wilderness and the water in the skin had been drunk up. So Hagar wept aloud for worrying that her child would die. When God heard the voice of her child, God sent an angel to call Hagar. When God opened her eyes, she saw a well of water and filled the skin with water and gave her son a drink so the child could live and be energetic again. In Exodus, after Moses led Israelites across the Red Sea, when they arrived at the wilderness of Shur, they could not find water. Then they went to Marah, where there was water, but it could not be drunk because it was very bitter. People complained against Moses that he had to ask help from the Lord. The Lord showed him a piece of wood and Moses obeyed what God told him. He put the wood into the water and the bitter water became sweet so it could be drunk. When they camped at Rephidim, they again confronted the crisis of the absence of water. People complained against and quarreled with Moses, so Moses had to turn to the Lord God for help once more. Finally, Moses struck the rock with wood and water emerged continually, which enabled people to have a drink. Therefore, water is the symbol of life. In the first chapter of John in the New Testament of the Bible, it was written, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “Word” was “God”, the true god of the Trinity of the Holy Father, the Holy Son and the Holy Spirit. In chapter four, Jesus said, “but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). God would bestow the spring water of life to the holy people. Water was the emblem of the Word of life. Believers, through the baptism of water, not only united with Jesus but also united with the Holy Father and the Holy Spirit. The explanation of the Bible was that water had the meaning of giving life and creating original things. When George Eliot held the post of assistant editor of Westminster Review, she became acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was one of the most significant thinkers in American history. Emerson related water with God. In his statement about water, human beings were a rivulet of unknown origin; our mankind’s existence fell into our human life from unclear places. He once said when he saw the water whose source was invisible to his naked eyes, he found himself was only a surprised onlooker of the whole-day water. According to Emerson’s idea, God’s will was displayed in nature. He once said that just as plants are attached to land, people are attached to God’s embrace. Emerson’s expositions about water as life’s origin and people’s relations with nature, were brilliant and profound. The influence of his theories on American literature was so far-reaching and huge that it also exerted vital roles in establishing the independent American culture and even the formation of the character of American people. Undoubtedly, George Eliot was influenced by Emerson’s thoughts about water.

Water, as a primitive image, originally was a kind of natural staff, or support. Innumerable reflections and thoughts of predecessors on water were turned into a kind of sedimentary accretion of psychology, which helped people have a universal experience of water. People’s spirits and destinies were integrated into this process. Water is not purely the natural water. In water, people’s creative mental images were all displayed freely. Once water became the primitive image, it was embodied in a lot of literary arts. Writers employing this image were expressing the voices of thousands of people and uplifting the thoughts of people wanting to be delivered from the transitory to the eternal realm. In Romola, when Romola took a little boat on the sea and let it drift randomly, she was just waiting for her destiny; mostly she was awaiting the coming of death. However, the seawater did not drift her toward death; contrarily, it guided her to a village which was suffering from the plague and waiting for her help. It was seawater that consoled the trauma of Romola’s pain afflicted heart, saved her soul and enabled her to obtain the new life and hope. 3.1.3 Water Can Instill Power into People’s Lives and Cure People’s Afflicted Souls From George Eliot’s works we can perceive that she is a writer with profound philosophical thinking abilities. Owing to her ability of understanding many foreign languages, she once read through the original texts of many philosophers, such as Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, David Hume, Hegel, etc. She also read works of Rousseau, Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Spinoza and Feuerbach etc. She quite appreciated these philosophers’ ideas but did not indiscriminately imitate them. She often cited some of their remarks in her letters and essays. During her translation of some philosophers’ famous works, such as David Friedrich Strauss’ The Life of Jesus, Spinoza’s Ethics and Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, etc, George Eliot was more unconsciously influenced by the religious and ethical thinking and thoughts of these philosophical masters. Feuerbach in his preface to the first edition of his The Essence of Christianity advocated the therapy of spiritual water and instructed people to utilize and exploit the cool water of natural reason. He also reckoned that in the speculative philosophical field, firstly in the speculative religious philosophy, people must return to the old and plain Inonian water theory, especially Thales’s theory. The theory of the Inonian natural philosophical school, the inception of the ancient Greek philosophy, belongs to the world origin theory. In terms of the world origin theory, Thales should be mentioned first. Thales was the pioneer of ancient Greek philosophy and he lived around 585 BC. Thales’ philosophical ideas could be summarized as “water created everything and everything returns to water”. He thought the world origin was water. Each of the seven saints of ancient Greece had their own special famous dictum. Thales’ dictum was that “water was the best”. Thales put forward that everything was generated from water, which was explained by later people that the origin of everything was water. Thales himself did not raise this kind of proposition, but

from his ideas others had already deduced this meaning. According to Aristotle’s explanation, Thales’ idea of “everything was generated from water” originated from the sea worship of the Greek people, which claimed that a couple of sea-gods were the ancestors of everything. The meaning of ancestors included a kind of reproduction worship. The first philosopher of ancient Greece still had the reproduction worship, to some extent, and he was also in the last period of the ancestor worship. But he was in the first period of the “will to power”, in fact, he had already separated himself from the inclination of ancient worship. From the explanation of “everything was generated from water”, we can see Thales’ extrication from the ancestor worship, that is, everything did not generate from reproduction. Thales’ extrication was not achieved through vivid description of “sea-god created everything”, but through observation, a kind of practical observation. Thales had gained a lot from observing floods and by learning from Egyptians. He carefully read the records of the rise and decline of the Nile River and also personally investigated the phenomenon of the fading of tidewater in Egypt. He discovered that, each time after the flood declined, it not only left silt but also countless tiny germs and larvae; everything was on the sustenance of this humid staff, everything grew in humid places and water was the source of humidity; if there was no water and all was dried-up, nothing would grow. It could be said that Thales pondered over these experiences and practices and directly concluded that everything was generated from water. He did not conclude this from mythology, and certainly there was the meaning behind him that water was holy. However, Hegel fully considered Thales’ ideas from the speculative norm. He explained it from the tradition from ancient times of using water as a means of making an oath. For example, all gods took oaths toward River Styx. Hegel said that there was speculative implication in this tradition—the faithful words, faithful things and their credible nature emanated from the objective truths, for instance, River Styx. Swearing was to convey the pure faith, taking the faith itself as the target and expressing it, the target and the truth were water. The essence of Hegel’s explanation was to emphasize the water as the thinking. The basis of his explanation was the speculative implication of swearing toward water. Proceeding to the next reflection, how did water have the abilities of breeding and nourishing everything? Aristotle explained that water was the ablest one to form various kinds of stuff and give rise to different kinds of variations, which meant that everything was changeable, but water was the most changeable. Water was amorphous or shapeless, and would become the specific and corresponding shape of whatever receptacle you put it into. Thales chose water as the origin of everything just because water was shapeless and it could turn into everything, whereas metal, wood, stone, mud, etc, could not be available, as they were of fixed shape. For Thales, water was the fundamental element of the origin of the world. The Egyptian shaman proclaimed that the earth emerged from the bottom of sea, but Thales deemed that the earth was floating above water. Thales also had another significant idea, that everything had spirit. According to this thinking, even the stone was also a kind of living being with spirit. Thales

repeatedly stressed that the whole universe was with life, but it was spirit that rendered everything exuberant. This saying was very popular at that time. According to Feuerbach’s opinion, water was not only the physical breeding and nourishing means, but also a quite effective medicine for soul and sight. Cool water could make people’s eyes clear and bright. When people saw the clear water, how delighted they were! The water bath for vision could urge people to be full of vim and vigor and reasonable in sense. True, water guided our penetration into nature just like a magical magnet attracting us, but it could also reflect people’s own images. Water was the portrait of self-consciousness as well as the portrait of people’s eyes—water was the natural mirror of people. People boldly got rid of all mysterious cloaks in water. People trusted amply in water and showed their true, naked selves in water. All supernatural illusions vanished in water. The marvelous therapeutic ability of water lay in this. Feuerbach also reckoned that water was the simplest means of grace and cure for various diseases of soul and body. The effect of water’s therapy could also be demonstrated in Middlemarch. The death of Casaubon freed Dorothea from the torment of her unhappy marriage, but Will’s sensation toward her made her confused as to whether it was love. Her soul was distressed again because of this. The final rainstorm was just a kind of therapy for Dorothea’s afflicted soul, which helped her extricate herself from affliction, enabled her to strengthen her love for Will and instilled power into her conviction about a new life. 3.2 The Employment of Water as a Medium Moving Heroines from Grief to Relief

