Female Characters In 19 Th Century British And Romanian Fiction

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. 19th CENTURY FICTION AND THE TRADITION…………………………….p.5

I.1. Female characters in 19th century English literature…………………………………………p.10

I.2. Female characters in 19th century Romanian literature……………………………………..p.14

CHAPTER II. PORTRAYAL OF FEMALE CHARACTERS: THE MILL ON THE FLOSS vs. MARA……………………………………………………………………………………………………….p.20

II.1. The struggle of a woman in Victorian society………………………………………………..p.20

II.2. Heroism as revelation of female nature………………………………………………………….p.29

CHAPTER III. FEMALE IDENTITY- a text study……………………………………………………….p.33

CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………………………………………….p.42

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………………… p.44

INTRODUCTION

If the poets of the Medieval Era sung the beauty of life, the joy to live and to love, the 19th century literature comes as a punch in the face. Even literary writings with an emotional charge are shadowed by a bitter irony. Victorian’s authors do not hesitate to use their best weapon – the writing – in rendering the faults of a society on the brink of capitalization.

Whoever knows a little about George Eliot’s life can easily perceive in her novels several autobiographical information and remark her craftsman shift. Thus, in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, fiction and reality pass together like the colors of a painter. The final panorama of the four novels depicts the provincial life with its narrow- minded people invaded by the overwhelming process of industrialization. Like any other change, industrial development has its victims and its time servers. A new world order is imposed by a new social class: the bankers gain supremacy over the aristocracy.

In what the women’s status regards, an improvement is out of the question. Business is exclusively a men’s privilege that consolidated his superior position. The world still belongs to them due to the belief that he is the one endowed with mind, whereas the woman is assumed to act accordingly to her heart’s weakness.

In the Romanian literature of the 19th century an important representative is Ioan Slavici with his novel Mara. In this novel he presents the habits and the customs of the people from Ardeal, a world characterized by important moral values, such as the good and the truth, honesty and justice. Ioan Slavici is a moralist, a psychologist, a creator of typologies. In his entire work, Slavici is pleading for a moral poise, for thrift and wisdom, for happiness; any departure from these tenets is severely punished by the author.

The first chapter of this work entitled 19th Century Fiction and the tradition includes social-historical information and pictures the premises on which the Victorian society was built. These aspects play a major role for the Victorian writers, too, who find in them an awesome spring for their literary creation. The economical blooming which characterizes the 19th century provides the financial resources for several extraordinary inventions. Moreover, scientists seriously drive away, with their theories, the Christian spirit, thus marking the beginning of capitalism.

Chapter two – Portrayal of female characters: The Mill on the Floss vs. Mara– concentrates on the important functions of a woman, and sets the limits of her existence in a men’s universe. It presents the two main characters of the two novels in discussion: Maggie Tulliver and Mara by debating on the struggle of a woman in the Victorian society, and the heroism as a revelation of the human nature.

With George Eliot – A spokesman of Victorianism, we come closer to our main aim. Details from George Eliot’s personal life testify the realism of her novels. Our preference for George Eliot is due first of all to her importance in the history of literature. She represents the voice that announces new perspectives in the course of literature. Living in times marked by revolutionary events, she had the sense to take the pulse of the English society and to embroider on it all sorts of human typologies.

Eliot’s intellectual concerns reached Freud’s theories, and directed her preoccupations towards man’s psychological background. For this she is said to have made the transition to modernism. We might even say she is a master in creating models of mind. As much as simple the decorum might be, and no matter how common the characters might look, Eliot’s novels bring out man’s inner fight i.e. problems of consciousness that will be the basis for the modern writers.

The Mill on the Floss gathers autobiographical information which mould on the Victorian structure. Among the four members of the Tullivers we distinguish several human typologies. In fact, the gap between generations is filled by the central events of the 19th century, the process of industrialization. The elder embody the old fashioned mill – owner, respectively the old fashion woman totally under man’s will. Maggie and Tom Tulliver overturn the old creeds: Maggie tries her best to affirm her intelligence, while Tom disregards the study of the classics in the favor of a mercantile occupation. This reveals the pragmatism of the new world order.

With Ioan Slavici and his novel Mara we come closer to the Biedermaier society’s confrontation with an ever-expanding market-economy, which transforms the once idealized home and anchor of social stability in a way that exposes it to the dangers of the outside world and its rampant materialism.

The novel’s narrative plot situates the impoverished widow Mara and her two children, daughter Persida and son Trica, at the heart of the changing landscape of Banat, a border region of western Transylvania that was at the time of the narrative under Austrian control. Banat has traditionally evinced a hybrid Central Eastern European identity and a baroque approach to culture. Already in the 18th century, the area could boast a developed system of mining, river transportation, sewage systems and canals, trade companies. A vast panorama of mid-nineteenth century Banat, Mara is a chronicle of the region’s multiethnic- Romanian, German, Hungarian, Serbian- social context, an interface of fiction and reality woven into one dramatic story meant to highlight the area’s intersections of economic interest, as well as those of religious, sexual and ethnic identities.

Chapter three of the present work is a text study and focuses on the female identity of the characters in the two novels.

Every period has its voices and its particularities. Whether Romanticism, Victorianism or Modernism, each literary current echoes the historical background. Both humanist sciences, history and literature interconnect: history adorns with the literary language, while fiction resorts to historical information. It is after this formula that George Eliot shapes her literary creation.

CHAPTER I

19th CENTURY FICTION AND THE TRADITION

Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 until 1901, but the term ‘the Victorian Age’ is sometimes applied to the period from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. In literature the period starts with the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832, and sometimes goes up to 1914.

When Victoria became Queen the monarchy was not very popular. There were many social problems: members of the working class were severely punished if they wanted to join together in trade unions; the Corn Laws kept the price of bread high; the Chartist movement wanted votes for all and social reforms. Britain became the richest manufacturing country in the world. The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851 became the high point of this worldwide success; the colonies and Empire were a huge market for Britain’s products.

But in the 1850s several events began to end this success. The Crimean War (1854-6), Britain’s first war for forty years, was not a success and it was the first war to be reported daily in the newspapers. In India, the Indian Mutiny of 1857 showed that all was not well in the colonies. In 1859 the beliefs of the age were questioned in the book On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, which showed that man was descended from apes.

“Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, and the Queen was a widow for forty years. The prime ministers for most of the second half of the century were either William Gladstone or Benjamin Disraeli. There were many protests against the monarchy, and a strong republican movement grew in the 1870s. Disraeli challenged this by building up the image of the Queen and she became Empress of India. As the problems of Victorian society increased, she came more and more to be a symbol of Britain, just as Queen Elizabeth was in the late sixteenth century”.

The move towards democracy, giving the vote to all men over twenty-one, continues after the first Reform Act in 1832 with another Act in 1867, but the slow process was not completed until women got the vote in 1928.

This was an age of extremes: the working classes were poor, and lived and worked in terrible circumstances; the middle classes grew rich and comfortable. There were double standards in this society. Many writers used their works to show that, although on the surface this was a successful society, below the surface there were many problems.

The Victorian Age established the predominance of the novel as the best suited literary form to express feelings, conflicts of the epoch. The novel became what the poetry and drama had been in previous ages. Consequently, the demand of the reading public for novels was becoming larger than ever before.

The Victorian novel is the meeting place of the beginnings, when one was aware of a mixture of preceding literary forms and devices rather than of a well constituted genre and the novel as an art form, as it emerged in the first decades of the 20th century. In that respect, the 19th century novel is the common ground of Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) and Henry James (1843-1916), as it received the heritage of the former and witnessed the presence and innovations of the latter.

The writers who reshaped the novel: Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce lived and created within the Victorian Age and when reshaping the novel, they explored some tendencies that had already become manifest in reaching its content and form with new elements. “M. Bakhtin shows that the novel reflects more profoundly and essentially, with greater sensitiveness and rapidity the changing social life itself. The novel has become the main hero of the drama, of literary evolution in modern times, just because it expresses in the best way the evolution of the new world. It anticipates the future evolution of the whole literature; b for novels was becoming larger than ever before.

The dominant tendency in the Victorian novel is realism, in the sense of a marked necessity of reflecting truth: social, economic, or individual, in art and of a rigorous documentation undertaken by the writer following the example of the man of science. Charles Dickens started The Commission Reports on Labour Conditions and Sanitation; Charlotte Bronte consulted old newspaper files about the Luddite movement to depict the content in Shirley, while Elisabeth Gaskell extended a field of fiction by presenting the life of the workers in Manchester. This new discipline in rendering truth, the special accuracy in the reflection of the reality was determined by the social and economic conditions of the epoch, but it was also due to the development of sciences, of biology and of mathematics in particular, whose sphere of influence was ever increasing.

Alongside this search for truth there appeared a reaction against the romanticism and idealisation of life to be found in the Silver Fork School, represented by some minor novelists of the epoch. The reaction against the extravagantly romantic novel, fairy-tale like meant to entertain, was found in William M. Thackeray, paradise of the romantic historical novel in his burlesque and in George Eliot’s Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.

