Dorothea’s Self-realization In Middlemarch

The early nineteenth-century author George Eliot’s Middlemarch is worthy of contemporary attention and study for its insightful exploration of Women Movement and the marriage views of Women in the Victorian Age.This thesis aims to put the study of literature under the specific and historical background.At the same time,this thesis is designed to further explore the relationship between work and author by inserting the author’s view when analyze the work.By analyzing the female’s assertion and social situation in the Victorian Age,the thesis aims to point out that Dorothea Brooke is an ambivalent woman who is both rebellious and conservative.Furthermore,this thesis also proposes that Dorothea’s ambivalent image reflects George Eliot’s ambivalent views on Women Question and Women Movement,which is of great meanings to the emancipation of women in modern times.As the classic work completed in George Eliot’s maturity age,Middlemarch took a social and historical insight in presenting the struggles that female have been through to fight for self-cultivation and self-assertion in the ever-changing society in which modernity was taking place of tradition.This thesis presents George Eliot’s ambivalent views on Women Question and Women Movement which could be seen in the Middlemarch’s heroine Dorothea who had an ambivalent character and held an ambivalent attitude toward marriage,which proves George Eliot’s historical and unique insight on Women Question through her unique thoughts on female’s selfassertion and emancipation.