英国文学导读 (35).pdf

George Eliot (1819-1880) • 1. Life and Career – Born in 1819 as Mary Ann Evans at Arbory Park in Astley – Her mother died in 1836, and she then became her father ’s house keeper. – In 1841 the family moved to Coventry. – Once there she joined a group of intellectuals and studied the bible. – Raised in a strict evangelical home, she eventually came to renounce organized religion. – 1850, she traveled the world for the first time – On her return in 1854 she began to write for the Westminster Review, a quarterly periodical. – She translated Feuerbach ’s Essence of Christianity from German. – She then started a relationship and later cohabited with Henry Lewes, her editor, who already had a wife and children. – She was rejected by her family and friends, because of the relationship. – Lewes eventually left his wife and moved to London with George Eliot. – Henry Lewes encouraged her to write. – She then changed her name from Mary Ann Evans to George Eliot. • 2. Major Works – Scenes of Clerical Life (1858 ) – Adam Bede (1859) – Mill On the Floss (1860) – Silas Marner (1861) – Middlemarch (1872) – Daniel Deronda (1876) 3. Writer of New Novel • Two ways of presentation: – External (objective) – Internal (subjective) • Psychological study of human nature – Join the two ways of presentation – By placing the responsibility for a man’s life firmly on the moral choices of the individual, she changes the nature of English novel: character becomes plot. – She is the first to “put all actions inside (D. H. Lawrence),” the pioneer of modern psychological novel. – She seeks to present the inner struggle of a soul and to reveal the motives, impulses and hereditary influences which govern human actions.