A novel gained a more elevated status, ceasing to be a mere entertainment and becoming a debate on the urgent matters of the day. Although novel writing and criticism did not have serious theoretical principles to go by, this strong aspiration towards truth, this realism of a special kind which attracted the creative efforts of the most gifted writers of the epoch and its propensity to stimulate debate as well as meditation on the important matters of the epoch definitely confirmed the novel a high prestige and a new artistic quality. “The striving to make the novel topical and lively through debates on the pressing problems of the day is well illustrated by Elisabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) about Manchester life in the so-called ‘hungry 40s’ a period of great distress in the industrial districts. Oliver Twist depicted the underworld without any idealisation. The Victorian novel extended the social, spiritual and geographical area of fiction and naturally led to the diminishing of the Romantic fiction of high-life. The writers confronted themselves to the tastes and demands of the public at large because the development of magazines, the number of readers was steadily increasing. This probably accounts for the fact that certain conflicts truthfully rendered in the Victorian novel were solved in a romantic, sensational and unmotivated way, as the public desired”.

The monthly part issue form of publication in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, Vanity Fair, Middlemarch by G. Eliot, as well as the periodical novel extended the reading public by spreading fiction throughout the country and lowered its cost. The form of publication naturally affected the very structure of the novel. Both part issue and serialization enhanced the role of the suspense. Readers wrote to writers and magazines expressing their wish regarding destinies of heroes and evolution of plot. This led to a close cooperation writer-reader. It was strengthened by the fact that writers wrote about matters readers were concerned with. The principles of selection, the standards and values were commonly shared. A plot pattern was made up of incidents and situations which were considered to matter in human life equally by writers and readers.

The Victorian novel is generally based on the chronological presentation of the hero’s life within an episodic and well-knit plot; there were two methods of the character’s description:

the character is shadowed; he/she gradually emerges as a living personality through

his reactions, through a chronological series of events;

the writer first gives a descriptive portrait of the hero to be proven or disproven by

events.

In this simple adventure story the writer either puts the character into the story, or he arranges the story in such a way that a character emerges.

Joseph Warren Beach points out three major tendencies of the Victorian novel:

moral edification: the novelist wants to teach lessons of virtue, to impose morals and

manners by his allegiance to a strict code of ethical value. The balance is in the end often restored through poetic justice or happy ending.

discussion of the character with the reader in William M. Thackeray: the author

comments as in a private conversation with the reader on the nature and actions of the hero, betraying some secrets in moments of sentimental reminiscences or nostalgic.

an insistence on the ways in which actions illustrate human nature in general; it was

assumed that the character’s moral and intellectual state was reflected in his behaviour and visible action.

“The great Victorians themselves were not untouched by foreign influence. The influence of Flaubert, Maupassant, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, can be seen in the novels and literary views of Henry James and Joseph Conrad. In the history of the English literature it is considered that from 1832-1875 realism in England may be said to have developed under influences exclusively indigenous.”

There were two generations of Victorian novelists:

William M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Elisabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, The

Bronte Sisters, George Eliot; writers remained close to the readers, they were the spokesmen of the epoch writing about wished-for topics; their works were critical of the age, confidence in progress and in moral improvement.

Samuel Butler, George Meredith, Thomas Hardy; these novelists turned against

Victorian authority and orthodoxy and no longer had confidence in the Victorian assumptions; a mood of satire and permeated their works, which were strikingly frank and cynical. “These representatives, as well as George Eliot, who marked the transition to modernism, were open to European literature and philosophy and to the achievements of science. Their works were less popular than those of the writers of the first generation”.

“The 19th century was the great age of the English novel, firstly because this essentially middle class form of literary art was bound to flourish increasingly as the middle class rose in power and importance; secondly, because of the steady increase in number of the reading public with the growth of landing libraries, the development of publishing in the modern sense; and thirdly because the novel was the vehicle best equipped to present a picture of life lived in a given society against a stable background of social and moral values by people who were recognisably like the people encountered by readers. This was a kind of picture of life the middle class reader wanted to read about. The desire to see the fundamental problems of human experience projected imaginatively and symbolically through the presentation of great figures acting out their destiny on the grand scale is lacking in the typical Victorian novel reader. The Victorian novel reader did not want to be entertained and in a sense he wanted to escape, but he wanted to be entertained with a minimum of literary convention, a minimum ‘aesthetic distance’, and in a sense he wanted to escape, he wanted to be close to what he was reading about and to have as little ‘suspension of disbelief’ as possible, to pretend indeed that literature was journalism, that fiction was history, a transcript of life as it was happening around him, without the modifying effect of literary form and imagination. The ordinary reader may only have had this illusion of what he was reading actually being that. In fact, the great Victorian novelists often created complexes of symbolic meaning that reached far deeper than the superficial pattern of social action suggested to the casual reader”.

The novels of Dickens are full of symbolic images and situations suggesting such notions as the desperate isolation of the individual. The grotesque and the eccentric in his work became almost a norm suggesting that life is isolating, atomistic, and irrational and that patterns of communication can never be real. But the great majority of readers wanted to read about life as they thought they knew it. The gap between the demands of art and the expectations of its audience it’s a common place in literary history. The best Victorian novels transcended the requirements of their audience and can be read by later generations for different and perhaps more profound reasons. The requirements and expectations of a given audience can help to explain the rise and flourishing of a given literary form, but cannot explain its true nature and value, except with reference to ephemeral works produced by hack writers merely to satisfy the contemporary demand. For all poetical purposes the novel embodied, reproduced and preserved like in a museum all the traits of the epoch in which it was written.

The situation of the British novel around 1850 is clearly depicted by an apparently paradoxical statement: ‘realism in art is not a method, but a tendency’. Indeed, realism is the essential notion around which an entire poetics of the novel is built. Realism is not an invention of the 19th century. The rise of the novel as Ian Wath has put it was perceived in England as the ambiguous result of the confrontation between realism and romance. Literary histories use the term ‘realism’ broadly as opposed in meaning to romantic or romance, being centred upon actions and things appropriate to describe reality. At the same time, it would be more accurate to speak about realisms not about realism, as it developed in the first decade of the 19th century. Realism had become a kind of universal tool that fitted all imaginable situations in fiction. Realism is deprived of any aesthetic form. It does not in itself guarantee the writer’s success, but it can offer him the illusion that he has come closer to the mysterious land of truth.

I.1. Female characters in 19th century English literature

In the Romantic period, poetry was the most important literary form. In the Victorian period, the novel became the most important and popular form, in Britain and all over the world.

This is the first fact about the novel, that it is the introduction of a new and rather curious kind of art; and it has been found to be peculiarly feminine, from the first good novel by Fanny Burney to the last good novel by Miss May Sinclair.

Elisabeth Gaskell lived in Manchester and had close knowledge of the lives of the working people there- the same lives as Engels has studied. Her novels are possibly the closest to the reality of the times: Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855) are particlularly clear in their social concerns. Mrs. Gaskell was also the biographer of Charlotte Bronte, one of the three sisters who all wrote novels.

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte was immediatelly successful, and it still is one of the most famous novels about a woman. Jane starts as a poor child with no parents, and goes through many sufferings, until she meets Mr. Rochester, who has locked his wife in a room because she is mad. The novel examines many sides of the circumstances of women, and at the end Jane’s words „Reader, I married him” show a new move towards freedom and equality. Jane controls her own life, and through all her difficulties and problems, becomes more independent. This is a great difference from the role given to women such as Pamela or Clarissa in the novels of Samuel Richardson a century before.

Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Bronte is quite different- it is a novel of passion, an early psichological novel. The central characters, Cathy and Heathcliff, live out their passion on the windy, rough countryside of Yorkshire, and the landscape is as wild as their relationship. The novel is very original in the way it is written, moving back and forth in time, and in and out of the minds of the characters. Again it presents a new view of women and their emotions. Here Cathy is telling her housekeeper Nellie Dean of hr feelings for Heatcliff compared to her feelings for Edgar Linton whom she marries: „ My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath- a source of little visible delight, but necessary.Nellie, I am Heathcliff- he’s always, always in my mind…as my own being…”

The oldest Bronte sister, Anne, wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall(1848) also with an unusual central female character and involving complex relationships and problems. All three Bronte sisters faced these kinds of problems in the novel with unusual courage and directness, and together they changed the way the novel could present women characters; after the Brontes, female characters were more realistic, less idealized, and their struggles became the subject of a great many novels later in the 19th century.

