• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.64 no.1
• /
• pp.95-116
• /
• 2018

Although acclaimed as George Eliot's masterpiece, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871-72) has been attacked by feminists since shortly after it was serialized. The main cause of feminist criticism is that she portrays her heroine, Dorothea Brooke, in an androcentric viewpoint and describes her lived experiences through male discourses. In order to identify what such feminist criticism originates in, this article places the novel in the sociopolitical contexts where Dorothea lived while authoring herself, and then analyzes it with M. M. Bakhtin's two important concepts, self-authoring and architectonics. As a result, Middlemarch has many shortcomings in the phases of the heroine's self-authoring and eventually the architectonics. In case of self-authoring, Eliot does not fully explain Dorothea's responses to her first husband and egoistic priest Edward Casaubon, and then her second husband and English-Polish dilettante Will Ladislaw until she reaches her ultimate marriage conclusions. Incessant authorial intervention obstructs the heroine's smooth interactions with her two husbands. In addition, the novel does not provide any sufficient comments about Dorothea's responses to Middlemarchers' opinions even if handling their opinions in the heroine's self-authoring influences the novel's persuasiveness. Dorothea's story has proved its own limitations by its frequent omissions and authorial intrusions. In Bakhtin's terminology, Middlemarch does not properly contain I-formyself, the-other-for-me, and I-for-the-other. It can be said that these shortcomings resulting from Eliot's cross-dressing narrative have caused attacks by feminists.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.153-165
• /
• 2007

The story treats each individual's vision as well as social reality that the author intends to describe. The purpose of this article is to search for the conflict between vision and reality, especially in feminist problem that critics have treated on the works of women writers. Though some articles have studied on the issue similar to this article, I try to analyze the narratives in the text that the author herself confesses to us. I think that we can find out clear messages from the individuals who construct the human relationship and build up their personal history through their dialogue or monologue. We can also catch their main problems in the community. I discuss the topic by mentioning the detailed discourses referred to the heroine and other characters in the text. The passages mentioned by the characters in the story may be a confession for the present and future generation that the author tries to confess. From the excerpts of some discourse, I can conclude that though Dorothea has a vision for her ideal, she is a failed feminist, for society is too strong for her as Miller (1990) argues.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.54 no.4
• /
• pp.443-459
• /
• 2008

This paper examines the discourse of masturbation in modern England and aims to re-draw the map of male sexuality related to such issues as nation, empire, family, and economy. It argues that the discourse of masturbation in modern England reflects national anxieties for the future of empire and an economic concern for unproductive sexual behavior, which were the main factors to transform masturbation into "solitary vice." The anxieties about empire and British dominance were constituted as the core of the anti-masturbation discourse on the boys. The imperial destiny was regarded to depend on the protection of the middle- and upper-class boys from the harmful psychological and physiological effects of masturbation represented in Lawrence's "The Rocking-Horse Winner." In the case of a single male, the concern for masturbation is constructed as a concern about economy, family, and human solidarity. As seen in Eliot's Silas Marner, the act of masturbation was condemned as the fulfillment of illegitimate sexual desire outside the familial sphere and a commercial economy, and thus without the possibility of human community. Silas Marner and Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel show the ways of reconstituting sexual others as normalized subjects: Boys were forced to be asexual through the regime of surveillance; and a single male was required to enroll in a remedial course on familial respectability.

• English & American cultural studies
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.89-110
• /
• 2016

Since he was an exile, Henry James himself was well aware of agonies as an outsider in either Europe or America. Such an anguish is deftly depicted in the character of Felix Young with James's unique ironic tone. Unlike James, however, Felix is neither affluent nor distinguished as an artist. Nor is he supported by any patron. Furthermore, at first, he doesn't seem to survive the strict joyless environment in New England, but he possesses his own survival value. His unique esthetic value and his beautiful smile enable him to win Gertrude's heart. His adroit balance between pleasure-seeker and respect for American serious culture without hostility ultimately ends up with his marrying Gertrude. His arrival in Boston might pose a threat as Mr. Wentworth fears. Actually he subverts the traditional idea of an artist. He is armed with amiability and frankness, which are incongruous with a stereotypical idea of an artist: a willful, freakish, and self-righteous person. Felix here suggests to us that a new kind of modern art be possible. Gertrude is also a new woman who opposes to staying put under the patriarchal society. She is always wavering in and out of the house, searching for opportunities to quench her curiosity to see the world by breaking the bond of New England. Her ceaseless quest for independent values results in fortuitous encounter with a new species of artist Felix. Unlike Henry James's other novels, in which male characters assume a role of sophisticated "fortune-hunter," the union of Felix and Gertrude in The Europeans represents the compromise between two different cultures. According to Nietzsche, the birth of superman is possible by the union of Athens and Jerusalem. In other words, the matrimony of Felix and Gertrude means the commingling of his liberal arts and Gertrude's moral seriousness might contribute to the birth of the new culture.