George Eliot and the Notion of Sympathy in Silas Marner and Middlemarch

Abstract

To better understand the unconventionality of George Eliot the writer and the originality of her notion of sympathy, it is fundamental to know George Eliot the woman. The first chapter of this dissertation gives a clear picture of George Eliot’s life to highlight and connect the personalities and the experiences that most influenced her way of thinking and her fiction. In the second chapter, Eliot’s translations of Strauss’s "The Life of Jesus", Feuerbach’s "The Essence of Christianity" and Spinoza’s "Ethics" are analysed and compared with the author’s ideas expressed in her letters and articles to recognise and reconstruct the originality of her conception of sympathy. Subsequently, through the literary analysis of "Silas Marner" and "Middlemarch", the role of sympathy as a transformative energy will be considered to see how it significantly changes the life of her characters in connecting them with the community and how it eventually transforms them into modern heroes. Finally, some reflections on Eliot’s sympathy will be drawn to see how it may benefit today’s society.