If the Middle Age Era seeks to build the perfect religious man, Victorianism gives birth to the industrial man. One of the aspects the two periods have in common is the women’s inferior status. However, time produced some changes and it became quite a trend for the Victorian women writers to cover under male pseudonyms. For this category stands George Eliot. Part of the Late Victorian writers, her case illustrates best Oscar Wilde’s dilemma: is it art that creates life or vice versa? Ironically, Victorianism coincides with the period when the misogynist side of men manifests the most. In a man’s world it was quite impossible for the female writers to affirm themselves. Shackled by an oppressive society they resort to male pseudonyms. A female figure is George Eliot. By adopting this name, she paid tribute to the man who nurtured her literary efforts, George Henry Lewes, but she also placed herself in a tradition that goes back to George Sand (Aurore Dupin Dudevant) and the Bells (the Brontes). The intense literary activity of these female writers assures their precious place among the chief writers of the 19th century. They prove that women, too, are capable of writing and they are good at. There is only one society they depict in their novels and their common denominator is its realism. The act of writing comes as the only solution to speak their mind, to communicate, to suppress.

Through her writing, George Eliot burst’s out the child’s cry, the teenager’s restlessness, the woman’s captivity, the citizen’s point of view. For this reason, she can be considered a spokesman of Victorianism.

In what the women’s status regards, an improvement is out of the question. Business is exclusively a men’s privilege that consolidated his superior position. The world still belong to them due to the belief that he is the one endowed with mind, whereas the woman is assumed to act accordingly to her heart’s weakness.

The growing of a new world based on materialism brings along a more obvious decline of the woman’s status. Further on, she is expected to behave like a spectator and never speak her mind. In this respect, Victorian literature gets rich through the novels of several women-writers such as Bronte sisters, George Eliot. With George Eliot – A spokesman of Victorianism, we come closer to our main aim. Details from George Eliot’s personal life testify the realism of her novels.

Even from her first novel, Adam Bede, George Eliot appeals to the sense of reality. Romantic love – stories do not at all characterize her literary work, where nothing is conquered without sacrifice. Life is harsh and love is bitter. Life is wonderful and love is sweet. Within these two limits the human kind gravitates. The character of Adam Bede suits perfectly this situation and stands for the old principles: Truth, Beauty and Goodness. The feminine characters met in Adam Bede form a wide palette of typologies: from the young dreaming girl to the old wise woman, the woman’s mind and her heart are out under George Eliot’s minute observation.

The second novel entitled after a male character, Silas Marner dwells upon the consequences of the process of industrialization, which comes strongly in opposition with the feeling of love. George Eliot reveals her sensitive side when resorting to the accents of a fairy – tell: the appearance of little Eppie puts a spell on Silas Marner’s emptied heart and replace his “unborn children” – money – with a living soul. Despite its title, a great part of the novel depicts social aspects of the provincials.

The last and definitely not the least of George Eliot’s novels – Middlemarch – illustrate the typical provincial life in the 19th century. George Eliot outruns herself in rendering the actions and the thoughts of the two inimical genders: the masculine and the feminine. This novel shows that there is a continuous war between the two and the woman’s heart can play tricks on the man’s heart.

As the century proceeded, there were many problems , in society, in religion, and in politics.The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 caused a great crisis of faith.This was reflected in many writings of the time. Perhaps Thomas Hardy is the novelist who best reflects the problems of the last years of the 19th century. The tone of Hardy’s novels is tragic. His novels show a part of the movement of the century: from the light comic tone of early Dickens, through the sadness and anger of his later novels; through the social concern of Gaskell, Eliot and Trollope; to the tragis vision of Hardy’s own writings. His characters are often victims of destiny, who cannot save themsevles from their tragic end. Hadry’s novels are all concerned with characters who try to go beyond their own limits. Tess, „a pure woman” according to the subtitle of the novel, is punished by society after her baby dies. The father of the child, Alec, leaves her, and her new husband, Angel Clare, also leaves her when he hears about her past. Eventually she kills Alec, and is punished for her crime.

I.2. Female characters in 19th century Romanian literature

In Romania, the 19th century marks the transition from simple capitalist cooperation to industrial machine use, with a delay of over 100 years when compared to Switzerland, England, USA. European civilization, especially the French, takes the place of the oriental, semi-Asiatic one. This is an “imitated” urban civilization.

“The economic structure in the Principalities was largely the same as in the 18th century”. Agriculture was still the main activity, but was backward and poorly endowed technologically. Important increases of population occurred, but up to the World War I the peasants were the largest population. Cuza’s reforms and the abolishment of the compulsory statute labor brought about a relative improvement. Romanian industry makes the passage from handcraft to the “great industry” until the beginning of the 20th century. Compared to Europe, the lagging behind is still significant.

As far as the Romanian culture is concerned, it managed to synchronize with western movements in a very short period of time and soon became an avant-garde European culture. Modern Romanian culture was born from the convergence between the autochthonous illuminist culture, the adaptation of western culture to the Romanian soul and the creation of 19th century authors. Literature played the most important role in the culture of this period. “The introduction by Cuza of the first education act, the increase in book and newspaper circulation, the development of theatres are just a few of the elements that contributed to the Europeanization of Romanian culture”.

The great mechanized industry that took the place of the traditional home economy meant that human energies were immensely needed, not only in terms of material production but also in social life. Women were employed in the process and began to fight for equal economic, political, and legal rights. On the other hand, the principles of equality and justice of the 1789 French Revolution reverberated among the most important representatives of Romanian society. Discussing the first half of the 19th century Calypso Corneliu Botez states: “for women, Vasile Lupu and Matei Basarab’s Code, whereby the man was the master of his family remained applicable”. He had the right to beat and even imprison his woman. Calimachi and Caragea’s law of 1817 maintain the subordinate status of women, but mention that she has the right of ownership to her paraphernalia. Ștefania Mihăilescu reveals that “the Romanian Civil Code of 1866, under the influence of Napoleon’s code, took a backwards step by stating the incapacity of the married woman to sign public acts. She had no right to sign any administrative documents, unless so agreed by the husband or by a court; marriage with a foreigner implied loss of citizenship; she had no right over her dowry and income. She had no legal right as guardian and was required to abide by her husband’s domicile; searching of the paternity was forbidden etc.

This status of women – equivalent to that of an underage person will be maintained with insignificant amendments (such as the possibility to legal recourse for alimony in case of illegitimate children, or the possibility to sue the husband that refused to authorize the woman to sign contracts etc.) until 1932, when under pressure from women’s organizations several improvements will occur”. She will lose her citizenship if she marries a foreigner, cannot dispose of her dowry as she wishes, cannot sue without her husband’s permission, be he a murder convict, and cannot trade without his approval. Until 1932 there will be no improvement.

Political activity was generally associated with male activities and achievement. Politics appeared to be their exclusive realm. Political institutions took decisions influencing the lives of all people.

Many supported the idea that women preferred being confined to the home, wished to spend their lives caring for their families and children, and were happy to leave politics to men. Numerous women believed this idea and did everything in their power to reinforce it. Along history women had been systematically excluded from political life. Participation in politics was forbidden and they were denied numerous rights. Electoral laws in several countries prevented women from voting, although their right to vote had already been granted. In addition to legal restrictions, the exclusion of women from public life was achieved through a variety of means.

Analyzing the studies published in the volume Patriarchate and emancipation in Romanian political thinking, coordinated by Maria Bucur and Mihaela Miroiu, we note that in our country until the 20th century, the image of the female character is constructed either in a positive or in a negative form, but always in a one-dimensional approach. These two forms are to be found in the speeches of representatives of all political parties. Thus, liberals (Nicolae Bălcescu, Al. Rosetti, Cezar Bolliac) pay homage to the woman seen as a Madonna, a goddess. Nationalists display either indifference for the situation of women or a misogynistic attitude denigrating the feminine, since femininity is considered to pervert the masculine genius. Eminescu unleashes an attack against a feminine superposed stratum characterized by “feline instincts” in the articles published in Timpul.

Courtesans are considered to be the representatives of the evil. Literary writers depict them as sinful: their beauty is fake, owing to their make-up, they are shrewd, liars, evil, greedy. An eloquent example is to be found in chera Duduca in Ciocoii vechi si noi by Nicolae Filimon. The courtesan has no psychological motivation. She represents a warning for the bourgeois forever defending their morality not to give in to the temptation. Autochthonous, angelic, empty of any substance virgins such as Maria, the exemplary daughter of an exemplary C. boyar should be preferred to foreign women. “Luckily for Romanian literature and its readers, later writers did not conform. True, they didn’t dare transform the courtesan into a first-rank character as in other countries, especially France”.

For the naive, plump Zoe, Negruzzi shows more sympathy, since she is to a certain degree a victim of society, but she will also be condemned by the writer to suicide. Andrei Miroiu reveals that in the volume of parliamentary speeches the Conservative leader Petre Carp places prostitutes “on the same level with assassins”.

