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George Eliot: Beyond Feminism, Mary J Dengler

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The three central conflicts of George Eliot's life--an emotional conflict with male rejection, an intellectual conflict with orthodox Christianity, and a gender conflict with the limitations imposed on women--can be attributed largely to the nineteenth-century feminine ideologies. While Eliot used her nonfiction to criticize the ideas responsible for her conflicts, she used her poetry and fiction to dramatize the conflicts and develop an ideal of humanity. Eliot considered feminism, in Romola, as a resolution to these conflicts, then moved beyond feminism to develop her human ideal. This ideal, which transcends gender ideologies in response to natural and moral law, posits …