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This essay is a study of George Eliot's moral vision, specifically the conflict between moral inflexibility and flexibility, which is characteristic of the artistic modernism that depicts reality as it is. George Eliot's moral vision is composed of an inflexibility which insists on absolute moral norms and also of a flexibility which questions the absoluteness of the norms and allows judgements to be determined at least in part by the situation and in part by the inner state of conscience. George Eliot admits the existence of moral norms, but she is skeptical of the norm's absoluteness, for when a moral loses its value, the moral norm degrades into mechanical actions for hypocritical ritual. As the absoluteness of the moral norm fades away through passage of time and change of environment and psychological state of the man, a flexible position of the moral norm is required in reality. Because George Eliot doubts there are absolute moral norms, she does not set a moral standard by which to judge her characters, nor does she give any central character absolute moral authority. Especially, most of her characters in Middlemarch fail to find an ideal moral vision. Instead, they learn the profundity of the morality. Middlemarch concludes that moral norms have value only when a person's emotions and inner state have been cooperated. In this context, we can see that George Eliot recognizes the importance of people's sympathy and understanding of human limitations and emotions. George Eliot's complex and multiple moral visions are informed with such recognition. Since the absoluteness of moral norms on good and evil has been denied, the conclusion can only be relative or ambiguous. This is why the reader can enjoy her novels, even though her works deals with abstruse ethical and philosophical conceptions.

키워드

조지 앨리엇 감정 선 『미들마치 도덕 도덕덕 비전 공감 George Eliot feeling good Middlemarch morality moral visions sympathy

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• 유종인 [ Yoo, Chong-In | 한양대학교 영미언어문화학부 교수 ]

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