Writers and politicians of the time, just as literati, agree that the woman should not work outside the home. The only respectable professions, says Carp, are sewing and being midwives. Women are economically dependent on men. We understand why marriage played a vital role in the life of young women. If they remained unmarried they could be received in the house of a relative where they played the role of servants or governesses. A more honourable alternative was entering a nunnery, which many a time happened without the consent of the woman in question. The first situation is exemplified by Bolintineanu through the ridiculous Duduca, while the second by Grigore Alexandrescu in the short-story Călugărița [The Nun], included in Jurnal de călătorie [Travel Log], where Elena Corbeanu is forcibly sent to a nunnery. The reasons are not merely religious, but also economic: the non-alienation of the girl’s dowry. Although the action takes place in 17th century, Călinescu in Viața și opera lui Ion Creangă [The Life and Work of Ion Creangă], tells us that things are the same in the 19th century. At Văratec nuns, most of whom have no religious calling, own silverware and porcelain crockery, but should they run from the nunnery, they no longer have to endure the censure of society, as was the case two centuries ago: „Nuns were at the time girls with no religious calling, thrown into monastery as a result of family calculations. When visiting Văratec, Kotzebue remained astonished by what he saw. Nuns lived in their own houses surrounding a courtyard, the richest of them living in flats with fashionable furniture, silverware, and porcelain crockery”.

Ramona Caramelea, analysing the way the education of women was described in the second half of the 19th century demonstrates that for defining the identity of the Romanian woman historical characters serve as models; some of them are also resurrected by Romantic authors: Bălașa, the daughter of Constantin Brâncoveanu, Ruxandra, the wife of Alexandru Lăpușneanul. “The identity of the Romanian woman is built not only on a set of values, but also on the use of historical characters as role models. The range of characters includes Bălașa, the daughter of Constantin Brâncoveanu, Ruxandra, the wife of Alexandru Lăpușneanul, the mother of Ștefan cel Mare and the wife of Mihai Viteazul”. Whether active in developing cultural activities (Bălașa – founder of churches), or simply characters resurrected by Romantic writers, these wives and daughters of princes and voivods are the role models of the young generations of Romanian women. But in the case of historic characters the emphasis is placed once again on family-related values. They serve as models not only through what they do, but especially through their standing as mothers and wives of heroes. Thus, “the mother of Ștefan cel Mare did not contribute to the preservation of Romanianness by fighting the Turks side by side with her son, but she nonetheless contributed to the liberation of this country by giving birth to and raising this son”.

Literature also contains negative models such as Odobescu’s Doamna Chiajna; however, they are not many, since literary writers tried to choose role models for the Romanian woman. The way characters are grouped is very interesting; each example brings together a personality from Moldova and one from Muntenia, no difference in this sense being made (Ruxandra-Bălașa, the mother of Ștefan cel Mare, the wife of Mihai Viteazul).

The official discourse of the second half of the 19th century quotes the wives of the ruling class, Elena Cuza and Elisabeta, in their positions as “mother and wife, but of the whole Romanian nation” as examples for “future wives and mothers”.

Another duty of the young girl is to read good books at home, and not to waste her time at meaningless performances and scandalous small talk which “fill the head with barren, useless, and harming ideas for your soul and mind. This is the wretched fruit of comedies, balls and scandalous theatre plays that license spreads around the world”.

Ioana Pârvulescu: “From Bolintineanu to Filimon, from Kogălniceanu to Hasdeu, the girl experiencing the first wings of goblin is pushed under the reader’s eye, while the woman is left in the background, sometimes as a mere element of contrast. The admissible age cannot exceed 20. At this threshold the novel closes to an end, the heroine takes her farewell from the reader, and will be placed in a secondary role in a future book, as a wife, sometimes advising, protecting or even being jealous of the new innocent heroine. Clearly, this aesthetic option is a translation of the existential situation of the time, where 13-14 was the age when the girl’s marriage had to at least be discussed, if not fulfilled. It is only in the 20th century that the age of the heroine starts to increase, shyly in the beginning. (…) the passing to another age of the central heroine in Romanian literature takes place gradually. (…)”.

Mara, the character of the novel bearing the same name, written by Ioan Slavici, is a complex and representative character for the artistic vision of Slavici. A fine psychologist, a careful observer of the human soul, Slavici creates a realistic and vigorous character.

Beyond this idyllic world, Mara presents female protagonists, Mara and her daughter Persida, who are crucial in framing contradictions central to the tensions between traditional societies and the need to address female subjectivity as a subject at once immersed in the world and securely enclosed in its domestic interiority. The centrality of the feminine subject in Mara may well reflect the natural consequences of Slavici’s awareness of the reevaluation of domesticity in the 1880’s. Slavici must have been familiar with the New Woman Movement of the 1890’s that swept through the literary scene of Western Europe with a rendition of female subjectivity as mobile consciousnesses and defiant of conventional categories like property and domesticity.

CHAPTER II

PORTRAYAL OF FEMALE CHARACTERS:

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS vs. MARA

II.1. The struggle of a woman in Victorian society

The Mill on the Floss

Eliot's most important contribution to literature was in her treatment of realism. Eschewing the caricature fiction of Charles Dickens, Eliot perfected the genre of psychological realism, paving the way for the later work of the American novelist Henry James. Eliot understood that art should be near to life, valuing observed truths and creating a greater sense of sympathy in the reader by coherently and non-judgmentally depicting the psychological motives of characters. Eliot's attention to character is mediated by a strong sense of historical and cultural climate. Thus in The Mill on the Floss, Mr. Tulliver's financial downfall is depicted within the larger context of the increased materialism of the British midlands in the first half of the nineteenth century, but it is also portrayed as the result of minute social and psychological actions and reactions of Mr. Tulliver and the characters that affect him, such as Mrs. Tulliver and Mr. Wakem.

The Mill on the Floss marks a break from the earlier work of Eliot, which was mainly a depiction of provincial life, and it bridged the gap to more wide- ranging later novels, such as Middlemarch, that drew detailed backdrops of the social and economic forces alive in an entire community. The Mill on the Floss is Eliot's only novel to end tragically and the most autobiographical novel.

When the novel begins, Maggie, the main character, is a clever and impetuous child. Eliot presents Maggie as more imaginative and interesting than the rest of her family and, sympathetically, in need of love. “It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love—this hunger of the heart—as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.” This quotation introduces an important element in Maggie's character—her extreme need for love and affection. The use of the word "hunger" stresses the overwhelming power of Maggie's need. This need can sometimes seem self-centered, yet by related her need to a body's hunger, this quotation naturalizes and normalizes it. Love here is shown to be something humbling, something with power over characters ("submit to the yoke"), instead of a force that characters use. Finally, just as hunger makes humans adapt their behavior and environment ("change the face of the world" could mean planting crops), Maggie's need for love will be seen to be a formative force on her.

Yet Maggie's passionate preoccupations also cause pain for others, as when she forgets to feed Tom's rabbits, which leads to their death. Maggie will remember her childhood fondly and with longing, yet these years are depicted as painful ones. Maggie's mother and aunts continually express disapproval with Maggie's rash behavior, uncanny intelligence, and unnaturally dark skin, hair, and eyes.

In Chapter VI Book VI refers to Maggie’s eyes by stating: “Was it possible to quarrel with a creature who had such eyes—defying and deprecating, contradicting and clinging, imperious and beseeching—full of delicious opposites? To see such a creature subdued by love for one would be a lot worth having”.

By doing this the writer participates in the symbolism of Maggie's eyes, referred to throughout the novel, as expressive of her particularly deep character. Maggie's eyes are a symbol of the power of emotion she contains—the depth of feeling and hunger for love that make her a tragic character. This unique force of character seems to give her power over others, for better or for worse. In Book First, Maggie is associated with Medusa, the monster who turns men to stone by looking at them. Maggie's eyes compel people, and different characters' reactions to them often reflect the character's relationship with Maggie. The quotation also foreshadows the dangerous instability that Stephen offers Maggie. Thus, Philip, who will become Maggie's teacher, in a sense, and first love, notices that her eyes "were full of unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied, beseeching affection." Maggie has been wracked by competing impulses within her throughout the novel. Finally, Stephen, who will exploit the inner struggle that Maggie has felt for the entire novel, notices that Maggie's eyes are "full of delicious opposites." We also see that Stephen's love for Maggie is based on unsound principles: egoism, attraction to her novelty, and an impulse to dominate her.

The motif of darkness and lightness of women—meaning their eyes, hair, or skin—is also often used to emphasize the uniqueness of Maggie's appearance. The motif of darkness and lightness connects to the motif of the distinctions between the Dodsons and the Tullivers—the Tullivers have darker skin, while the Dodsons have lighter skin.

It is only Tom's opinion for which Maggie cares, and his inability to show her unconditional love, along with his embarrassment at her impetuosity, often plunges Maggie into the utter despair particular to immaturity.

His father provides Tom with an education in a clergy house, unfortunately not the right one for the changes that will take place. Mr. Tulliver is what we might call “old-fashioned”, and will not survive the changes. And Tom does not even enjoy studying disciplines such as Latin, while Maggie is crazy about all the books when visiting him. In her innocence she expresses her desire to study too, but Tom brutally suppresses her enthusiasm: “Girls never learn such things. They’re too silly.” Women are disregarded no matter the age, as Maggie’s evolution shows us; when she reaches womanhood she no longer passes unnoticed. The handsome Stephen seems to be the spokesman of the male gender regarding women’s role: “I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.”