For those people who had broken hearts resulting from exhaustion and sinister human intentions, nature was a good medicine. In the embrace of nature, people regained their identities and rediscovered themselves. George Eliot was good at employing the natural staff—water, in different states, to assist in uplifting people. In all the world’s cultures, nearly every race had their own myth of floods bringing rebirth. The common theme of this kind of myth was that everything in the world was born from a boundless primitive flood. Although Maggie finally died in the flood, it also symbolized that she gained a new birth in the water. In western literature, the sea was always considered as a kind of archetypical image that symbolized the limitless and mysterious spiritual world, death and regeneration, eternity and immortality. Although the sea had terrifying force, it could cleanse people’s souls and show people’s true nature. The weak and humble human nature was turned into the firm and unyielding force under the wash of the sea. Rain, as a natural phenomenon, could moisten everything, wash away all filth, save people from their wretched state and make them acquire a completely new outlook. The arrival of rain promoted the affection between Dorothea and Will and enabled Dorothea to extricate herself from her misfortune.

3.2.1 The Baptism of Flood toward Maggie in The Mill on the Floss The river, in the novel of The Mill on the Floss, was not only a kind of natural phenomenon, but also had special meaning for Maggie. First, from the aspect of form, a river generally runs slowly and never ceases, which is just like blood lineage passing from generation to generation. Maggie liked staying on the riverbank of Floss near the Dorlcote Mill when she was a little girl. When we first read about Maggie, this little girl had just come back from playing on the riverbank. Although her mother had warned her many times that she would fall into the river, she was infatuated with the river. She and Tom often sauntered along the river as if they were on a journey. Just as Mr. Tulliver had an intense reliance on Maggie and Maggie had an inflexible affection for Tom, Maggie’s obsession with the Floss was heartfelt, a kind of ingrained love, as if loving herself. Second, from the aspect of nature, a river brings people a sensation of peace and happiness, which is like the blood lineage, connecting people closely and imbuing them with a deep mutual love. Maggie’s awakening also happened on the river. She had followed Stephen to the boat on the impulse of passion, and while they drifted with the stream, she suddenly came to realize the truth. She completely understood that she could not break herself away from the blood lineage. She could not separate herself from Tom. Third, from the aspect of influence, a river is filled with the sudden menace of an outbreak of flooding. A flood is a burst of accumulated power, which can scour everything and submerge everything. In the flood, Maggie showed no sign of fear and guided Bob to save his whole family. Maggie risked her life, braved winds and rain and paddled against currents to go to rescue Tom. The reason is that the advent of the flood aroused her strong desire to be reunited with Tom and her family. She perceived the possibility of being reconciled with Tom. In the flood, she and Tom became reconciled, embraced each other closely and sank deeply into the river. The flood removed the past distrusts and interpersonal misunderstandings. The flood swept away hard, cruel offenses as well as people’s faults, sins and guilt. So the flood cleanses people’s hearts. Feuerbach thought that water not only washed away people’s physical filthy things, but also made people become enlightened all of a sudden. People could see more clearly and contemplate more clearly. Drenching in water will quench the burning desire of selfishness. People who come up from water are a kind of new, regenerated people. Therefore, the turbulent flood baptized Maggie and brought regeneration for her. Furthermore, death is a kind of atonement and regeneration for Maggie. When the river restored quietness, the afflicted Maggie also found the eternal peace in the graves burying Tom, Mr. Tulliver and Maggie. 3.2.2 The Salvation of Seawater toward Romola in Romola George Eliot once talked about Romola in the letter to R. H. Hutton, in which she pointed out that the main problem in Romola’s life was on how to coordinate with Fra Girolamo’s opinion. Romola’s second flight was just because she had discovered and recognized the nature of Fra Girolamo’s behaviors—that he had sacrificed five people’s lives, including Romola’s godfather Bernardo, to reach his own religious and political position. The death of Bernardo made Romola

completely disappointed in Fra Girolamo and she was in despair. Romola chose to flee again. She took the boat on the sea, letting it drift by itself with the flow and waiting to hand over her life to destiny. But upon the arrival of the next morning, she began to recognize that the boat of destiny had taken her far from the turmoil of fighting for power and money. On the calm sea, under the fondling of the warm sunshine, the little boat was drifting with the stream. The boat “instead of bringing her to death, it had been the gently lulling cradle of a new life.” (Romola: 515) Romola achieved her regeneration on the sea. The crying of a baby directed her to get on the shore, where she found the villagers tortured by plague and awaiting help. She stayed and rescued them In the Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach reckoned that water, as a kind of universal element in life, made us think about the fact that we came from nature. George Eliot, here, placed the afflicted Romola, who was troubled by spiritual trauma, into a position of lying on the sea, which returned her to a pure and innocent nature and allowed her to leave everything from her past far away. The author also employed the crying of a baby, as if calling her to a new life, to stand for Romola’s new start. It made Romola generate a kind of instinctive moral sensation, that is, a heart of sympathy. There was no outside authority requiring her to do anything now, only her instinct telling her to do as she had often done for the poor in Florence. She finally found her own moral norm on the sea as well as in nature, which obviously exceeded her individual emotional extent. She began to understand that she did not need any external moral authority or bondage to be the supporting point of her moral norm. She could establish the moral standard from the natural moral sensation of being human. And the maintenance of this kind of moral sensation was permanent and could also give her the objectives of life and the norm of meanings. The norm of moral sensation for Romola replaced the submission to external authority and becoming a Christian. Romola finally realized that Fra Girolamo’s opinion that human emotion was directed by the reason represented by religion was incorrect. Thereupon, Romola did not distress herself about the loss of the religion that Fra Girolamo preached. The seawater provided her the salvation and she obtained spiritual regeneration. George Eliot naming the heroine Romola seemed to relate Romola with Romuls. George Eliot employed the classical spirit, religious spirit and humanistic spirit of ancient Greece and Rome, represented by Romola, to save Florence, which was tormented by political disputes. Romola and Romuls are two Roman names with the same root word. The former is used for females, the latter for males. According to a common saying, Romuls was a legendary personage who founded Rome. It was said that after the fall of the city of Troy, a hero named Aeneas led the Trojans, who had luckily escaped the disaster, to travel far away across the sea and arrive on the Latium plain. Aeneas’ descendants dominated here for generations. The fifteenth king was Numitor who had a very beautiful daughter Rhea Silvia. Numitor’s younger brother Amulius defeated Numitor, and with despicable means usurped the throne. He killed Numitor’s son in order to have no worries of losing the throne and forced the pretty princess Rhea Silvia to be as the chaste maidservant for the kitchen god Vestal so she could never get married. This deprived her of the hope of having children

