Individuals’ Challenges Against The Society: A Sociological Reading Of Middtemarch

George Eliot is an important man of letters in Victorian England. Middlemarch, produced at the peak of her writing career, is accepted as her representative work. Scholars and researchers home and abroad have made lots of investigation concerning relationship between individuals and society. However, these researches mainly concentrate their attentions on social restrictions on individuals and disappointment and failure caused. This thesis tries to study George Eliot’s exploration of individuals’ challenges of society placed in the interrelationship between individuals and society under the influence of19th-century scientific organic theories.After choosing three characters, this thesis studies the negative effects of society on the social groups they represent, their struggles with the society and the different consequences of their struggles. The three characters belong to different social groups and their conflicts with society have different characteristics. The first one is a middle-class man; the second one is a lower-class man; the third one is a middle-class woman.Lydgate, armed with ambition of medical reform, does not recognize the significance of the interrelationship between individuals and society, and therefore is forced to leave the town at the end. His failure illustrates that individuals’acts and dreams are supposed to rely on the social context and need to be accepted by the society before their talents are to be exercised. A minor figure from the lower-class oppressed by social hierarchy, Raffles rises from the disadvantaged to one manipulating powerful men. Though he succeeds to demonstrate his power, he loses his life and damages others’reputation and even involves innocent people. Defiance against society in this way has no constructive effects on society and individuals in it. Therefore, his act is not recommended. Dorothea challenges patriarchal constraints on women and conventional moral expectations of women’s behaviors. Finally she struggles out of her unfortunate marriage and gains independence and happiness. Moreover, she offers support and comfort to those in despair and helplessness rather than complain about her own difficulty, which helps her realize her value. She successfully challenges society and her sympathy provides motivation to the advance of fellow beings’lives and the whole society.By thorough text analysis of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, this thesis intends to examine Gorge Eliot’s study of three individuals from different social groups and illustrate that individuals must be put in the interrelationship between individuals and society if individuals’pursuits and dreams are to challenge social conventional conceptions and behaviors. Challenges George Eliot wants to propose must act in accordance with social expectation of morality and required maintenance of social order and positively facilitate healthy social development.