Here we have the idea of the woman seen as a sexual object but who turns into a subject of veneration: Stephen truly falls in love with Maggie and exiles himself when she refuses to leave her home for good. Maggie’s constant inner fights lead her back to her home-town where she puts up with all the gossips caused by her run with Stephen. As she seeks financial and moral support in the priest’s home she is again suspected of having an affair.

The most important event of Maggie's young life is her encounter with a book of Thomas a Kempis's writings, which recommend abandoning one's cares for oneself and focusing instead on unearthly values and the suffering of others. Maggie encounters the book during the difficult year of her adolescence and her family's bankruptcy. Looking for a "key" with which to understand her unhappy lot, Maggie seizes upon Kempis's writings and begins leading a life of deprivation and penance. Yet even in this lifestyle, Maggie paradoxically practices her humility with natural passion and pride. It is not until she re-establishes a friendship with Philip Wakem, however, that Maggie can be persuaded to respect her own need for intellectual and sensuous experience and to see the folly of self-denial. Maggie's relationship with Philip shows both her deep compassion, as well as the self-centered gratification that comes with having someone who fully appreciates her compassion. As Maggie continues to meet Philip Wakem secretly, against her father's wishes, her internal struggle seems to shift. Maggie feels the conflict of the full intellectual life that Philip offers her and her "duty" to her father. It is Tom who reminds her of this "duty," and Maggie's wish to be approved of by Tom remains strong.

Even since childhood Maggie has always been criticized for her behavior totally improper for a girl, especially by her aunts. The two men in her life, Stephen and William do not diminish her deep affection for her brother, who keeps her constantly trapped and tormented: “You wish to be independent, you told me so after my father’s death. My opinion is not changed. If you think of Philip Wakem as a lover again, you must give me up.”

Maggie’s innocent love story with Philip consumes in the friendliest way, but it ends in the conditions imposed by Tom. His enmity towards Philip is justified by the fact that Mr. Waken, the father, was the cause of Tulliver’s bankruptcy after a long trial. But young Waken truly loves Maggie and he will love her forever.

We can explain men’s attraction for Maggie by considering her physical and moral aspects: good-looking and a vivid spirit she embodies the qualities of what a woman is supposed to be, but also spicy: “A man likes his wife to be accomplished, gentle, affectionate and not stupid; and Lucy had all these qualifications.” This is Stephen’s remark before seeing Maggie at the bazaar, where both of them feel attracted to each other. Destiny plays one last trick on Maggie who, precisely on that night, reflects what to do next with her life as death comes and takes her away with all her troubles. Some critics consider that “instead of allowing Maggie to resolve the moral dilemma in which she found herself, and live by its consequences, George Eliot took the easy way and substituted for a genuine resolution a cliché-ending from the stock of Victorian fiction.”

The final books of The Mill on the Floss feature Maggie at the age of nineteen. She seems older than her years and is described as newly sensuous—she is tall with full lips, a full torso and arms, and a "crown" of jet black hair. Maggie's unworldliness and lack of social pretension make her seem even more charming to St. Ogg's, as her worn clothing seems to compliment her beauty. Maggie has been often unhappy in her young adulthood. Having given up her early asceticism, she longs for a richness of life that is unavailable to her. When she meets Stephen Guest, Lucy Deane's handsome suitor, and enters into the society world of St. Ogg's, Maggie feels this wont for sensuousness fulfilled for the first time. Stephen plays into Maggie's romantic expectations of life and gratifies her pride. Maggie and Stephen's attraction seems to exist more in physical gestures than in witty discussion, and it seems to intoxicate them both. When faced with a decision between a life of passionate love with Stephen and her "duty" to her family and position, Maggie chooses the latter. Maggie has too much feeling for the memories of the past (and nostalgia for a time when Tom loved her) to relinquish them by running away.

“The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.”This sentiment was first articulated by Montesquieu in neutral gender as "the People." Eliot's gendering of the comment as female perhaps gestures to the fact women, more than men, are conspicuously absent from history. Yet, more specifically, the quotation gestures toward Maggie's status as a tragic character. The quotation also subtly points to Eliot's conception of progressive life as a struggle—to progress beyond previous generations is to meet difficulty, yet this progression is necessary and noble, worthy of recording and recounting, as she does with the story of Maggie Tulliver.

The title of the book does not predict something good for the characters, because a mill’s position implies a river nearby and “if you have a river in a novel, a flood is always tempting”. Life has been compared to the flowing of a river and Eliot deliberately places the action in an unprotected environment. No one is really happy or at least satisfied with the circumstances. On the contrary, there is more tribulation than sun light as the author renders the English rural life in the 19th century. The great changes in the working field brought by the so-called Industrial Revolution shake the old world order: owners of mills, like Mr. Tulliver, strongly oppose to the industrial process, which is inevitable. Like any other change, industrialization has its sympathizers and opponents, its victims and profiteers.

Mara

The novel Mara written by Ioan Slavici was published in 1894 in the Vatra journal. Ioan Slavici’s work presents the habits and the customs of the people from Ardeal, a world characterized by important moral values, such as the good and the truth, honesty and justice. Ioan Slavici is a moralist, a psychologist, a creator of typologies. In his entire work, Slavici is pleading for a moral poise, for thrift and wisdom, for happiness; any departure from these tenets is severely punished by the author.

The novel Mara is “our best novel before Ion, (Șerban Cioculescu) and “almost a masterpiece” (George Cãlinescu), because the destiny of the characters and the social environment are remarkably presented in detail.

The title of the novel is suggestive, as this novel is first of all “Mara’s novel”, whose destiny is the main point of the novel, Mara also being “the first capitalist woman in our literature” (Nicolae Manolescu).

The novel follows two important lines: the destiny of the heroine, and the destiny of the erotic couple Persida-Națl.

Mara is a complex and representative character for the artistic vision of Slavici. A fine psychologist, a careful observer of the human soul, Slavici creates a realistic and vigorous character. Slavici portrays in Mara the Biedermaier society’s confrontation with an ever-expanding market-economy, which transforms the once idealized home and anchor of social stability in a way that exposes it to the dangers of the outside world and its rampant materialism.

The novel’s narrative plot situates the impoverished widow Mara and her two children, daughter Persida and son Tricã, at the heart of the changing landscape of Banat, a border region of western Transylvania that was at the time of the narrative under Austrian control. Banat has traditionally evinced a hybrid Central Eastern European identity and a baroque approach to culture. Already in the 18th century, the area could boast a developed system of mining, river transportation, sewage systems and canals, trade companies. A vast panorama of mid-nineteenth century Banat, Mara is a chronicle of the region’s multiethnic- Romanian, German, Hungarian, Serbian- social context, an interface of fiction and reality woven into one dramatic story meant to highlight the area’s intersections of economic interest, as well as those of religious, sexual and ethnic identities.

The centrality of the feminine subject in Mara may well reflect the natural consequences of Slavici’s awareness of the reevaluation of domesticity in the 1880’s. Slavici must have been familiar with the New Woman Movement of the 1890’s that swept through the literary scene of Western Europe with a rendition of female subjectivity as mobile consciousnesses and defiant of conventional categories like property and domesticity.

This was not only the area of the “self-made man”; it was also the time of the “self-made woman” whose values where shifting from domestic self-sacrifice and familial emotion to marketplace competitiveness and business-like rationality. The specter of material acquisitiveness and thus less concern with parental responsibility than with higher profits, involved women like Mara in a particularly complex way. Bent on making money, she spends long hours at the market selling products for a profit, while her children run around filthy and unsupervised.

Mara’s ample narrative scope is evident in the novel’s two strains involving Mara and her children. The first is the „public” plot, which corresponds to social conventions and chronicles significant moments punctuating the social context that is skillfully interwoven with accounts of interactions between Mara and her children, on the one hand, and the rest of the community, on the other. The second narrative strain focuses on the „private” plot, which corresponds to Mara’s love for her children and her business transactions, her struggle to save money and her ambition to rise to prominence in the comunity, and her relationships with Tricã and especially with Persida, who is romantically involved with Națl, but also often likened to her mother when conducting her own business transactions.

The overall narrative action of Mara witnesses the gradual emergence of the private plot into the public sphere, and the overall conflict involves, beyond the clashes of the characters’ personal needs and wants, an avalanche of ethnic tensions and turbulent contradictions caused by the prgressive and more conservative strains of Biedermaier culture and its society. And at the intersection of private and public spheres it becomes evident that, beyond catching Mara’s and Persida’s essence as the story’s protagonists, the novel foregrounds realistic social and psychological details corresponding to the most pressing contradictions emerged from ethnic, religious and national conflicts, on the one hand, and from the challenges posed to a conventional society by the values and practices associated with a rising progressive bourgeois individualism and the emergence of new feminine values, on the other.

