A Return To Realistic Life

George Eliot(1819-1880)is a distinguished English woman writer in the nineteenth century,and occupies an important position in English literature and even in world literature.In her writing career,Eliot writes many works,and her masterpiece Middlemarch represents the life scene with a deep insight of the British provincial town Middlemarch.The novel has aroused wide concern of critics since its publication,but with a mixed reputation.Research by domestic and foreign scholars is mainly embodied in feminism,narratology and so on.However,few critics study it from the perspective of myth and archetypal criticism.Therefore,this thesis sets Middlemarch within the framework of myth-archetypal criticism to analyze the archetypal characters and archetypal mythoi of the novel,and to explore the character and fate of the protagonists in the novel by using close reading as the research method.Based on Frye’s Archetypal Criticism,this thesis tries to interpret the character and fate of the protagonists in Middlemarch from two aspects of archetypal characters and archetypal mythoi.For one thing,on archetypal characters,this thesis holds that the archetype of the heroine Dorothea is Antigone as well as Ariadne.Antigone’s adherence to Christian doctrine fits in with Dorothea’s asceticism and altruism;Ariadne’s “thread” and her forsaken plight echo the situation of Dorothea.And the archetype of the hero Lydgate is Heracles.He has lofty ideals in his career,but is also in face of the choice of temptation,and he has a characteristic of indulging in pleasure and an impetuous disposition.For another,on archetypal mythoi,this thesis generates that the fate of Dorothea and Lydgate is the reflection of Frye’s narrative structure of “mythos of romance” and “mythos of tragedy”.The heroine in her quest of love is confronted with the conflict,and through continuous struggle against the external world,she overcomes a hard adventure,and finally obtains happiness.The hero in his quest for identity fails to fight due to the external conflict brought about by his arrogance and the wrong choice of marriage,eventually his abandonment of his ideal is signified by his exile,and the loss of his identity declares his tragic fate.The process of the protagonists’ quest is essentially the one of the struggle and reconciliation between themselves and the external world.Their fate depends on their character,environment and also their free choice.And in the complicated social network,the act of the protagonists is confined by many factors.With their caring love for others they return to realistic life and thus gain the new meaning of life.