Transformation of Rage

Mourning and Creativity in George Eliot's Fiction

Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1994
• Print ISBN:
  9780814742358
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814743201
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

George Eliot has been widely praised both for the richness of her prose and the universality of her themes. In this compelling study, Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone goes beyond these traditional foci to examine the role of aggression in Eliot's fiction and to find its source in the author's unconscious sense of loss stemming from traumatic family separations and deaths during her childhood and adolescence. Johnstone demonstrates that Eliot's creative work was a constructive response to her sense of loss and that the repeating patterns in her novels reflect the process of release from her state of mourning for lost loved ones.

Index

Adam Bede, 3, 21, 22, 24–40, 41, 42, 43, 76–77, 86, 94, 105–6, 133, 183, 186, 187

"Address to Working Men," 123

Aggression, 2, 183–84

Bowlby on, 11

and characters in Bede, 29, 30–31, 32–34, 35–38, 184

Felix, 118–19, 184,

Mamer, 72, 73, 184,

Middlemarch, 146, 184,

Mill, 43–46, 48–59, 184,

Romola, 90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 99, 100, 106, 107, 184

and Eliot, 2, 26, 39, 66–67, 110, 124, 129

Kernberg on, 8, 92, 107

Kohut on, 9, 27, 45. See also Eliot, George, aggression/rage; Rage

Anniversary reaction, 3–4, 18, 70, 77, 81, 109, 126, 129, 188, 190, 191–92

Anxiety, 11, 71, 72, 73, 77, 80, 87, 109, 128, 185, 190. See also Separation anxiety

"Armgart," 155

Attachment, 3, 6, 10, 184. See also Bowlby, John

Attachment figure, 10, 71

Attachment theorists, 6

Bain, Alexander, 1

Blackwood, John (editor and publisher), and Bede, 24, 25

and Deronda, 159, 160, 178

and Felix, 112

and Magazine, 123

and Marner, 69, 87

and Mid-dlemarch, 133

and Mill, 41, 42

and Scenes, 19–21

and Theophrastus, 181–82

Bowlby, John, 3, 4, 10–11, 70, 79, 184, 185

on reactions to loss, 77, 80, 83, 108–9, 129, 192. See also Attachment; Loss; Separation Brabant, Robert, 62, 189

Bray, Charles and Cara, friendship with Eliot, 15–17, 62–63, 66, 76, 82, 124–25, 186,189

"Brother and Sister Sonnets," 22, 154

"Brother Jacob," 22

Chapman, John: editor of Westminster Review, 16–18, 63, 65, 109

relationship with Eliot, 16, 64, 107, 125, 186, 189

Chessick, Richard D., 92, 98, 100, 101

Christian Observer, 14

Comhill Magaz...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• ONE Self-Disorder and Aggression in Adam Bede
• TWO Narcissistic Rage in The Mill on the Floss
• THREE Loss, Anxiety, and Cure: Mourning and Creativity in Silas Marner
• FOUR Pathological Narcissism in Romola
• FIVE Fear of the Mob in Felix Holt
• SIX The Vast Wreck of Ambitious Ideals in Middlemarch
• SEVEN The Pattern of the Myth of Narcissus in Daniel Deronda
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Index