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Missing page 53. / A critical study which links George Eliot to George Sand is not a new idea. While considerations of social thought, art, feminism and the imagery used by the two novelists have formed much of the comparative criticism to date, this study examines another vital link between the French and the British novelist. "Two Georges and the Dragon" focuses on the psycho-spiritual evolution, the individuation process, experienced by four Sand-Eliot heroines. The nineteenth century's concern with "Soul-Making" (Keats, 334 ), its search for self and certitude in the face of social, religious and technological change, fostered a widespread artistic renovation of both pagan and Christian myth. Thus, while Carl Jung's terminology for the stages of individuation was not yet available to either Sand or Eliot, the mythic archetypes essential for a Jungian exploration of the psyche were. It is from this archetypal perspective that the sequence of "the -heroine's journey" is developed. Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey (1990) depicts the twentieth century version of the feminine quest for individuation. Despite separation by a century-and-a-half, the Sand-Eliot protagonists' struggles to attain an "informed sympathy'' are strikingly similar to the contemporary "heroine's journey" toward an integrated consciousness. Murdock's archetypal sequence illustrates precisely how "history (becomes] incarnate" in these nineteenth-century heroines. A progression through a series of initiatory stages marks the individuation process. To be sure, some measure of ego deflation and subsequent renewed perspective do occur for many characters in both Sand's and Eliot's novels. In these cases, shadow aspects of the unconscious emerge and are assimilated. However, our concern is with the heroines who undergo a complete cycle of individuation. In Jungian terms, these heroines not only acknowledge personal shadow content, they also undergo an ultimate ego deflation in depth. The process involves an encounter with, and assimilation of, the collective historical values inherent in the imago Dei, central archetype of the psyche's unconscious aspect. As a result of her personal individuation, the heroine, in turn, effects an elevation of consciousness in those around her. George Sand's Consuela offers the nineteenth century's first depiction of a complete individuation process for the feminine. This study proposes that the same process marks the experiences of the heroines in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets is full of beautiful and resounding imagery, yet the art of unfolding these images, discovering the movement and drama taking place in and between them, often remains elusive. In this thesis, I approach this problem by offering a detailed reading of Eliot's four poems, tracing the repetition and subtle movements of these patterns of images and the connections between them. I show how in each poem, Eliot develops a set of images that uniquely depicts the entrance of the timeless into time; these images offer ways of framing the problem of responding to revelations of deeper reality, which I take to be the poem's central drama. At the same time, across the whole of the four poems, this reoccurring drama—the issue of the intersection of the timeless with time and the poet's response to this intersection—continues to develop, becoming more complex and layered in each of the poems. Unfolding the different but parallel movements that are enacted across the four poems gives us a better understanding of the way the poems work together as a whole, harmonizing with one another to expand and deepen the individual images and momentary expressions of emotion each poem conveys. / Master of Arts / T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is a complex and intricate series of poems. In this thesis, I draw on the work of key critics as I offer a detailed reading of these four poems, tracing the repetition and subtle movements of Eliot’s patterns of images and the connections between them. I show how in each poem, Eliot develops a set of images that uniquely depict revelations of deeper reality, the entrance of the timeless into time—I view the response to these revelations as the central problem of the poems. At the same time, across the whole of the four poems, this reoccurring drama—the issue of the intersection of the timeless with time and the poet’s response to this intersection—continues to develop, becoming more complex and layered in each of the poems. Following these pattern of response across the four poems gives us a better understanding of the way the poems work not only individually, but as a unified whole.

George Eliot's fiction is filled with mentoring relationships which generally consist of a wise male mentor and a foolish, egotistic female mentee. The mentoring narratives relate the conversion of the mentee from narcissism to selfless devotion to the community. By retaining the Christian value of self-abnegation and the Christian tendency to devalue nature, Eliot, nominally a secular humanist who abandoned Christianity, reveals herself still to be a covert Christian. In Chapter 1 I introduce the moral mentoring theme and provide background material. Chapter 2 consists of an examination of Felix Holt, which clearly displays Eliot's crucial dichotomy: the moral is superior to the natural. In Chapter 3 I present a Freudian analysis of Gwendolen Harleth, the mentee most fully developed. In Chapter 4 I examine two early mentees, who differ from later mentees primarily in that they are not egotists and can be treated with sympathy. Chapter 5 covers three gender-modified relationships. These relationships show contrasting views of nature: in the Dinah Morris-Hetty Sorrel narrative, like most of the others, Eliot privileges the transcendence of nature. The other two, Mary Garth-Fred Vincy and Dolly Winthrop-Silas Marner, are exceptions as Eliot portrays in them a Wordsworthian reconciliation with nature. In Chapter 6 I focus on Maggie Tulliver, a mentee with three failed mentors and two antimentors. Maggie chooses regression over growth as symbolized by her drowning death in her brother's arms. In Chapter 7 I examine Middlemarch, whose lack of a successful standard mentoring relationship contributes to its dark vision. Chapter 8 contains a reading of Romola which interprets Romola, the only mentee whose story takes place outside nineteenth-century England, as a feminist fantasy for Eliot. Chapter 9 concludes the discussion, focusing primarily on the question why the mentoring theme was so compelling for George Eliot. In the Appendix I examine the relationships in Eliot's life in which she herself was a mentee or a mentor.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate George Eliot's literary indebtedness to the Bible by isolating, identifying, and analyzing her various uses of Scripture in her novels. This study is an attempt to demonstrate in some detail George Eliot's literary indebtedness to the Bible, to show that in the course of her fictional career she made virtually every possible use of the Bible. She at times presents Bibles themselves as significant objects, she refers to the Bible-reading habits of various characters, and she quotes, paraphrases, and alludes to the Bible. She employs biblical words, passages, narratives, characters and objects for purposes of scene-setting, symbolism, authorial commentary, characterization, and presentation and underscoring of basic themes. Sometimes she uses the Bible to achieve a serious tone; at other times, she uses it with humorous intent. Sometimes she sounds traditionally Judaeo-Christian and employs the Bible to exhort the reader in homiletic fashion, but just as often she uses biblical material to preach her own Victorian gospel. The purpose of this study is to isolate, identify, and critically analyze these various uses of the Bible which together produce the recurrent Biblical overtones so notable in the novels of George Eliot.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2002. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2842. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves 1-2. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-86).

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