George Eliot's Early Fiction: The Movement From Alienation to Integration
George Eliot's fiction depicts the processes of moral growth in individuals who discover they have held illusionary views about themselves and their relationships. Through the crisis of disenchantment they come to varying degrees of moral awareness. This study shows that in her early fiction moral progress depends upon harmonious integration of self with family and community. Males who fail in the process of integration manage to continue their diminished lives in exile; but females who are unable to adapt their individuality to the roles assigned by family and community lose their lives. At times their struggles against communal constraints threaten to subvert the affirmative theme of integration.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign