Nineteenth-Century Psychoanalysis of George Eliot’s Major Characters in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Middlemarch

Abstract

While most contemporary psychoanalysts use the Freudian and post-Freudian psychological theories to analyze literary works, the focus of this article is using the pre-Freudian, nineteenth-century psychology to analyze George Eliot's (Mary Ann Evans) major characters in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. The article will attempt to explain Eliot's characters to the reader from within and without: their motives and impulses on one hand and the external forces shaping them on the other. The basic assumption of this article is that George Eliot utilized the nineteenth-century psychological theories known to her to construct her characters. She experimented some of the ideas of Association psychology to show her characters' psychological flaws, limitations, and to maintain their humanness.