INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE VERSUS SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND MIDDLEMARCH
Keywords:
Social conscience, societal expectations, moral responsibility, individual ethics, collective morality, class structure, marriage as a social institution, gender roles, female agency, social reform, moral realism, free indirect discourse, Victorian society, Regency society, personal growth, institutional constraint, social hierarchy, ethical limitation, realism vs irony.Abstract
This study investigates the conflict between the moral autonomy of the individual and the restrictive socio-economic structures of 19th-century England as depicted in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871). By analyzing Elizabeth Bennet and Dorothea Brooke, the paper explores how female conscience navigates the "marriage market" and Victorian provincialism. Using comparative literary analysis, the research demonstrates that while Austen’s protagonist achieves a harmonious integration into society, Eliot’s heroine faces a "fragmented" victory, highlighting the evolution of realism from the Regency to the mid-Victorian era.
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