Mara’s character advances the argument that money can be a moral force within society, finally triumphing over class pride, ethnic divisions, and institutional barriers. Her love of money and increasing greed make Mara’s heart “laugh with delight” when on holy days worshippers come to the local church, St. Maria Radna, to pray to a miracle-working icon. It was not that Mara, a Romanian Orthodox, felt any divine grace, “For she did not believe that the icon could work wonders; she knew very well that a German Holy Mother was not a true Holy Mother”. What really makes Mara’s heart leap with joy is the knowledge that the gathered crowds were good for business: “So it was all right that people should come to Maria Radna to worship, and Mara’s heart would laugh with delight when, on Saint Mary’s Day, The fine weather would bring people from far and wide, from as far as a week’s walk, in large crowds, their crosses adorned with flowers, carrying banners that waved in the wind, all singing psalms and litanies. When the hundreds and thousands gathered on the vast plain in front of the monastery, that day was Mara’s harvest day; in the mornings she’d go out with full baskets and return in the evenings with empty ones. This is why Mara would pray in front of the icon, then take her little ones, whom she always kept by her, push them a little ahead and say: “You pray too mother’s poor little ones!”

Her unwillingness to part with her money is nowhere in the novel more poignant than when she refuses to pay the ransom that would exempt her son Tricã from military service.

Mara’s attachment to material gain and worldly ambition supplants traditional domestic values and establishes the basis for a different claim that transcends moral authority. More importantly , Mara believes in a kind of inevitability, combined woth a degree of free will, that prompts her to encourage Persida and Tricã to cultivate self-assertion instead of self-denial, individual autonomy instead of the moral ambiguities of propriety, and an unbound confidence in their own ability, talents, and rights.

The same Mara who sees fit to put her daughter in a Catholic convent for economic advancement strongly objects to her marriage into a prosperous German family since marriage would codify her identity as a Catholic through the subordinating institution of marriage. Thus Slavici makes clear that the domestic sphere is the most impervious to social change, ethnic amalgamation, and cultural integration. Social climbing calls for putting aside religious and ethnic differences for material advancement, yet these differences are not always put aside, and it is in comparing the resilience of prejudice that we find those aspects of society that are most opaque to cultural integration.

In the novel Persida illustrates the idea that man can succeed in life through will, lucidity, love, and through self-control, which are the main weapons of the heroine, along with a troubled destiny. Slavici again proves to be a fine psychologist and a refined observer of the feminine soul. Candid, delicate and pure, Persida is strong enough to face all the problems in her life with a calm submission. Her physical portrait done by the narrator, suggest the moral traits, which impress the others around her.

Persida’s love for Natl becomes Slavici’s vehicle to call for an examination of the inevitable confrontation between repressive social conventions and cultural legacy, on the one hand, and the desires, of an individual heart, on the other. Romantic love, embodied in Persida’s love for Natl, is a primal emotion which is used in the novel as a counterpoint to the primal emotion of hatred, embodied by Mara. Even though Persida’s and Natl’s love is socially condemned, Natl’s free spirited friend Burdea absolves the lovers from the start when he decrees that “love is from another world and comes out of nowhere, you don’t know how it carries you away to you don’t know where”. Love, therefore, which has everything to do with a woman giving herself freely to the man she loves, allows Persida to become her own agency when she recognizes the imperatives of personal feelings.

The turning point in Persida’s feelings occurs in the chapter XIV, “Bandi’s role”. Before this chapter, Persida has maintained that she does not love Natl, and thus the reader has remained engaged in the young woman’s attempts to master her still active desire, not so much in the name of some authoritative principle but because circumstances-social reality- make such discipline necessary. In order for the critical shift in the narrative to take place, two things must happen: Persida must realize that she loves Natl, and this recognition must be conveyed to the reader. Only then, with both lovers struggling to make social conventions express and accommodate their feelings, will the primary conflict shift the focus on romantic love, a convenient device whose delicate handling generates the surface tension and power of Mara while subordinating the social and cultural conflicts foregrounded in the narrative. In the beginning we cannot be sure of Persida’s feelings.

Having been raised by Sister Aegidia and aware of her mother’s dislike of Natl, Persida is mindful of the nun’s views, namely that “this world isn’t here to fulfil our hearts’ desires, but to carry out our duties in it. First God, then your parents, and after them, all your benefactors”. Early on in the narrative, Natl publicly embarrases Persida, first at a wedding and then at a harvest celebration, and she seems determined to avoid him because he feels that she is reckless with his and her feelings. Moreover, she is at this time courted by two other young men, Pavel Codreanu, a theologian, and Bradeanu, a lawyer. To her mother and brother, Persida insists that she is not in love with Natl, but only feels sorry for him because he is despondent over his unrequited love for her. Soon, however, it becomes evident that in Natl’s grief Persida sees only a mirror image of her own lingering sorrow, and, in the comfort she tries to offer him, she sees only the medicine she has ineffectively administred to herself.

“…I have a soft spot for you, you know, you could see it and I, too, am telling you about it, since it is not my fault. It came like that, out of the blue, the way all misfortunes will. But this is all there is to it, and you can’t know more than this. I took pity on you; but if you won’t take pity on me, do whatever you please, for I, too, will do only what I want to!”

But contrasting Persida’s public self-command with Natl’s demonstrative and eloquent suffering as he pursues her, we recognize how far Persida really is from indulging the pain she cannot help but feel. The incident involving Natl in a nearly murderous fight with his father reduces Persida to her lowest emotional state. Subsequently, the young man’s confession to her that she has in fact been wronged by his father, and not trying to murder him, shows Persida unequivocally that her love for Natl is stronger than ever. When she is faced with her brother’s harsh criticism of her passionate feelings, Persida speaks movingly of her love for Natl:

“I know”, she went on excitedly, “that it was a misfortune for both of us that we saw each other, yet we still do. But my soul fills with unspeakable sweetness when I look into his eyes even if they are frowning, and I tremble whenever his hand touches me. It’s not myself who wants it, nor does his will compel me, but an implacable fate that keeps us enthralled. The ground burns under my feetwhen I stay here with him secretly, and yet my true life is made up only of the moments spent with him. The rest is only struggling, consuming anxiety, hot desire.”

In Persida’s moving plea, Slavici sees the most sophisticated version of romantic conventions to highlight the compleities raised by the clash of realistic social and psychological details within the Biedermaier society, on the one hand, and the failure of the domestic and monastic enclosure to regulate a New Woman’s feminine instincts on the other.

The fatal confrontation shows Slavici’s energetic intentionality is rich and engaging in Mara’s and Persida’s depiction as New Women, whose claims to their new identity are solified by the novel’s male counterparts, Anton Hubãr and Natl. For even though the still-prosperous guilds and a patriarchal structure seem to preserve a vanishing type of the old culture, the rise of a modern competitor like Mara, and also Persida, the new mother and businesswoman, show the robustness of modernization. Altering the domestic sphere’s definition by challenging its distance from a compromised public world, Mara’s and Persida’s stories are consonant with a modern, woman-centered culture. Their shrewd ability to attain financial success and to manipulate an obsolete social structure attracts the admiration of such pillars of the old community as the town treasurer and master-butcher Anton Hubar. When Mara offers more money than he does as a gift for Persida’s and Natl’s newborn son, Hubar looks at her in amazement, “as she was just a helpless woman”. He also feels “like crying very time he looked at Mara’s serene face” during the great feast celebrating Trica’s and Natl’s acceptance as masters into the furriers’ guild. Defiant and victorious, she is the reigning spirit of the large gathering which seems to encapsulate a modified domestic sphere: “With the conviction that it had been she who’d brought them together and that her own children represented the knot that kept them tight, she walked around proudly and lightly, as if she had wings, and spoke slowly and emphatically like an empress.”

II.2. Heroism as revelation of female nature

The Mill on the Floss

In an epoch marked by the disappearance of God, George Eliot renders the mixture of beliefs, which characterizes especially Late Victorianism, the new theories regarding man’s origin totally turn up-side-down the old world order. The flood at the end of the novel may symbolize the twilight of an era governed by conservatory principles. Maggie Tulliver struggles with all her forces to remain God’s child, but she is finally defeated: she and her brother drown along with an old-fashioned world.

Both a sharp and observant picture of English rural life and a profoundly convincing analysis of a woman’s psychology, The Mill on the Floss is a novel that tackles the complexities of morality versus desire. Watching closely our heroine’s destiny, one sees her fighting against people’s prejudices, against her own feelings, against everything Victorian society presumed. When Tom has the privilege to get an education, although she desperately craves for it, she submits to the norms. Women are by no means allowed to speak their mind or to have an opinion, their existence being reduced at certain stages: a housekeeper is considered in some cases an incompetent mother, a good manager of the household, the husband’s entertainer.

