earticle

영어

Feminism has been one of the major discourses across disciplines throughout the twentieth century. By this powerful reawakening movement, forgotten or erased voices of females could be restored, and the quality of human life and humanistic resources have become richer. Some radical feminists, however, have pushed their political, as well as theoretical, standpoints far to the extremes that, by all their rights and benefits, women should construct a counter-society of women to the present patriarchy. Mary Daly, for example, voices the main tenor of this radical feminism. In her Pure Lust, she maintains that women should live separately from men because they cannot achieve the goal of becoming the true, natural women, "hags," when with men around. This radical feminism, however, seems to be too political because women as well as men should live together, as independent beings, in a community. George Eliot's A&m-Be& provides a model text that illustrates my argument. Traditionally, Eliot has been regarded as ambivalent toward woman issues. However, her first successful novel well reflects her deep thought about the issues. Main female characters, Hetty Sorrel, Dinah Moms, and Mrs. Poyser, are all incomplete feminists in a sense, and their incompleteness derives from thc faulted values of their own community. The ethics or values of the community, in other words, govern the lives of its members. Although the values of the community are male-oriented and authoritative, no one can live away from it. What is left in the end in the reader's mind is the keen awareness of the injustice or distortion in the values that the community upholds. Eliot's ambivalence toward woman issues is due to this clear recognition of the difficulties in approaching the issues within the contemporary society.