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ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8481-7103
Access Type
Open Access Thesis
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
English
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2022
Month Degree Awarded
May
Abstract
This thesis assesses the centrality of care relationships in George Eliot’s Middlemarch and, by doing so, seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of individual and collective morality. Using the ethics of care as a methodological framework to acknowledge the importance of care acts and successful care relations – especially those complicated by the presence of dichotomized socioeconomic hierarchies – will allow readers to engage more fully with this text, its author, her relations, her characters, and the community of readers; reading Eliot’s work from this lens will allow us to validate every interaction, every thread of connectedness, and every act of care to better understand Eliot’s webs of relation. This thesis argues that it is the atypical or unexpected social figure that arises as the most effective care practitioner, regardless of social class. In order to arrive at this point, it will provide a foundational understanding of both care ethics – from the work of Nel Noddings to that of more contemporary theorists like Talia Schaffer and Sandra Laugier – and the economic theories circulating during Eliot’s time – Smithian, Ruskinian, and Socialist. Through an assessment of Dorothea Brooke, Fred Vincy, Mary Garth, and others within the Middlemarch community, this thesis integrates varying notions of political economy, reciprocity, engrossment, and genuine care for both compensated or uncompensated care acts. By doing so, it strives to privilege the success of authentic care, thereby triumphing the value of relationships over personal gain or ambition.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/28612204
First Advisor
Suzanne Daly
Second Advisor
Lise Sanders
Third Advisor
Randall Knoper
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Newman, Madison V., "An Economy of Care: George Eliot's Middlemarch and Feminist Care Ethics" (2022). Masters Theses. 1210.
https://doi.org/10.7275/28612204
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/1210
Included in
Economic Theory Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Feminist Philosophy Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Women's Studies Commons