Maggie’s sensibility bursts out in her relation with her father, and more intensely with Tom. Even though he treats her in a bad manner, Maggie loves him enormously, and is aware of her inferior position: “[…] you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in the world.” In her innocence she expresses her desire to study too, but Tom brutally suppresses her enthusiasm: “Girls never learn such things. They’re too silly.” Women are disregarded no matter the age, as Maggie’s evolution shows us; when she reaches womanhood she no longer passes unnoticed. The handsome Stephen seems to be the spokesman of the male gender regarding women’s role: “I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.” Unlike other girls, Maggie does not want to be a burden for her brother, and she sets her hopes in working as governess in order to earn her living. But her future plans fail to become reality as she falls in love and is “swept off her feet by Stephen Guest, who is tacitly engaged to her cousin Lucy. The situation is necessary so that Maggie may be made to make a moral choice.” Even since childhood Maggie has always been criticized for her behavior totally improper for a girl, especially by her aunts. The two men in her life, Stephen and William do not diminish her deep affection for her brother, who keeps her constantly trapped and tormented: “You wish to be independent, you told me so after my father’s death. My opinion is not changed. If you think of Philip Wakem as a lover again, you must give me up.”

George Eliot makes it clear in The Mill on the Floss that the social norms of St. Oggs exert a heavy influence on Maggie's development. This fact has long been obvious' but less obvious, perhaps, is that fact that the norms Maggie struggles with are sexist. They are norms according to which she is an inferior, dependent creature who will never go far in anything, and which consequently are a denial of her full humanity. Years of such denial teach Maggie to repress herself so effectively that she cannot mobilize the inner resources that might have saved her. By internalizing crippling norms, by learning to rely on approval, to fear ridicule and to avoid conflict, Maggie grows up fatally weak. In place of a habit of self-actualization she has learned a habit of self-denial which Philip rightly calls a "long suicide.” Both she and Tom feel the crippling influence of these norms but we will focus here on Maggie and on how being female is an important key to her tragedy.

Maggie learns the family pieties, though not so willingly. She is strong enough to be suffocated by her narrow life, but not strong enough to escape it. Responsive and flexible, she resents the narrow restrictiveness of her environment and she struggles valiantly against it. But because she is completely alone in this struggle her small force is too feeble to prevail. Her family's constant opposition to her aspirations gradually teaches her a habit of self-distrust which over-powers her better self and which perverts her energies. She has already learned to defer to others in place of developing a sense of her own authority; hence what she learns to fear most is the withdrawal of approval. In the jam-puff episode this is Tom's device for enforcing her submission and he has learned it from his elders. Maggie's mother uses the same device to control her troublesome daughter. On the morning Tom is to be brought home from school, for example, Maggie is prevented from going along because the morning was too wet "for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet." When Maggie tries to assert herself against these unfair restrictions by ducking her curls in water, she gets the following response: "'Maggie, Maggie,' exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, 'what is to become of you if you're so naughty: I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more'". Of course, Maggie and Tom are none too fond of their aunts-their mother says this is "more natural in a boy than a gell"-but the important point is that Maggie is threatened with the withdrawal of approval or love as punishment for being the wrong kind of little girl. She is referred to a standard she does not accept or understand (the value of her aunts' love) and for which her own mother will betray her or "tell" on her.

Mara

Mara represents an interface of fiction and reality woven into one dramatic story meant to highlight the area’s intersections of economic interests, as well as those of religious, sexual and ethnic identities.

Beyond the diversity of the social aspects detailed in the novel, Slavici presents the feminist behavior and psychology, and also the effects of the passions on the novel’s two main characters, Mara and Persida, who by the end of the novel prove to be two facets of the same prototype: mother and daughter, Mara-mature, Mara-young. “Mara is a character, Persida, a destiny; the former means stability and force, the latter significant transformation”.

Hovering pleasantly between the urban and the rural, the novel’s characters are motivated by Biedermaier values such as respectability, tradition, familial and social stability, morality, labor, tranquility, and learning. Mara dominates the entire novel through her force, psychological characteristic and complexity. She is tireless, optimistic, self-confident, and able to face any new situation. Her physical appearance gives us a clue about her character: “a big, broad-shouldered woman, with weather-beaten cheeks”. The centrality of the feminine character in Mara may well reflect the natural consequences of Slavici’s awareness of the reevaluation of domesticity in 1880s. She is dominated by two passions: her children and money. She knows the power of money, and all her actions show her making transactions in the town market in order to save money for her children. Mara is a petty trader and the toll bridge collector. She wants her children to be respected by the other members of the community, and she knows that money bring respect. Her love for children is gradually replaced by the greed for money. She doesn’t give her children money when they need them.

When Codreanu proposes to Persida, Mara refuses to give her daughter her part of money; as a consequence Codreanu’s family cancels the wedding. This results in Persida’s further miserable character. She comes back to Lipova, falls in love with Natl, Huber’s son. Their marriage is not accepted by the two families because of the social, ethnic, and religious differences between the two. Națl is a German Protestant, and is rich. Persida is Romanian, Orthodox and poor. Tricã also needs his mother’s money to be exempted of army. Mara doesn’t offer her son any money either.

Mara and Persida are two figures caught between the drive to destabilize conventions limiting women and their cultural roles as bearers of a tradition that reflects their New Woman status in the familial position they inhabit. Both Mara and Persida live in a time of fluid identity that allows them to add new dimensions to their social-political subjectivity. Mapping new roles and expectations, the mother and the daughter give themselves new roles to assume and act out in the social economy of identities. Persida’s marriage to Națl is the site of familial tensions and reflective of the rhythms of a woman’s initiatives, a situation calculated to show that Slavici does not idealize Biedermaier society and finds the power of the New Woman’s intervention to be a driving force underlining a different, more sex-balanced social stability.

In the second half of the 19th century the Banat region witnessed the rise of individualism that rapidly began to transform society and labor. In the increasingly competitive industry of the area, individual effort became the means of material success. Mara becomes more interested in making money and less concerned with parental responsibility. While her children are dirty and not supervised, Mara is in the town market selling and buying products for a profit. Mara’s preoccupation with money, her love for her children and her pride are also visible when she exclaims “Nobody has children like mine!” Mara’s character advances the argument the argument that money can be a moral force within society, finally triumphing over class pride, ethnic divisions, and institutional barriers.

CHAPTER III

FEMALE IDENTITY

The Mill on the Floss

However, in The Mill on the Floss we are not dealing with a girl picked up at random, but with the reflection of George Eliot’s own childhood, partially. George Eliot puts a lot of herself in this character. Critics such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar stated that “Maggie Tulliver’s acute sense of her own female “slavery” reflects some of the early frustration that resulted in the headaches, depressions, and sensitivity toward cold that Eliot suffered all of her adult life.”.So, instead of a humble, obedient girl, Eliot gives voice to an intelligent, rebel who will speak her mind no matter the consequences. Moreover, she will have plenty to endure! Because of her sensibility and need to love all her life she longs that her life, should have a wider meaning; she will go through an intense Puritan phase, when renunciation seems to be her own reward.

From the beginning Maggie is presented as a clever and impetuous child. The writer presents Maggie as more imaginative and interesting than the rest of her family and, sympathetically, in need of love. Mr. Tulliver’s words right at the beginning are in a way prophetical, and regard precisely Eliot’s intention, namely to describe the harsh fate which Maggie is going to confront: “ It’s bad-it’s bad, Mr. Tulliver added sadly[…]a woman’s no business wi’ being clever; it’ll turn to trouble, I doubt.”

A veil of bad luck is already being predicted for poor Maggie as her father infers her wild, complex nature. We might as well feel compassion for this man who has no escape from the preconceived Victorian ideas regarding the woman’s status. He clearly specifies to his friend, Mr. Riley, on what grounds he married his wife: “I picked the mother because she wasn’t o’er cute-bein’ a good-looking woman, too […] but I picked her [… ] because she was a bit weak.” The entire text is sprinkled with woman-haters’, remarks unanimously accepted and taken for granted. And how could things be different when even since their infancy boys have been educated in this spirit? As an example, we have Tom, Maggie’s older brother who always treats her with superiority, and makes her feel miserable: “I always have half-sovereigns for my Christmas boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have five shilling pieces, because you’re only a girl.”

The education issue is also illustrated in The Mill on the Floss when his father provides Tom with an education in a clergy house. Tom does not even enjoy studying disciplines such as Latin, while Maggie is crazy about all the books when visiting him. In her innocence she expresses her desire to study too, but Tom brutally suppresses her enthusiasm: “Girls never learn such things. They’re too silly.”

Women are disregarded no matter the age, as Maggie’s evolution shows us. The handsome Stephen seems to be the spokesman of the male gender regarding women’s role: “I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.”Here we have the idea of the woman seen as a sexual object but who turns into a subject of veneration.

Watching closely our heroine’s destiny, one sees her fighting against people’s prejudices, against her own feelings, against everything Victorian society presumed. Women are by no means allowed to speak their mind or to have an opinion, their existence being reduced at certain stages: a housekeeper is considered in some cases an incompetent mother, a good manager of the household, the husband’s entertainer. Women nowadays are truly blessed by the freedom they have and the rights gained by their predecessors. Of course, there are still old-fashioned creeds in what the women’s place in the society, especially within a marriage concerns. Despite the numerous events which mark humans’ presumed evolution, people are people and the social framings represent only temporary layers.

