George Eliot and The Woman Question: Feminist Tendencies in Romola and Middlemarch

When it comes to the representation of women in the literary works of Victorian England, George Eliot stands out as one of the female novelists who realistically depicted the complexities of female experience in a patriarchal society. The long debate on Eliot’s feminism has led critics to regard this female writer either as a non-feminist, due to a discrepancy between her unconventional life and the conservative paths of her heroines’ storylines, or as a writer that embraced the ideals of the feminist cause. Romola (1862-63) and Middlemarch (1871-72) can be considered two novels that elicited frustration concerning the fates of the heroines who are eventually confined to the ordinariness of the domestic and marital spheres. Rather than focusing on the failure of the heroines’ aspirations, the thesis considers those aspects that effectively demonstrate Eliot’s attention to female subjection, her support for the improvement of female existential conditions, as well as her positive view of women as the ones who can contribute to changing societal narrow-mindedness. The first chapter introduces the main phases of George Eliot’s extraordinary life, paying attention to her personal conflict between rebellion and conformity. The second chapter examines George Eliot’s relationship with the Woman Question: after providing an overview of the status of women in 19th-century England, the focus shifts to feminist criticism on Eliot’s novels and writings and the role of her heroines in promoting sympathy and the religion of humanity. The third and fourth chapters are dedicated to Romola and Dorothea respectively and present a similar structure: an excursus of the status of women in the male-dominated world of their epochs is followed first by the description and analysis of male authoritarian figures and then by the examination of their marriages; the conclusion of these chapters includes a feminist reading of their epilogues. By doing so, the thesis attempts to reconcile Eliot’s often controversial portrayal of women with a more positive feminist interpretation, highlighting her awareness and understanding of the challenges and struggles faced by her contemporary fellow women.