for revenge. But the war god Mars met Silvia and they fell in love with each other, resulting in Silvia later bearing twin boys. After Amulius heard this news, he killed Rhea Silvia instantly. But Mars disappeared without a trace. Amulius ordered the twin babies to be placed in a tattered basket and thrown into the River Tiber to drift with the stream. He wanted the brothers to be drowned in the sea. However, the tidewater pushed the basket to the river bank where a she-wolf found them and took them back to her cave. The she-wolf used her own milk to feed them and endowed them with quick-witted and valorous spirits. Afterwards a shepherd couple found the twin brothers, took them home and attended to them carefully. A few years later, the two children had grown up into two mighty men. They were Romulus and Remus. The two names were derived from the Latin word “ruma” which meant nipple. The two young men killed Amulius and returned the throne to their maternal grandfather Numitor. They themselves returned to the initial place where the she-wolf had fed them and founded a new city here. In the process of establishing the new city, there was an internal dispute between them. Romulus killed Remus and named the new city Rome according to his own name. So the salvation of water toward Romola indirectly saved Florence, too. Romola began to treat the Florentine people with a new sight and she found she could re-establish a suitable relationship with them. She decided to serve the Florentine people just the way she had treated the past villagers. She voluntarily assumed the responsibility of taking care of Baldassarre, Tessa and Tessa’s two children, which touched and affected the Florentines. At this point, George Eliot combined in Romola the individual innate moral feelings and religious morality. George Eliot finished the moulding of the female Christ. Romola’s reflection and meditation were also the embodiments of the tolerance, endurance and philanthropy in humanity religion. Romola’s experience was actually the symbol of regeneration after death. The vast seawater was just the amniotic fluid of the mother of the land which was the cradle for her new birth. When she threw herself into the embrace of the mother sea without hesitation, her action began to be tinted with archetypal meaning. It was just like Moses who was placed by his mother in a cradle drifting with the stream, was discovered by people, regained his life and later founded the country of Israel. Romola also underwent the same critical moment of survival or extrication and then she established a new order with her love. 3.2.3 The Extrication of Rain toward Dorothea in Middlemarch Dorothea’s ardor was refused and she was treated coldly by her husband Casaubon. This caused the stream of her affection to be repressed, like a torrent hidden under the placid surface of the water. But this repressed sensation was embodied in a more fierce stormy way from her past communication with Will. If we say Casaubon’s arid soul blocked up Dorothea’s emotional stream, the appearance of Will, like a rainfall anticipated for a long time, satisfied Dorothea’s thirst for love. When Dorothea met Will in the heavy rain, “Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband’s

mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had found receptive” (Middlemarch: 330). These words were often taken by critics as the proof of a sexual hint. Whatever, Will’s deep understanding and passionate concern toward Dorothea moistened Dorothea’s soul like the rain and dew. The Canadian scholar Northrop Frye (1912-1991), in his Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays, thought that “Water symbolism features chiefly fountains and pools, fertilizing rains, and an occasional stream separating a man from a woman and so preserving the chastity of each, like the river of Lethe in Dante” (Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays: 152-153) There seemed to be a brook between Dorothea and Will flowing forward. They both were sparkling and crystal-clear and very pure along the side of the brook. Although there was the dull and mean Casaubon separating them, Dorothea and Will still kept the beautiful prints and traces of each other in their deep hearts. The plot of the rainstorm in chapter 83 displayed their tempestuous emotional contradiction in psychology; meanwhile, it also implied that their affection was experiencing the turbulent rainstorm at the same time. For Dorothea, she gained extrication from rain and also attained happiness. She experienced the self-transcendence in the emotional mighty storm and obtained the freedom of soul. Her emotion was finally turned into a steady rippling stream nourishing people’s hearts. In the story of Dorothea, the river had thinned down to a mere trickle enriching, with a more eternal power, numerous living beings who had been living in a state of meanness. This hinted of Dorothea’s emotional power of benefiting everything while not competing for anything, and also suggested the latent power possessed by thousands of people just like Dorothea who seemed not worth mentioning. But the slow development of the world, the harmony and balance of social relationships and the increase of the good depended on just these people who did not seek fame but were full of devotion.

Chapter 4 Factors Influencing George Eliot’s Theme The theme of “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration” ran through George Eliot’s novels. Factors influencing George Eliot’s theme are mainly from her historical and social background, and her personal experiences as well as the developmental process of her thoughts. Women, as nearly the lowest social class, were not only inferior to the class of king and ministers, but also were oppressed by the gender class of father and husband. There were two events that put most of her life in repression. Firstly, in 1842, the twenty-three-year old Mary Ann made a big decision to discontinue accompanying her father to church. Her father Evans threatened to break off relations with her. Later they made a compromise with each other that George Eliot still accompanied her father to church but she was permitted to think freely when having prayers. However, after her father died, she was very sad and regretted her past rash actions. Although she abandoned the false ceremony of the church, she did not abandoned Jesus nor the spiritual value of Christianity. The sentiment of her belief in Christianity during her younger days became an indispensable part of her character, but also offered a means for the redemption of the characters in her novels. The second event was that she cohabited with Lewes in 1853. Because of their “indecent” relationship, as defined by the society of that time, she endured intensely repressive suffering for the rest of her life. But George Eliot remained loyal to the interpersonal love preached by her humanity religion and brought up Agnes’ four children. George Eliot found a release in her own way. 4.1 The Existing Society

Just as Simone de Beauvoir said, the rapid development of industry changed women’s destiny, opening up a thoroughly new period for women. With the arrival of the British bourgeois and industrial revolutions, British women had more and more opportunities to receive education. Education granted women wisdom and thoughts, which made them begin to think about serving society with their intelligence, just as men had been doing, to win their own social position. However, their good wishes were often smashed to pieces by the society, which discriminated against and oppressed them. Thereupon, a lot of female intellectuals started to realize the need of altering their own position. But the prejudices against females during the past thousands of years in society not only control men’s thinking, but were also deeply rooted and firmly planted into women’s minds, which made women habituate themselves to submitting to these biases and being obedient to a society dominated by men. 4.1.1 The Historical and Social Background under the Patriarchy System In western countries, since the times of ancient Greece and Rome, women had been oppressed and constrained by men and religion. The Greek philosopher Democritus had a deep bias against

