英国小説における女性の自立と結婚観 -E.Browning,G.Eliot,Lawrenceの場合-

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In the nineteenth century, the English middle classes-particularly the educated and conscientious-were beginning to realize that their great Empire, prosperous as a result of industrialization and imperialism, had its darker side as well: poverty in the country and a large population moving from the country into the city because of enclosure, the poverty and unhealthy conditions of the slums in the city,crimes,riots,strikes in the mines.... At the same time, an increasing emphasis on education and professionalism led to the spread of liberal ideas among the intellectual part of the upper and middle-class population. In such problematic circumstances, labour movements, attempts at social reform, and the women's suffragette movement rose individually and yet shared a similar sort of revolutionary sentiment against the conventional, classdominated, male-dominant society, for, even in middle-class society, a woman's chance of supporting herself and being independent was extremely limited. Unless she inherited enough money of her own, she could only get married or be a governess, a teacher or perhaps a writer if she were to retain some respectability. Once she were married, her money was not her own. Nor could she express her views publicly. Married or unmarried, women had almost no chance of directly influencing the society through her actions or speech. Yet women's position in the middle-class society had its ambiguous element. They were also part of the male-dominant society, had supported its ethics, and had sought to influence society, if they ever did, through their private influence on their husbands and sons. Thus women were both the rulers and the subjects of the middle-class ethics which bound both men and women in public and private life. To that extent, the meaning of marriage for women- and their views of marriage- reflects both the way society inflicted its limitation on individuals and the way individuals reacted to society in often ambiguous and conflicting manners. In Elizabeth Browning's Aurora Leigh, a novel in verse, we can find the basic form of such conflicts with a clear message of socio- historical cause behind them. Aurora rejects her cousin's proposal in spite of her love, and she makes a heroic speech, criticizing his `liberal'view that she should actively assist his social mission(that of social reform) rather than pursuing her own career as a poet. On the one hand, Aurora's voice is a criticism of liberalism which forces a snobbish view of intellectuals, which is of the ruling class and gender. On the other hand, Aurora's pain and loneliness, caused by her choice of vocation over love, shows her dividedness between two passions:(1) private and sexual, and(2) social and spiritual(in this case, artistic). I discuss how the later authors, particularly George Eliot and Lawrence, inherited this basic plot and developed it in their novels where marriage, love, and women's independence, set in the different but fundamentally common social backgrounds, are the major issues.
神戸女学院大学の論文
1991-03-00

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平井雅子
神戸女学院大学

英国小説における女性の自立と結婚観 -E.Browning,G.Eliot,Lawrenceの場合-

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