Idealisation of Female Characters in Silas Marner
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-2-494069-45-9_48How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Idealization; Female; Victorian Literature; George Eliot; Silas Marner
- Abstract
In the Victorian period, the role of woman gained more attention from the society than in the past. In the literature creation of this period, the images of women, especially the idealisation of them, were carefully delineated by the authors, which provoked the discussion of what an idealised woman should be like. George Eliot, as an female and one of the most famous authors in the Victorian period, showed her unique understanding about this topic in her works. This paper focuses particularly on one of her greatest works, which is Silas Marner [1], to analyse how Eliot depicted idealisation in her female characters and how this idealisation is influenced by the society background of that period. The analysis integrates various concepts including industrialization, marriage, and determinism to help interpret this practice, as well as social background, description in other literature writings and George Eliot’s private life to further the explanation. It will focus on three characters in Silas Marner: Nancy Lammeter, Dolly Winthrop, and Eppie. At the end of this paper, the discussion comes to the contribution of this idealisation to the literature creation and how it affects the perception to the females from the Victorian period as well as the current society. The paper aims to clarify the characteristics of women and endows more understanding of women to help pursue gender equality.
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Zile Liu PY - 2022 DA - 2022/12/16 TI - Idealisation of Female Characters in Silas Marner BT - Proceedings of the 2022 2nd International Conference on Modern Educational Technology and Social Sciences (ICMETSS 2022) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 391 EP - 398 SN - 2352-5398 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-45-9_48 DO - 10.2991/978-2-494069-45-9_48 ID - Liu2022 ER -