women. He considered women to be inferior to men. He reckoned that speaking less was a kind of ornament for women and that everything should be arranged by men on account of their authoritative will. He also believed that accepting a woman’s order was the biggest humiliation for a man. Plato thought men exceeded women in every aspect. To him, the virtue of men was displayed by being proficient in national affairs, helping friends and cracking down on enemies, while the virtue of women was in managing domestic housework and obeying their husbands. The medieval churches took the enslavement of women as the arrangement of God. They thought Eve, the token of women, was the origin of sins. The churches also taught the holy lesson that all women should be ashamed of themselves when they thought they were women. This holy lesson had been used for hundreds of years. Rousseau, who lived in the eighteenth century, also supported the principle of male power. In his opinion, men depended on women because of men’s desire, but women depended on men, not only due to women’s desire, but also on account of women’s needs. Men could survive without women, but not contrariwise. In the Victorian period of the nineteenth century, the patriarchal concept was still ingrained in the British society. Women’s positions in many aspects, such as education, job and marriage, etc. were much lower than men’s. The general view then was that women could only attach themselves to men to live—before marriage they attached to their fathers and after marriage they attached to their husbands. In the early nineteenth century, most of the British middle bourgeoisie women neither engaged in social production nor did trivial housework; they just stayed at home and idled away their time, being a symbol of the success of men’s enterprise. Their sole outlet was to find a satisfied husband, and family was the destination already arranged for them by society. Concerning choosing spouses, they had no right to speak, as this was decided by their male relatives. The first factor to be considered was couples coming from families of equal status, and many parents even regarded marriage as a way of attaching themselves to persons in power. At that time, it was deemed that the most sublime action for a daughter was to create a happy marriage that could raise their parental family’s status. But the bridegroom’s age, morals and intellectual abilities had nothing to do with marriage. In the Victorian marital perspective of families having equal social status, being well matched financially was the indispensable factor to think about. In Middlemarch, the purposes of Dorothea’s two marriages were contrary to this perspective. She first chose to marry the weak, old bookworm Casaubon entirely for devotion to her ideal. What she was concerned about was not men’s appearance and economic status; she just wanted to accomplish her pursuit of ideal and knowledge through marriage. This kind of marital motive, unfit for the matrimonial concept of the patriarchal society, was destined for failure. Although her first marriage was with what society considered to be an impure motive, yet this marriage was at least fit for the concept of marrying one’s own kind of people. Casaubon had a good income and status. He owned his own property. According to Dorothea’s uncle Brooke, who was Dorothea’s guardian, this was an acceptable marriage. But Dorothea’s second marriage wholly disobeyed the Victorian marital perspective and met with opposition from all of the people, including her uncle. Dorothea would

rather marry the unaccomplished Will than inherit legacies from her ex-husband. The only reason for this was that she wanted to pursue her true love. It could be said that both of Dorothea’s two marriages were not for money and status, which was progressive to some extent at that time. George Eliot satirized and lashed out at the Victorian marital perspective by employing the heroine’s failure and confusion in marriage and showing her distinctive view on marriage, which was that marriage must be founded on true love. Because of the restrictions of the traditional marital and religious notions in the society of the nineteenth century, divorce was rarely seen. On one hand, it was strictly influenced by religious doctrines, because divorce was inhibited by the church, and on the other hand, it resulted from the external conditions, for instance, the prejudice against women in the patriarchal society. The inequality of position between couples forced women into a situation of having no social position or right to handle their own economies. Especially the middle class women, who did not have the practical working abilities, would hardly be able to live by themselves once they left their husbands. Therefore, in the nineteenth century, it was very difficult for a wife to live if she left her husband because there was no love between them. Wives who had unhappy marriages were oppressed and lived the rest of their lives in agony, immense distress and depression because of these manifold constraints and moral responsibilities. In the novel of Romola, through the unhappy marriage between Romola and Tito, George Eliot revealed the phenomenon of concubines who often existed in other people’s marriages at that time, especially in the patriarchal society. Although the novel was in the background of Italy of the fifteenth century, what the writer denoted were all the realities of Britain of the nineteenth century. After marriage, Romola gradually discovered a series of deceitful actions done by her husband Tito out of his selfish motivation—such as renouncing his foster father and betraying his father-in-law—which once led Romola to want to betray her marriage and to flee from home. Afterwards, she was persuaded by Fra Girolamo to return to Florence to fulfill her responsibility of being a wife as requested by religion. The religion bound her tightly with the pledge of matrimony, which made her unable to struggle to free herself. Before long she heard from Baldassarre that her husband had another wife as well as two children. She was furious and felt that her dignity as a woman had been seriously insulted. She confirmed that Tito had another family beyond the one with her, though the other one was illegal. Now, since the external law could not exercise the power of divorce, Romola decided to deal with the matter by herself. She decided to talk clearly with Tito about their relationship and hoped to achieve his agreement for them to live apart. But she was not able to carry out her ideas, as Tito was choked to death by his foster father Baldassarre who was full of the fire of revenge. Although Tito having died in the ordinary course of events had freed Romola of the responsibility of being his wife, yet she still voluntarily undertook the responsibility of raising Tito’s mistress Tessa as well as their two children. Although Romola chose to take care of them of her own accord, the distress and depression she once endured in her wretched marriage was extremely tremendous.

4.1.2 The Requirements of Female Roles in the Victorian Period One of the consequences of social changes resulting from the industrial revolution was the emergence of the two fields of public and private, namely, the division between home and work. Fields pertinent to the males and male activities, such as the state, market, etc, belonged to the public field, which was emphasized by society; fields related to females and female activities, such as family and emotion, belonged to the private field, which was despised. The correspondence between the two divisions and the separation of male and female roles formed the traditional ideological form about social division of labor and family. Just like the thought of Talcott Parson’s social structural functionalism, in core families formed since the modern times, the division of men’s instrumental role and women’s ideographic role satisfied the needs of industrial society, which meant that men went outside to earn money to support their families, while, women just stayed at home and did housework. Women’s social position was lowered to the lowest in society and they were isolated and excluded from the public field. The notion of women running their homes and bringing up their children was internalized by women. There appeared a large number of books and periodicals about women’s roles in Victorian times. These claimed that women’s roles were to be good mothers; the family domain was the best site in which women could display their excellent talents; creating a comfortable home was women’s biggest contribution to the society; women should be docile, virtuous and invulnerable; the task of women was to ingratiate themselves with their husband, gently bear men’s ardor and irritability, and understand and accept his tastes. Arguments like these reflected the concepts of the Victorian people toward women and families. Through granting women the reputation of domestic angel, it exaggerated women’s natural attribute. Women were considered only as a kind of reproductive tool; women’s existence was just to be mothers of men and children; all of women’s value was just in her reproductive ability; women did not have self-consciousness and they were just assuming responsibilities and obligations. Ladies, especially the middle-ranking ones, gradually became the passive recipients from sustainers; they even had no right to go outside for work and live by themselves, therefore, they lost more opportunities of achieving social values and winning social position. In The Mill on the Floss, when Mrs. Pullet heard Maggie would go out to be a teacher or governess to live by herself, she said “I’m not going to give Maggie any more o’ my Indy muslin and things if she’s to go into service again when she might stay and keep me company and do my sewing for me if she wanted at her brother’s” (The Mill on the Floss: 464). Mrs. Pullet’s remarks embodied the attitude of most middle class women at that time. They thought that before marriage a female’s responsibility was to take great care of the family and create a peaceful atmosphere of harmony and happiness for it and that they should be attended to by the male relatives of their family. After marriage they should depend on their husbands. This was deemed to be in conformity with the decency of the class they belonged to, but working outside was equal to lowering their social status and would be despised. Maggie did not want to rely on her family and

relatives; she did not want to continue having to read and respond to their every emotion. She wanted to seek a livelihood by herself, but she received consistent, strong opposition from her family and relatives. Even her plan of being a teacher outside was considered as “going into service” which implied that the work of a teacher was merely to be as a servant at that time. If Maggie went out to earn money for sustenance, it would embarrass all of her relatives and friends. The status quo of the female education in the early Victorian period was also the direct reflection of the concept about women at that time. The entire female educational level of the early Victorian period was quite low. The traditional female education was set up for those who belonged to the idling class, the main purpose of which was to cultivate girls into ladies, the ideal future wives and mothers. What they taught was just to inculcate moral values like respect and love, plus skills like dancing, singing and arts, etc. Even for learning foreign languages, history, reading, writing and grammar, etc. the requirement was not high; girls could just have common sense. There were no universities or colleges opened publicly for girls until 1857. Girls could usually study in boarding schools. Concerning the situation of female education, George Eliot herself had full understanding because she once studied in boarding schools. George Eliot agreed with and gave strong backing to the ideas of the feminist Mary Wall Stonecraft of the eighteenth century in her comment. Mary Wall Stonecraft reckoned, in her classic work A Vindication of the Rights of Women, that the reason why women were enslaved was rooted in the process of the corrupt socialization, which hindered the growth of women’s mentality and instructed women that serving men was their noble objective in their lifetime. Mary Wall Stonecraft advocated that women should be involved in public life and achieve independence in spirit and economy instead of being confined in the small circle of the home. Therefore, George Eliot appealed for granting women the equal right of receiving education. Thereupon, she donated one hundred pounds to sponsor establishing the first girl’s college, which manifested her stance. She reckoned that women should have some profound insight and the accumulation of fundamental knowledge just the same as men. We could discern George Eliot’s viewpoint on this from her heroines who had strong cravings for knowledge and persistently pursued it. Maggie, in The Mill on the Floss, who was the shadow of George Eliot, was smart, fanciful and thirsty for knowledge. She loved reading from her childhood. She liked reading various books and explained the contents of books in her unique way. But Maggie’s thirst for knowledge was constantly repressed by the traditional thoughts of the patriarchal society represented by her father, brother and teacher. They thought women should not be that clever, that they just had cleverness in trivial matters, but that they could not research deeply because they were very limited despite this cleverness. Even though she dropped boarding school, Maggie still persisted in learning her brother’s teaching materials by herself, because this was an important step for obtaining men’s wisdom and she felt she would become satisfied, even in her love life, once she obtained this knowledge. Dorothea, in Middlemarch, was pretty and intelligent. She was talented and had ideals. She proposed to pursue knowledge and her ideals within her marriage. She hoped to marry a man

who excelled her in scope and knowledge and wished to scale the heights of knowledge through marriage. 4.2 George Eliot’s Personal Experiences

George Eliot’s lifetime was out of the common run, but was also full of depression. Although she read widely and thought freely from her childhood, once she declared her separation from the Christianity church her relation with her father was totally changed and she was repressed by an invisible pressure. Especially after her cohabitation with George Lewes, she could not bear the hardship or repression from the attacks of public opinions. 4.2.1 The Unrestrained Life of George Eliot in Her Youngster Days George Eliot’s original name was Mary Anne Evans. She was born in the village of Arbury Extate, Warwickshire, in the southern part of Britain in the cold winter of 1819. Her father Robert Evans was born into a carpenter family, but through his own efforts he later became the field agent of Newdegate Grange, thus raising the Evans family into the middle class. Robert had two children with his first wife. His second wife gave birth to one son and two daughters, Issac, Crissy and Mary Anne respectively. The Evans moved to the Griff house located on the verge of the Grange in 1820, where Mary Anne spent a very happy childhood with her elder sister Crissy and her beloved elder brother Issac. Her most special and intimate relationship was with Issac. They were inseparable companions, which could be seen from the narrations in her semi-autobiographic novel The Mill on the Floss. In 1824, when George Eliot was five years old, her brother Issac was sent to the Foleshillr boarding school. She also entered the Miss Lathim boarding school where she began to read the works of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Goldsmith and Walter Scott. In 1828, after she finished the study in Lathim, she went into the Mrs. Wallington boarding school where she met the pious believer of the Gospel, Maria Louis, who exerted an important influence on her early life. Under the guidance of Maria, George Eliot accepted the evangelicalism and became a pious believer. Their friendship lasted fourteen years. In 1832, she went to the Franklin boarding school of Coventry to study, where she learned a lot about language. After her mother died in 1836, and her sister Crissy later got married, she had to leave off her study and return home to look after her father’s life. Trivial housework made her hardly have time to read. But Robert, who could not love his little daughter even more, bought any books she wanted and also employed private teachers to teach her German and French. Via diligent self-teaching, she also mastered Italian, Hebrew, Latin and Greek and showed her talent in music, arts, etc. Like this, George Eliot persisted in studying while she accompanied her father and managed household affairs, which enabled her to set up the foundation for her later translation work. In 1841, her brother Issac got married and her father retired. Her father and she moved to Coventry, where she continued her study and began to read some books on rationalism. The

thoughts and ideas of rationalism enabled her to form the habit of thinking in a philosophical way. In Coventry, the young Mary Anne got to know quite a lot of free thinkers and political progressives, including the phrenologist, idealistic sociologist Charles Bray who was the author of Philosophy of Necessity (1841) and his wife Caroline Bray as well as the author of Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838) Charles Hennel and his young sister Sarah Hennel. George Eliot kept a lifetime friendship with the two families. Owing to the encouragement and recommendation of her friends, Mary Anne began to contact and got involved in the trend of thoughts of radical and progressive philosophy and scientific progress sweeping across the European continent. She successively translated several philosophical books and published them; they are respectively, Life of Jesus, Critically Examined(translated in 1844-1845, published in 1846 anonymously) written by the German theologist, the senior critic of the Bible D. F. Strauss, The Essence of Christianity (published in 1854) written by the famous German humanistic philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, Tractatus Theologico—Politics (translated in 1849-1850) and Ethics (translated in 1854-1856, published in 1981) written by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. On May 31, 1849, having been tormented by diseases for more than a year, Robert Evans died, which brought unforgettable misery into George Eliot’s whole life. Under the persuasion of the Brays, she traveled with them to France, Italy and Switzerland. During this time, she made an important decision—go to London and march towards the intellectual circles, relying on her wisdom and intelligence. She undertook the position of assistant editor of Westminster Review from 1850 to 1852, during which time, with her astonishing talent, she soon became an extremely experienced editor of addressing manuscript and the major schemer of this magazine. She communicated with writers by letters to discuss and proofread manuscripts. She wrote reviews on philosophy and religion. Her learning and talent began to unfold. But her mysterious identity caused people to speculate about her as a knowledgeable old lady. During this time, she changed her name to Marian. Her excellent work assisted this magazine in achieving a high quality and grade, expanding its popularity among the intelligentsia and encouraging numerous domestic and overseas, well-known experts to contribute their writings. Because of the relations in her work, she had the opportunity to become acquainted with many celebrities and cultural elites, including the celebrated evolutionist Charles Darwin, sociologist Herbert Spencer, the essayist Thomas Carlyle, the Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson, the innovative poet Robert Browning, the famous novelist Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriot Stuart Beecher Stowe, etc. 4.2.2 The Doleful Life of George Eliot during Her Grown-up Times Although Marian was very successful in her career, the thirty three year old lady who was still single, longed for family affection and love. She began to become dejected and cast a gloom over herself. Her health was unsatisfactory. A dreadful headache always tortured her. In 1851, she encountered George Henry Lewes, who had a great influence on her lifetime. Lewes was a

philosopher, dramatic critic, novelist, scientific researcher and editor. When they first met, Lewes’ original marriage had ceased to exist except in name. After she bore three children with Lewes, Lewes’ wife began to carry on a clandestine love affair with Lewes’s friend Thornton Leigh Hunt and successively bore four children from Hunt. Lewes had swallowed insults and humiliations silently for many years, acquiesced to his wife’s betrayal and accepted the responsibility of raising her four children. He could not get a divorce by law. During their association, George Eliot and Lewes gradually came to love each other. From 1853, they began their cohabitation of twenty-five years. The combination of Marian and Lewes enabled their emotional lives and their causes to achieve the consummate state. “Without him, it is possible that she would never have had the confidence or the time to write as she did: he protected her from intrusion and criticism, he helped with her researches, he negotiated with her publishers, he supported her through periods of depression. It is at least in part thanks to him that Marian Evans became George Eliot”(Classic: Pix) But according to the social law and moral standards of their time, their cohabitation was an illegal one which offended the public decency. In the light of the double standards of Victorian times, this decision did not have a bad influence on Lewes, because it was very normal for married men to find mistresses; but in terms of the unmarried Marian, it meant she could not have her own children and she had to undertake the obligation of raising another woman’s children. At the same time, she was called “the morally degenerate woman”, was cast aside by society and abandoned by her family. During the twenty-five years of their cohabitation, her dear brother Issac and other relatives thoroughly broke off all relations with her. The British “decent” society was hostile to her. In order to draw a demarcation line between them, a lot of their friends deliberately became estranged from them. Especially those ladies and wives who had identities and positions disdained her by all means, used abusive words to insult her and set up obstacles for her everywhere, for she was a “dangerous” woman. Within the initial years of their cohabitation, they had to reside abroad and live a kind of closed, reclusive life. During that time, they lost nearly all of their contacts with the outside world and seldom went out for social intercourse. There were few guests visiting them and even fewer invitations to banquets or evening parties. In 1856, under the encouragement of Lewes, Marian began creating her novels under the pen name of George Eliot. Her first work of fiction, three stories collected as Scenes from Clerical Life, was very popular. Particularly, in 1859, the publication of her novel Adam Bede helped her achieve an exciting success. Queen Victoria liked this novel so much that she could not bear to part with it. People had a very high opinion of Adam Bede. It provoked a lot of magazines and newspapers, such as Saturday Review, Times etc, into commenting on this novel. Nevertheless, her mysterious identity made people very curious about the author. There were many various speculations. Some people assumed the author was a priest; some even guessed it was George Sand. Calls from readers requesting the author’s identity to be made public became greater and greater. George Eliot knew that the revelation of her identity would result in the depreciation of the value of her novel, but finally, she bravely announced her

name. Just as she expected, she received pressure from various sources, because women were despised by society at that time, and because her relationship with Lewes made people averse to her. Consequently, they left London in 1859, but what was more embarrassing was that when they moved to Kent, their neighbor went so far as to proclaim that they were unpopular. Also when she planned to visit Gildon Women’s College, to which she had once donated money for funding, to her surprise, she was informed that the original planned reception was canceled. So we could feel that her union with Lewes forced her into the predicament of enduring the merciless social opprobrium. The publicity of her identity also brought problems for the publication of her new novel. When The Mill on the Floss was published in 1860, people responded coldly to this novel. This novel maintained George Eliot’s consistent strict moral tone, moral responsibility and sentimentality toward hard life. Meanwhile, it was often filled with the self-contradiction of the author—the contradiction between sticking to the past wishes and the wishes of overturning the restrictions on class and gender. The narration of the relationship between Tom and Maggie showed George Eliot’s attitude toward her brother Issac, that she wished Issac could forgive her behavior and make a compromise with her, and displayed her yearning for family affection. Because their home in the countryside was very far from the city, it was not convenient for them to go back and forth. In 1860, they moved back to London. In the new environment, due to the exclusion from the London society, George Eliot’s mood became dispirited again and could not be rehabilitated even by Lewes. George Eliot became a compound of contradictions. People often criticized her because of her worst offense of rebellion, even as they adored her novels. But Lewes’ unfaithful wife Agnes was a “victim” in people’s mind. George Eliot hated people for considering her as “the third person” destroying other people’s marriage. Under this circumstance, there were few visitors to their home, especially few female visitors. But for her true love, she was willing to bear the disdain and rejection of society, the desertion of relatives and the solitude of the exiled and reclusive life. People could fully imagine the pressures George Eliot stood at that time and understand why she chose to conceal her identity, why she was afflicted by headaches, neurasthenia and illnesses, why she never went outside alone, and why she frequently traveled to Europe with Lewes. After the publication of The Mill on the Floss in 1860, she successively wrote Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, the Radical, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, etc. Among these, Middlemarch pushed her to the peak of literary reputation, which permanently enlisted George Eliot into the most splendid page of British literature. On May 6th, 1880, one and a half years after Lewes had died, George Eliot challenged the traditional conventions again and shocked the whole society. On that day, the nearly sixty one years old George Eliot suddenly married Cross, who was twenty years younger than she was, which made London burst into an uproar. Perhaps her final legal marriage could be explained by her hard choices in her lifetime and as well as the realization that her brother Issac had not contacted her for more than twenty years. But on December 19th, of the same year, George Eliot suddenly complained to Cross of a sore in her throat and got a fever. She suffered a relapse of a calculus of the kidney, which had troubled her so much. She finally died

on December 22nd, 1880. It was just because George Eliot had never obtained pleasant tranquility, but rather only interminable stress, that she could reflect these in the creation of her novels and form her unique style. Melancholy and contemplation were the greatest features of this style. For protagonists in her novels, if they wanted to renew themselves and perfect themselves, if they wanted to redeem others’ sins and save the world, they must undergo misgivings, sufferings and tribulations. Perhaps Dinah Morris in Adam Bede best expressed that kind of “hardship worship”; she said that it was useless to evade hardship, because people were born from moans of pain. Furthermore, there was misery everywhere in the world and even if you could evade hardship, you could not obtain genuine happiness. Hardship was one part of love, while love would not like to renounce hardship. 4.3 The Developmental Process of George Eliot’s Thought

George Eliot once published an article in Westminster Review in 1854 to expound on the prosperity of female wisdom. Some conclusions she derived corresponded to herself—the grief and regret of the inner heart were interwoven with the passions of life; the queries about self and destiny as well as the power supporting them; living in suffering made the meanings of their lives become more profound. The philanthropy and tolerance of the spirit of Christianity and of the humanity religion George Eliot adhered to, ran through her novels and was an important factor in moving the heroines from grief to relief. 4.3.1 The Pious George Eliot as a Christian From George Eliot’s novels, we can detect that her heroines were affected by deified images and shared a kind of common life experience; there was always a holy believer or holy lady who played an unmeasurable role in the heroines’ growth. It was these who, with noble thoughts and actions, directed these girls’ lives, troubled in confusion, helplessness or passion, and offered them brightness for their dark souls. Thomas Kempis and Mother Theresa, through yellowing pages, deeply influenced the young Maggie and Dorothea. The girls were clothed in their brilliance of restraining their selfishness. The dignity of Fra Girolamo prevented Romola from being continually lost in her personal grief and grievances and guided her direction in life. The deeds of these holy believers were narrated either concretely or briefly in her novels, but what the author wanted to emphasize was the influence of their inspiration on the formation of the heroines’ outlook on life as well as their concept of value. Although they belonged to different religious sects, there was the common point in what they propagated, that was, abandoning yourself, excluding yourself and serving others more. Thereupon, this sacred principle of renunciation had become the same creed in life for these listeners of the holy remarks. So we could find that the heroines in George Eliot’s novels harbored the self-sacrificing spirit of renouncing themselves and repressing themselves. They would rather undergo grief than hurt any person. This kind of life impetus, of willingly shouldering other people’s unhappiness, had all kinds of connections with the Christian ideas. Jesus

