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Addiction And Recovery In Silas Marner, Sarah Netto

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Depending on the historical period, culture, and available knowledge, addiction has been defined and theorized in numerous ways. Approaches to solving the problem of addiction have been similarly diverse. Medical knowledge is still fairly limited, and the debate still continues to this day on whether or not addiction is a moral choice. During the nineteenth century various forms of addiction including but not limited to opium and alcohol had reached epidemic levels. Consequently, the subject of addiction is a major theme in many Victorian novels. In the nineteenth century, Susan Zieger explains, the word “addiction” was used to describe a …