『급진주의자 필릭스 홀트』연구: 페미니즘적 고찰 = A Feminist Approach to Felix Holt, The Radical

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines Felix Holt, the Radical from the perspective of psychological developmental theonsts of 1980s such as Nancy Chodorow and Jean Baker Miller. All these psychological theorists argue that Sigmund Freud is prejudiced when he suggests a hypothesis concerned about the psychological developments of a boy and a girl. His hypothesis is that the boy`s psychological development is normnal and natural because he achieves his independence from his mother without difficulty while a girl clings to her mother failing to achieve her detachment from her mother. So the girl`s psychological development is inferior, immature, or problematic according to Freud. However, these new psychological theorists insist that the feminine characteristics such as attachment, intimate relationship, mutual dependence shown in the woman`s psychological development are not weak points but strong points for human existence. Josephine Donovan calls feminism of these new psychological theorists as cultural feminism which has existed along with Enlightenment liberal feminism from the nineteenth-century on. Using the term of Donovan`s cultural femlinism I approach George Eliot`s cultural feminism of Felix Holt, the Radical. Especially I pay attention to how Esther Lyon, the heroine of the novel, develops morally from a conventional woman who wants to become a lady of the upper class society to a moral being who practices her feminine values for herself and for her society actively.