Part of Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1934. / Photolithographed. "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago libraries."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1921. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to introduce Victorian authoresses of the second half of the 19th century and concept of fictional novelistic spaces. Firstly, the thesis will shortly present the main authoresses of the Victorian novels in the social context of the 19th century (the Brontë sisters, George Eliot). Secondly, it will focus on the analysis of the last of George Eliot's novels, 'Daniel Deronda' (comparing it with her earlier novel 'The Mill on the Floss') with the emphasis on the changes of the concept of space in the novel, in which the Jewish theme dominates, and it will also describe searching for the roots and traditions in the personal life of the hero. Finally, the thesis will aim at European context of the concepts of novelistic spaces and it will evaluate the importance of the last novel written by George Eliot.

Because of the many similarities between the life of George Eliot and the lives of Maggie and Tom Tulliver in The Mill on The Floss, Eliot’s novel has been understood as an autobiographical novel. The aim of the essay is to, by using a psychoanalytical perspective, examine if the fictional characters could be said to be engaged in an incestuous relationship even though they do not engage in a sexual relationship. Though their relationship never becomes sexual, there are factors which could support a claim that brother and sister are engaged in an non-sexual incestuous relationship.

The discussion in this thesis is designed to show reflections of George Eliot's life and philosophy in her four early novels: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Romola.

This study has been made in an attempt to illustrate how the genius that was George Eliot developed, how a magnificent intellect was driven first to achievement by emotional frustration and then was coupled with emotional maturity in person, developing emotional maturity in the creative artist and producing at last the supreme and delicate balance of intellectual and emotional maturity in the philosopher who found her medium in creative art.

Thesis advisor: Maia McAleavey / This thesis examines the layers of interpretation that encase the female characters of George Eliot’s early fiction, and work through the seemingly contradictory ways in which Eliot intends for their status as created objects to be understood. Chapter 1 focuses on Caterina Sarti, Dinah Morris and Hetty Sorrel, and their depiction as both artists and art objects. Chapter 2 examines Maggie Tulliver and the way being a controlled object is embedded into her character, despite the appearance of freedom. What is puzzling about Eliot’s portrayal of these characters is that it is never clear how their attempts to be objects are meant to be understood. Eliot’s characterization of these young women is best understood in light of the association between becoming an object and “coming of age” as an adult woman. She sees no escape from this association, so these characters must be presented through layers of interpretation and objectification. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: English.

This dissertation explores the subject of heredity and its novelistic treatment c. 1850-1900. Though hereditary phenomena had long been incorporated into literary works, heredity acquired an unprecedented significance with Darwin’s theory of evolution. It became a central fact of life, generating both fascination and fear, but its exact workings remained unknown until the turn of the century. This left novelists some experimental leeway in creating fictional universes and characters in accordance with the nascent naturalistic worldview and in struggling with its philosophical implications. While work on nineteenth-century literature and science has focused significantly on evolution, I demonstrate that heredity is a more immediate human concern and is more intuitive to the form of the novel. The works considered here by George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Thomas Hardy grapple with an increasingly deterministic view of biology but also with other forms of inheritance, for most of the conditions that constitute and determine our lives are inherited. Chapter one discusses how the metaphor of inheritance became a powerful tool for portraying the complexities of life in a post-theological age. This dissertation is grounded in the history of science, and, beyond the common language shared between science, philosophy, and literature, I examine the role of narrative in the study of heredity, particularly in medical case histories, which formed an early point of contact with the novel. Chapter two is on Eliot’s treatment of the inextricable workings of legal, cultural, and biological inheritance in The Mill on the Floss, showing how the mismatch between theory and reality regarding these matters demoralizes the novel’s protagonists and inhibits their development. Chapter three contextualizes The Picture of Dorian Gray in the history of art and science, reading Dorian’s portrait as a device suggestive of metaphysical inheritance and the disruption of personal development, and the ancestral portraits in Dorian’s gallery as indications of the biological heredity that drives his self-destruction. Chapter four looks at Hardy’s technique of genealogical narrative and overdetermination in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and the novel’s engagement with debates over the value of pedigree and the pessimistic view of determinism at the century’s end. / 2020-09-29T00:00:00Z

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<p>This dissertation explores the connections between sympathy, gender, and characterization in four novels by George Eliot. It contributes to studies of George Eliot’s work by offering readings of minor characters in <em>Adam Bede</em>, <em>The Mill on the Floss</em>, <em>Middlemarch</em>, and <em>Daniel Deronda</em>. Focusing on these characters, who have tended to be ignored in critical studies of the novels, this dissertation argues for a re-evaluation of the relationship between gender and sympathy as understood by George Eliot. Taking into consideration a number of characters who exhibit a range of gendered behaviours and identities, this study explores how both normative and non-normative expressions of masculinity and femininity inform individuals’ sympathy. It uses the concepts of sympathetic economies and sympathetic ethics to demarcate the tension between realism and idealism in George Eliot’s representations of sympathy. The goal of this dissertation is to begin to map out some of the ways in which careful attention to peripheral characters can enhance readings of sympathetic ethics and economies in George Eliot by showing the subtle and challenging ways in which sympathy inflects, and is in turn inflected by, discourses about femininity and masculinity.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)