Tragedy and society: The novels of George Eliot
Eliot's belief that reform must begin with the individual led naturally to her appreciation of tragedy as the best means of arousing human sympathy and inspiring social activity. I locate Eliot's early social ideas in her essays, drawing attention to similar ideas about reform in the writings of her contemporaries, particularly Feuerbach and Marx. I also discuss the aesthetic components of Eliot's theory of tragedy: the collision between the individual and the general, the fellowship of human suffering, the pressure of inheritance, and the tragic actor's submission to social laws.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign