Development of Maggie’s Morality in The Mill on the Floss

1、development of maggies morality in the mill on the flossa thesis presented to thefaculty of foreign language departmentxingtai college in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree bachelor of artsbywang xumingmarch，2011acknowledgementsmy deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to prof

2、essor yang guixia, my supervisor, for her/his constant encouragement and guidance. she/he has walked me through all the stages of the writing of this thesis. without her/his consistent and illuminating instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form. second, i would like to express

3、my heartfelt gratitude to professor zhang shuju, who led me into the world of literature. i am also greatly indebted to the professors and teachers at the department of english: professor shen yuge, professor zhang shaojuan, who have instructed and helped me a lot in the past two years. last my than

4、ks would go to my beloved family for their loving considerations and great confidence in me all through these years. i also owe my sincere gratitude to my friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult cour

5、se of the thesis. contentsabstract (in chinese)iabstract (in english) .iiintroduction. 1i. egocentric childhood.2 a. maggies nature of egotism.2 b. maggies strong desire for love.3ii. conflicts between morality and desire.6 a. maggies responsibility and love.6b. maggies obedience and rebellion.7iii.

6、 maggies sublimation of morality.10 a. renunciation of her love for others sake.10b. maggies sacrifice of herself to rescue tom.11conclusion.14notes.15bibliography16摘 要本文主要探究了麦琪的道德成长过程，在这一过程中，她从利己主义逐步转变到利他主义，通过不断的自我教育，学会了自我放弃。从道德的盲目到自己道德体系的建立，她经历了三个阶段。第一个阶段是她的以自我为中心的童年，她是一个冲动且反叛的女孩，在爸爸和哥哥的保护下她过着无忧无虑

7、的生活。她只关心自己的爱，并且渴望被爱；第二个阶段是家庭变故后的时期，麦琪遇到了很多诱惑，自己在道德和欲望面前不断进行抉择，在选择中不断的觉醒和成长，一步一步建立自己的道德体系；最后的一个阶段是她为了家庭和别人的利益，放弃了自己的爱情。虽然最后在洪水中和哥哥死在了一起，但也正是此时她的道德得到了升华，建立了自己的道德体系，塑造了一个完整的自我。关键词：弗洛斯河上的磨坊；道德观；自我主义；自我放弃：升华abstractthis paper mainly explores the development of maggies morality. in the process of her mora

8、l development, she experiences from egocentric to self-recognition. from moral blindness to a whole moral system of her own, she undergoes three stages. the first stage is her egocentric childhood. she is an impulsive and rebellious girl. whatever she does, her father and brother will protect and fo

9、rgive her. so she never worries about her behaviors and forms an egotism consciousness. she only wants to love and be loved. the second is the time of her fathers bankruptcy and illness. she undergoes a series of conflicts between her morality and desire, and she has to make a choice. in the process

10、 of choices, she is also growing up and building her own morality. the last stage is her renunciation of her love for the sake of others. though she dies together with her brother in the flood, she makes her morality sublimated at this very moment. finally, she builds a whole moral system and shapes

11、 a whole self.key words: the mill on the floss, morality, egotism, self-recognition, sublimation16introductionanyone who has studied the history of victoria novel knows about george eliot, one of the greatest english novelists in the 19th century. george eliot is the pen-name of mary anne evans. for

12、 a good sense at philosophy and art, she created a few novels that revealed the human spirit world and laid a foundation for the modern psychological novels. her talents in art made her become an important writer in english literary history, even in the literary history of world. her theme concerns

13、moral. f. r. leavis highly praised her due to her concerning on moral in her works and placed eliot in a position that equally famous to jane austen, henry james and d. h. lawrence. british female writer, virginia woolf, considers her as the pride and model of the female and regards her novels as th

14、e very few good novels for the adult in the 19th century. in most of eliots novels, the main character would experience a series of development on morality, like maggie in the mill on the floss, hetty in adam bede and marner in silas marner. eliot held that the novel should be a moralized fable, the

15、 last word of a philosophy endeavoring to teach by example. based on this belief, eliot meant for her novels to reflect a moral struggle. her novels describe a moral development that the egocentric major characters make self-renunciation decisions for the sake of others. obviously, the moral develop

16、ment from self-assertion to self-renunciation is the lasting theme in eliots novel. the mill on the floss is one of the representations. this paper will analyze maggies moral development in the mill on the floss.i. egocentric childhooda. maggies nature of egotismfrom the perspective of the adult, eg

17、otism is not accepted. a certain outer environment makes the existence of maggies egotism possible. in fact, maggie and tom, in their childhood, enjoy entirely their gladness, as if they live in the eden garden without any pain and trauma. eliot implied the eden-like life in her description. “the ru

18、sh of the water and the booming of the mill bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. they are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond.” in maggies terms, the self is the very center in childrens world. she enjoys the pure pleasure

19、with tom and never thinks of the fact that she will grow up and have to learn self-renunciation. in maggies opinion, the world will never change and they will never grow up. her individuality is reflected in her unreserved manner of relating to objects around her. as the beginning of the novel, she

20、is captivated by the mills movement: “now i can turn my eyes towards the mill again, and watch the unrest wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. that little girl is watching it too: “she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since i paused on the bridge. and tha

21、t queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous, because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement.” maggie is attracted by the motion of the mill and its diamond jets of water. she is so exci

22、ted that she has not noticed objective detachment from it. she obviously even has no sense of yap barking at her, being jealous that her attention is not fixed on him. just like her father, maggie makes the mill as a part of herself. her response to it is imaginative and total. all her senses are al

23、ive to the sounds and smells of grinding, and to the feel of the great heaps of grain that she likes to slide down repeatedly when she is playing in it. even her hair takes in the powder that flying in the air from the flour. we can see that her imaginative absorption of the mill is also her enjoyme

24、nt of her individuality and freedom. maggie has strong sense of egotism, and it makes her an impulsive, spontaneous, rebellious and self-centered girl. it is obvious that the most character of her egotism is her need to be loved and acknowledged. if her need cannot be met, maggie will act rebellious

25、ly and impulsively. so she is unreachable, a mistake of nature, an idiot because of this. in her mothers eye, she is a “pythons,” “a skye terrier,” a “wild thing” and a “miss spitfire”. in fact, maggie is none of these things inherently. she is only so young that she is not conscious of the renuncia

26、tion and only pursues her natural self.b. maggies strong desire for love we can see maggies individuality in her resistance to the control that her family attempts to exercise over her. in order to stress maggies rebellion, eliot created a different girl who has two dark eyes, straight and black hai

27、r and brown skin on purpose. her father has tried to make her black hair curl but in vain. when the aunts visit the tullivers, maggies uncurl hair becomes the object of the discussion. maggies mother is so ashamed of her daughters looking that she force maggie to comb her hair: “go and get your hair

28、 brushed-do, for shame”. no doubt, mrs. tullivers orders spoils maggies dream of being acknowledged, loved and being the center of the family. there is no surprise that maggie rebel it naturally. she comes upstairs and let tom help her to cut her hair. as a result, her dream of being the center of t

29、he family is ruined totally because tom laughs at her after her hair cut. maggie felt an unexpected pang. she had thought beforehand chiefly of her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by t

30、his very decided course of action: she didnt want her hair to look prettythat was out of the questions he only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. but now, when tom began to laugh at her, and say she like the idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. she

31、looked in the glass, and still tom laughed and clapped his hands, and maggies flushed cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little. we can see that maggie is impulsive, eager to be acknowledged and rebellious from the quotation above. she wants to be the center of all the people and desire

32、s to be accepted by both children and adults around her. however, faced the accusation of others, she does not think of self-recognition but rebellion in extreme way out her inherent egotism. maggies cousin, lucy, is just opposite to maggie. lucy is the representative of the social culture, namely,

33、she is the ideal of the moral world. because maggie against the traditional values, she does not accept such moral ideal unconsciously. as soon as i came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, i shut it up, and determined to read no further. i foresaw that that light complexioned girl w

34、ould win away all the love from corinne and make her miserable. im determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry away all the happiness. i should begin to have prejudice against them. if you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman triumphs, would restore the balance

35、 the blond-haired woman above is lucy, and the dark woman is maggie in some sense. in her opinion, she is eager to conquer the blond-haired woman, the representative of the social value. the relationship between her and tom also reflects her impulsiveness and self-centeredness. she loves tom very mu

36、ch and is not hesitant to acknowledge it. maggie always strangles him with kisses and hugs when tom comes back after school. maggie tells the mill operator, luke, which she hopes to keep house for tom when they leave home. she loves tom so dearly that she hopes to live together with tom in the house

37、 forever. her feeling is certainly open and unrestrained. she just considers herself and her feelings, but does not consider others feelings and the reality. maggies individuality may also be seen in her queen dream. she often dreams that she would be the queen in some world. “she was fond of fancyi

38、ng a world where the people ever got any larger than children of their own age, and she makes the queen of it just like lucy, with a little crown on her head, and a little scepter in her hand. . . . only the queen was maggie her self in lucys form.” wanting to be the queen is the reflection of egoti

39、sm while the queen in lucys form reveals maggies need to be acknowledged by the society. maggies fancy proves that she wants to keep her egotistic nature and to be accepted by others at the same time. it seems contradictive but it makes maggies egotist nature convincing. maggies childhood is marked

40、by the strong need to be loved and acknowledged, which is one aspect of her egotism. generally speaking, maggie, in her childhood, lacks all self-knowledge. having no guiding principles, she embraces an illusory life and gets locked up completely in herself. she is engrossed in the pursuit of her ha

41、ppiness and is always losing herself in the day-dreams of the queen. maggie at this period is undoubtedly immature and inexperienced but she refuses to understand things.ii. conflicts between morality and desire a. maggies responsibility and loveafter reading the book of thomas kempis, maggie begins

42、 to learn the key of the responsibility or duty. the book helps her look for the key of the duty and leads her to get out of the egotistic world. she steps into a new period in her life.know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world if thou seekest this or that, and wou

43、ldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thous shalt never be quiet nor free from care: for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be somethat will cross theeit is but little thou sufferest in comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so stro

44、ngly pempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of others, that thou may set the easier bear thy little adversities. and if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof bless

45、ed are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth outwardly, but unto the truth, which teacheth inwardly these words awake her soul. she seems to find the key of the

46、responsibility. she thinks that she can get real happiness if she is able to leave herself, and go out of herself and maintain nothing of self-love. she steps an important step to the self-renunciation and altruism. maggies choice process of her own love, in fact, is the choice process of self-renun

47、ciation in the pain and choice of her responsibilities and obligations. just as what eliot says: “i am honest and fair, not because i want to live in another world, but because i am treated unfairly after the dishonest, i do not want others to suffer the same fate.” because of maggies honesty and fa

48、irness that drives her to choose responsibility and give up her love. maggie has no courage to pursue her love and happiness in the face of moral standards. philip is the only person who really understands and cares about her in maggies low spirit period. after she repressed herself for a long time,

49、 her spirit and mind is extremely dry and empty, which makes her do not know what to do before him. in the lonely world, maggie finds out her spiritual sustenance, and this temptation is irresistible. philips emergence makes her begin a new life, and her drying soul is moistened again. only with him

50、, maggies nature could shine through, and that is her real self. but maggies feelings to him just like a swing balance that she cannot find a lasting balance point, because he is the son of her fathers enemy, her brother will not allow them to interact. if she continues to interact with him, she wil

51、l hurt the feelings of her brother. maggie does not want to run counter to the wishes of his brother. she tried to get out of the plight, and finally she refused philip. in order not to hurt her brothers feelings, she gives up her relations with philip. maggie leaves st.oggs for two years and tries

52、her best to get back the ascetic life after separation from philip. unfortunately, maggie falls in love with stephen who has showed his love to lucy. they are loved and attracted by each other at their first sight. to stephen, maggie is really special with her beauty. in maggies eyes, stephen is gen

53、tle and handsome. stephen makes her feel strange in a new way. in order not to hurt her cousin sister lucy, she has to give it up though she loves stephen very much. from these points we can conclude that she learns self-renunciation. she could choose love, but she chooses her responsibility. she be

54、gins to self-recognize. that egocentric girl has gone. her moral gains a great development.b. maggies obedience and rebellion this reality world seems full of lots of conflicts to maggie. she wants to love from the family when her father and brother are indifferent to her for the bankruptcy; she lik

55、es philip while he is the son of her fathers enemy. she is fond of stephen while she is going to marry her cousin lucy. if she wants to keep a close relationship with philip for her own happiness and pleasure, she has to hurt and resist her father and brother because they hate mr.wakem, philips fath

56、er so much. if she wants to go on their feelings with stephen, she has to hurt her cousin lucy, to bear the public opinion and even dishonor the family. there always full of conflicts on her way to her happiness.maggies brother tom is the center of maggies life in their young ages. maggies emotion i

57、s changing around tom. though maggie grew up, brothers status in her life still has not wavered. however, there emerges an obedience and resistance conflict between their relations. in toms moral beliefs, he puts himself as a hero to save the family; maggies obedience to him is no doubt. toms love is only in the form of his own. his love to maggie is guided by a principle that he thinks his love is good for her. this is toms standards, but also the towns social norms at that time. tom is rigid and does not know how to modify, which de