was crucified on the cross just because he excluded himself and gave up his own life, innocently dying for people’s sins. But the early people obtained the atonement just through Jesus’ suffering. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Matthew 26:39). Jesus’ initiative of self-abnegation guided people to walk on the road of the cross. His suffering was always chosen as a basic theme and archetype and continued influencing people profoundly. It sparkled with radiance through thousands of martyrs and holy believers who accepted asceticism. It could be said that the history of Christianity was the suffering history of human beings. And the behaviors of the heroines in George Eliot’s novels also reflected this affliction in religion. Under the inspiration of holy believers, they all chose a life road based on abandoning themselves. They put their own interests aside and undertook responsibilities and tribulations for other people’s happiness. Maggie walked through rumors proudly and painfully, just because there existed the enormous chasm between obeying emotions and safeguarding morals. The emotional trauma did not hinder Romola from serving people tormented by the plague. What Dorothea mostly looked forward to was to share more worldly tribulations and fulfill more obligations. There was no essential difference between their strong spirit of self-sacrifice and Jesus’ heart when he was suffering afflictions. George Eliot was not a Christian writer in the strict sense. Contrarily, she also expressed some remarks which seemed extremely rebellious to theists. “God is unimaginable, immortality is incredible, but responsibility is absolute” was George Eliot’s opinion. However, there is no denying that the ideas of Christianity exerted an edifying influence on her internal heart. Through the pervasive spirit of suffering filling George Eliot’s novels, we could perceive the essence of the Christian spirit—philanthropy and tolerance. George Eliot accepted Christianity when she was a student. Under the guidance of her teacher Maria Lewis, just like most maidens in the Victorian period, she became a pious evangelical believer. Maria’s religious influence on George Eliot was so lasting that even after she stopped schooling at home, she still kept contacting her teacher to discuss her feelings toward religion. Her family was just like other Victorian families, where her father was the godfather who strictly asked his family members to obey the teachings and courtesies of the church. During her stay at home, she loved participating in the evangelical activities sweeping across London. She read the Bible wholeheartedly and prayed every day. She was so pious that she looked like a severe puritan. She often appeared at various charity sites. She acted in her own way by dropping the letter “e” off her name Anne. She claimed she felt ashamed of her parents’ vanity of the French aristocracy. In addition, her paternal aunt who was a devout member of the Methodist church, exerted an important influence on her. The female Methodist preacher Dinah Morris in Adam Bede had the trace of her paternal aunt. 4.3.2 George Eliot’s Firm Belief in Religion of Humanity In George Eliot’s novels, there was no purely good or bad character. The characters were all

molded into well-founded and credible images. Every character had virtues and defects and all confronted their respective problems in life. Different destinies of different people interwove together, and there were conflicts, but also harmonies. Her novels were called the experiment she did in life. She tried to seek a kind of purpose, dignity and moral guide for modern people through those experiments. Once she said her purpose for presenting human life in front of readers was to make people perceive the key factor which connected people, that was, love between people, which was the principle of social and moral developments, the highest value of people’s existence and also the happy ideal of all human beings. The humanity religion she held ran through her works and was the soul of her works. But how was George Eliot’s humanity religion formed and what was the humanity religion? The formation of George Eliot’s humanity religion was not occasional but was the product of her times and was also closely related with George Eliot’s personal life experiences. The age George Eliot lived in was a period of crisis in belief. The new developments in philosophy, social science and natural science fundamentally shook people’s beliefs. Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species by the action of natural selection forced human beings to reconsider themselves. Feuerbach’s materialism repudiated Hegel’s idealism, and had a great influence on the western ideological world. People in the Victorian period began to suspect their religious beliefs. The renovation of social activists and consciousness inevitably pushed the development of literature. Some scholars and intellectuals who had acute insight began to re-observe the changeable world and seek the new spiritual pivot point. They reconsidered religion, morality and ethics in the Victorian times and they wanted to find a new religion to rebuild the social ideology so that it could maintain the social order. George Eliot’s humanity thought originated from her own thinking about the period she lived in as well as other philosophers’ influence. The most conspicuous impacts were from Feuerbach and Comte. George Eliot once translated Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity. Feuerbach’s famous inference was that God was the alienation of the essence of human beings. Humanism was the center in the system of Feuerbach’s philosophy. He reckoned that God was just like the projection of human beings themselves. So the essence of religion was the essence of human beings. Influenced by Feuerbach’s thought, George Eliot renounced the transcendence in religion; substituted human beings for God and substituted love for God, which formed her own humanity religion centered in love. Another person who had a lifelong influence on George Eliot was the French philosopher Comte. George Eliot’s thought about altruism was from Comte’s philosophy. Comte was a renowned sociologist. Through studying interpersonal relationships, he discovered that the individual’s behavior would have an impact on others more or less. Thus the individual’s behavior should be beneficial for others, meanwhile, it would also benefit oneself. George Eliot once said she accepted Comte’s thoughts with a grateful psychology. From then on, this thought permeated her life.

George Eliot’s humanity thought was also related to her personal life experiences. George Eliot lived in a devout Christian family from the time she was born. Her father Evans was a dedicated believer of the Anglican Church. Her first teacher Miss Lewis was an evangelical. She was also influenced by evangelicals when she was in the boarding school. In addition, her aunt was Methodist. Although later Feuerbach’s materialism and Darwin’s evolution theory influenced her a lot, George Eliot still deemed that the teachings of Christianity were the cornerstone safeguarding social ethics and morals and she insisted that there was no discord or conflict between science and religion. It could be said that philanthropy and tolerance were the foundation of George Eliot’s humanity thought. However, George Eliot was opposed to comprehending and performing morality by religious means. She disapproved of people maintaining their religious beliefs by the means of promise or punishment. She believed that only through anguished experience could true belief be achieved. She deemed that “suffering humanizes”. As long as they were faced with misery, people could derive a kind of life and belief of an unprecedentedly highest state. Through her gleanings of different philosophers’ thoughts and her personal life experience, George Eliot gradually formed her own humanity religion. In George Eliot’s humanity religion, it was thought that people’s lives contained the attribute of tragedy. The existence of this tragic attribute in people’s lives was the consequence of the conflict between people’s inner needs and the outside world. People possessed sensation and had various psychological needs, but the external world was emotionless and indifferent and it often frustrated people’s hopes and needs. The blindness and coldness of the universe tinted people’s existence with thick tragic ambiance, thus causing people distress. In George Eliot’s novels, “she traced the origin of calamity back to the characters themselves with the cruelty of Greek tragedy and her persistence, as a result it deprived them of the consolation which could be got from their blaming fate and other people”(朱虹: 8). George Eliot thought people in the tragic life needed a sense of belonging. But how could human beings find a sense of belonging and live a meaningful life in this ridiculous world? The answer was to establish a new kind of religion—the humanity religion. Feuerbach thought that the essence of the past Christianity was the humanistic religion which was not perceived by people. George Eliot thought there was also an order of human nature in this cold and absurd universe, that was, the moral order, which lays in the interpersonal love and friendship. The existence of the morality order was based on human consciousness. Only people had consciousness and they could perceive this similarity among the whole human race. This was the foundation of moral behavior as well as the cornerstone of altruistic conduct. The morality order was ubiquitous and existed in various aspects of the society, such as in traditions, customs, ceremonies and laws, etc, and also existed in each individual’s emotions which made the existence of humans and material things no longer absurd. Therefore, each person should have a sense of identification in an ethic group, a religious group, a political group or a social group and feel they are a part of the valuable and cooperative group; each person should have a sense of moral

responsibility. And morality was a kind of reflection of people’s sensation which was not an individual attribute but of the universal human nature. Morality could clearly distinguish between right and wrong as well as between good and evil and it was the basis for the existence and progress of cultural society. Furthermore, morality, besides coming from tradition and the consciousness and emotions of human beings, also came from compassion. Compassion was a kind of natural revelation and it was also a kind of higher morality. The positivist psychology thought that people were innately endowed with social attributes and sympathy, while George Eliot deemed that people were altruistic and the process of growing up was a time during which people were constantly recognizing the external world, including other people, and renouncing the absolute self dominance. The protagonists in George Eliot’s works all embodied the thought of humanity religion and, under its guidance, solved their own problems to realize their ideal life.

