Honors Theses
Date of Award
2013
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Natalie Schroeder
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
This study focuses on the conflicts between society and the individual in three of George Eliot’s works: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda. This work analyzes the relationship between the individual and his or her society within these novels and uses its findings to illustrate the mechanism and goal of social evolution as it is depicted in these three works. Research was conducted by reading several primary and secondary texts. The primary texts included the three novels discussed, as well as many of Eliot’s non-fiction essays and Herbert Spencer’s essay The Social Organism, in order to place the novels within a larger discussion of the theory of social organicism. Secondary literary criticisms of George Eliot’s works were also consulted in order to place this study within the current discussion of social organicism as well as the individual’s place in society in George Eliot’s works. The research suggests that in these three novels George Eliot depicts social evolution as giving rise to the organic society in Herbert Spencer s sense as opposed to J. G. Herder’s sense. This study argues that in Adam Bede there is a fundamental and necessary conflict between society and the individual, that in The Mill on the Floss this conflict is revealed to be the very mechanism by which societies evolve, and that in Daniel Deronda George Eliot suggests that Spenserian organicism, in which the needs of the individual are valued above those of the a society, is the final goal of this social evolution.
Recommended Citation
Wilson, Meredith Leigh, "Self Vs. Society: The Essential Antagonism Between Society and the Individual In Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda" (2013). Honors Theses. 2461.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/2461
Accessibility Status
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