Chapter 5 Conclusion Schopenhauer deemed that the art of tragedy was in the affirmative of life will. The grief of tragedy held a large proportion among George Eliot’s novels. But mostly, the tragic character finally achieved a kind of spiritual upliftment, which fully proved the affirmation of life will. In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche reckoned that the Greek tragedies were derived from the surge of two kinds of spirit, one was the Apollo spirit which was displayed in hope and ideal, the other one was the Dionysus spirit which was embodied in reality, enjoyment and indulgence. The combination of the two spirits boosted the occurrence of Greek tragedies. In Nietzsche’s opinion, the Apollo spirit represented ideals and dreams and it was an imaginary world of human beings as well as people’s illusion of the outward appearance of the beauty of everything. The Dionysus spirit was the impulse and desire of the original instinct of human nature and constituted the broad-minded, unrestrained, wild side of human nature. The two spirits were both the embodiments of life will and were people’s inherent qualities. The former spirit covered the tragic image of people’s lives with a veil, the latter uncovered the veil and directly faced the tragedy of human life; the former taught people to never give up pleasure in life, the latter told people to never evade human sufferings; the former stuck to life, the latter was detached in life; the former was attached to transience, the latter was looking forward to eternity. Compared with the Apollo spirit, the Dionysus spirit was concerned more with metaphysical nature and was endowed with a thick tragic tint. In my opinion, the characters in George Eliot’s works corroborated the ideas of Nietzsche’s theory. Although heroines in George Eliot’s works were all ordinary people, they were full of ideals. Take the following characters as examples, Maggie, in her childhood, was bubbling with enthusiasm and was kind and smart and full of romantic imagination about life. Despite the fact that her aunts belittled her as a Gypsy because of her black hair, black eyes and relatively brown skin, she was not depressed about this. She brought her imagination into full play and imagined Gypsies would quite like her because of her knowledge and treat her as a queen. This kind of free and equal thought rendered her full of love toward mankind. She sympathized with all weak beings and was good at consoling the solitary souls with her own love. Additionally, her sensitive emotion and her exquisite and rich imagination enabled her to observe and taste other people’s feelings and agonies. For instance, she had compassion for, concern about and consolation to Philip who was deformed in his body, which assisted Philip in finding pleasure in life and forged a profound friendship between them when they were little kids. These all revealed the Apollo spirit in Maggie. But afterward, when she met Stephen, she also fell in love with him and one day followed Stephen out for boating, which made people think they had eloped. This all resulted from desire and impulse of her instinct. While, for Romola, in spite of her always being at home, in order to ease her father's sorrow over her brother’s betrayal, she wanted to be an excellent assistant for her father and was praised by her father for her meticulous and careful work. Her life after marriage was wretched

because her study life had offered her few chances of knowing men. She and Tito both fell in love at the first sight of each other. But unexpectedly, things Tito did out of his own selfishness made her distressed. Dorothea, in Middlemarch, just like Saint Theresa, was enlightened by stories of the martyrdom of Christians and was determined to suffer afflictions for Christ. Her mind was imbued with unfeasible plans. She always wanted to bring benefit to other people. She also wanted to become a knowledgeable person through marriage, but the failure of her marriage disillusioned her. In Nietzsche’s philosophy of “superman”, Nietzsche deemed that “superman” made people of strong life force become even stronger and made people of weak life force become strong. But how to become strong? Nietzsche thought that it was through constantly experiencing the anguishes in life and strengthening life in sufferings. Although Maggie was cast aside by all the people of St Ogg after she returned, she was worried about the conditions of Lucy, Philip and Stephen without considering herself and she wanted to find a job to support herself. Although Romola was deceived by her unhappy marriage, she was unshaken about her dreams, was looking forward to the genuine virtue and never gave up her ideal and pursuit in the face of her tragic experience and the vile reality. For them, the more despairing their lives were, the keener were the expectations in their hearts. The heroines in George Eliot’s novels all strengthened their life power through their life experiences and uplifted themselves from the weak life to deal with all of the challenges in their existence and overcome the tragic attribute of human life, thus endowing themselves with a unique meaning within the meaningless existence. F.R. Leavis once in his authoritarian work The Great Tradition which studied British novels, indicated that George Eliot’s works were at the height of thought of Tolstoy’s style—the deep human compassion, revering vexation and expecting redemption. Indeed, George Eliot’s novels always delivered the theme of “the grief in repression and the relief after regeneration”. The heroines in George Eliot’s novels were all experiencing their own grief, agony and tribulations in life and lived in repression. Although they endured pains in their own lives, yet there was the lofty side in their characters, for instance, Dorothea longed for knowledge and was eager to devote herself to the cause of all human beings’ happiness, meanwhile, Maggie’s individual ideal and Romola’s heroic deeds of saving human beings, endowed a very high value on each life. They harbored profound human sympathy all the time and adopted renunciation and self-sacrifice for others on all occasions. Thereupon, it could be said that it was just their natural endowments of exceeding females that promoted their excellence, uncommon experiences and human values. Water implies profound connotations in the western culture. George Eliot employed the mystical water as a means to make the heroines have a transformation and spiritual uplift under specific circumstances, which enabled the heroines to extricate themselves from mental torments, rendered them no longer ignorant or perplexed and gave them relief and remission that came from reflection in their souls so that they could arrive at spiritual regeneration. George Eliot chose the ordinary in common life as her writing material and demonstrated the psychological features of different people in various events. Especially, she probed deeply into

human nature by paying much attention to the mental conflicts of the characters at critical moments in their life, for instance, their suffering and despair when confronting frustrations or cruel reality. George Eliot insisted that faithfully representing the real world and life was to represent the commonness—showing greatness in commonness and showing the true in plainness. Through her works, George Eliot showed us that reality was imperfect and relentless, and that only when we accepted reality, confronted life, disbelieved fatalism and threw away hypocritical comfort or evasion, could we get somewhere. Cherishing belief when in the midst of afflictions, clinging to hope in despair, saving oneself in grief and achieving transcendence in plainness, these are the great points of George Eliot’s novels.

Acknowledgements

First of all, l would like to give my heartfelt thanks to my tutor, Mrs. Li Xiaolan, who gave me a lot of valuable advice and unselfish help in my thesis writing. Without her effective guidance and careful revision, my dissertation would not be completed successfully in time. I also feel grateful to the professors who helped me with my study here during the past years. I benefit much from your lessons and useful suggestions. And I also show thanks to Beverly, my foreign teacher, from whom I learned a lot of things not only on classes, but also in the daily life that will motivate me all my life. I also really appreciate the help from another foreign teacher Judy who helped me a lot in my thesis writing. Third, I should express my sincere gratitude to my parents. They did everything they could to support me financially and spiritually. They have played such an important role in the past years in my life. Without their constant encouragement and support, my graduation thesis would not be possible. Besides, I will not forget my classmates who once gave me their friendly help and suggestions in the three years.

References

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Papers Published in the Period of Master Education

李智彩, 李晓岚. 2009,12. 人性光芒的闪耀——论“人本宗教”在《米德尔马契》中的体现.边疆经济与文化. 李智彩. 2009，12. 深情母爱，眷如爱恋——论《亚当·贝德》中的“恋子情结”.作家. 李智彩. 2010，2. 自由·选择·责任·奉献——《织工马南传》之存在主义解读.飞天. 李智彩. 2010，5. 精神的漫溃到明晰——论《亚当·贝德》和《罗慕拉》中的成长主题. 名作欣赏.