Reading between the lines, one can distinguish between two important ways of living: on the one hand, there is the ignorant majority which goes by the rules of society; on the other hand, as Eliot shows us, life can be perceived in a different manner, but for this aim, one must have a certain sense and here stands Maggie Tulliver. In this respect, she does not go through a drama, as some critics consider, as she has a protective shell, self-control guided by conscience. With Maggie Tulliver, the link between reason and heart finds a common point, not without torment, of course. Nature is the only place where she does not need to control herself, when her wild temper bursts out and does not care about the consequences. For example, when she meets Philip Wakem in Red Deeps, her favorite place even from childhood, she cannot help herself and reacts like a child; she is sincere and spontaneous.

The idea of repetition rendered by the words “history” and “nature” justifies our statement that the ending of The Mill on the Floss is endless. The “ravages” caused by nature may be repaired with “sunshine and with human labor.” We might conclude that nature is for everybody, but only few really look up to the sky and pay their due. Man should reinforce after whatever breakdown, should seek for hope (for sunshine), and make efforts for their own brightness. That is why we do not consider that Maggie simply dies; the heroine behind her is in fact the author who just redraws from society, from what kills her spirit. Barbara Hardy hints that

“[…] the novel has a unity in imagery, and this has a strong mnemonic force, but it does not prepare us for the part played by the river in reaching the conclusion and solving the problem. What we are prepared for is the struggle between the energetic human spirit and the limited and limiting society: such struggles are not settled by floods.” when referring to “sister in love”, we hint to both Maggie Tulliver and George Eliot. In what way the creation of this alter ego (character) helped the author to get along with her destiny we do not know, but it certainly opened the gate of her soul towards her readers. In this respect, George Eliot can be considered a very courageous and generous writer. Her entire work comes as a manifesto of her personal way of perceiving the realities of the Victorian Age.

George Eliot shows much interest in human interrelationships, especially in The Mill on the Floss, where tension is caused by the nature of the relations: within the Tullivers (alias George Eliot’s own family) Maggie cannot behave freely (when she does, she is punished and left outside and licks her wounds in the attic), but is always forced, her spirits is trammeled by the circumstances of an epoch characterized by man’s superiority. It is as Steven Cohan observes in his study: “The novel records all the contradictions of a culture which does not appreciates an intelligent, emotional woman like Mag, but instead conspires against her vitality”. Furthermore, Maggie Tulliver is totally swallowed by her brother’s personality and her obsessive love for him.

In the light of these facts, we propose an analysis of what “home” might mean; apparently for Maggie Tulliver, it represents the Centrum of her universe as she creates one for herself which is not at all compatible with the “outer” one.

In this respect, we have Steven’s Cohan point of view that “Eliot makes us aware that the innocence of Maggie’s childhood is more fiction than fact” In order to strengthen this statement, we resort to the text which illustrates the different perceptions of her home: “Home- where her mother and a brother-were Philip- Lucy- the scene of her very cares and trials- was the haven towards which her mind tented- the sanctuary where sacred relics lay- where she would be rescued from more falling”. If at the beginning of the novel (which corresponds to her childhood) Maggie Tulliver commits errors all the time and falls in disgrace and takes refuge in the attic, by the end of the novel she melancholy longs for Home.

With this comparison we want to prevent the reader from pitying a girl who self-victimizes and harms herself. In Maggie Tulliver’s case, imagination has its negative side: instead of bringing happiness, it pulls her down.

There is another spring of Maggie’s love, namely her brother, Tom. As Steven Cohan observes: “she cannot divide herself from Tom without scarifying the illusion that her childhood, at least, was a time of acceptance and love, and that Tom, the one stable reminder of the continuity of her life, makes her feel at home because he allows her to envision the outer world as an extension of her personality”.

This part of our analysis is the most delicate one as it deals less with fiction and more with true feelings. George Eliot’s Letters reveal the strong tension between herself and her brother, Isaac, who only in the year of her death puts an end to their breach. Here is what she wrote twenty years ago in The Mill on the Floss: “Her brother was the human being of whom she had been most afraid, from her childhood upwards: afraid with that fear which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending, unmodifiable- with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us”.

At this point, we can be positive that these words belong to Eliot herself. From her last words we can suppose that it has been hell on earth for her to continue her life without any contact with her beloved brother.

It is possible for Maggie Tulliver to be in love with her home on the condition that we put the equal sign between home and Tom as critics do: “Tom embodies both Maggie’s desire to feel at home and her realization that her own imaginative and passionate nature makes her an alien in their home”. The same voice states that “Tom is a replacement for her weak father”.

Maggie Tulliver does not escape from the absurdity of the human nature. George Eliot takes advantage of her position as a narrator and appeals to the reader’s judgment. In order to understand the role of her characters, Eliot is very generous with the reader and guides him or her throughout the story. As for Tom, we might perceive a protective veil which the author creates in order to justify his attitude: “Tom, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the limits of his own nature, and his education had simply glided over him, leaving a slight deposit of polish; if you are inclined to be severe on this severity, remember that the responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision”.

We go back to the idea that Eliot appears as a spokesman of Victorianism, but at the same time announces the great changes which the 20th century novel is about to bring.

If Tom Tulliver is the one to wake in Maggie the process of maturity, the other men in her life are situated on the other side. For instance, Philip Wakem is the “familiar component of her emotional life who offers her a respite from her brother’s unyielding authority”. Philip’s soft nature comes too powerfully in contradiction with Tom’s and puzzles Maggie even more. She is way enough tormented and barely controls her moves and the flow of her thoughts.

The ‘Stephen Guest’ episode represents what the author splendidly expresses: “the partial sleep of thought” or “a loss of consciousness”. Could this part reveal Maggie Tulliver’s real nature? We seriously doubt it and we hurry to share the previous opinions. This kind of romanticism suits any other girl, but not Maggie Tulliver. She seems to see things through and leaves Stephen.

The reader might ask himself/herself what the meaning of all the suffering and torment which characterizes Maggie’s Tulliver existence is. Why is she deprived of so many things? The answer might sound exaggerated, but we consider that all her misfortune consists in the fact that she does not love herself. And if one does not love himself or herself, how could he or she interact with the others, give or receive love? In vain does Maggie try “to conquer love” when she is emptied by the chaotic inner fight she constantly puts up with. Her wishes lack the consistency as she once states: “I must wait- this life will not last long” and another time exclaims: “O God if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort” But where has she been all this time? What has she done? It is as Steven Cohan sees the situation: “Maggie’s life turns out to be a perfect waste of her great talent and energy, preoccupied with self-sacrifice, self-destruction”

The end of the novel does not come as a shock as Maggie “knew it was the flood. The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her”. Ironically, the frightened image of the flood is associated with the inner peace. The rage of the flood is the perfect destructive instrument suited to stop the rage of the soul and mind overwhelmed by Life and smothered by Death.

Mara

One has to note that in the mentality of the 19th century, in the Romanian society the woman is associated with private sphere, being assigned the role of mother, wife, or daughter. If in the case of boys education was structured in such a way as to prepare them to become worthy citizens of the homeland, articles and speeches of various politicians – targeting the adult woman as a devoted wife and mother – advise women to educate their children to love their country and fellow countrymen, and to respect the law and the monarchy. Ioan Zalomit’s speech mentions the moral and behavioural values that make up the portrait of the Romanian woman: „virtuous, educated, modest, and housewife; selfless and devoted to everything that suffers and is miserable”. The Romanian woman is virtuous, modest, and temperate; her main responsibility is the family.

Beyond this idyllic world, Mara by Ioan Slavici, presents female protagonists, Mara and her daughter Persida, who are crucial in framing contradictions central to the tensions between traditional societies and the need to address female subjectivity as a subject at once immersed in the world and securely enclosed in its domestic interiority. The centrality of the feminine subject in Mara may well reflect the natural consequences of Slavici’s awareness of the reevaluation of domesticity in the 1880’s. Slavici must have been familiar with the New Woman Movement of the 1890’s that swept through the literary scene of Western Europe with a rendition of female subjectivity as mobile consciousnesses and defiant of conventional categories like property and domesticity.

The specter of material acquisitiveness and thus less concern with parental responsibility than with higher profits, involved women like Mara in a particularly complex way. In the second half of the 19th century, scientists looked for proof that women were biologically inclined to household activities, rather than social ones. Juliet Mitchell states that „women are offered their own universe: the family. Both are – ironically – upheld as ideals. In reality things were not like this all the time”.

In the chapter on Feminism and Femininity at the Turn of the Century, the author finds that according to Aristotle’s philosophy, the woman is but a “powerless man”, she is a woman because of a certain “incapacity”. Juliet Mitchell notes an increase in the propensity of the cult of the “true femininity”. Piety, purity, obedience, and domesticity are but a few of its features. Marriage was the only way for a woman to improve her social and material condition.

Femininity, says the same author after analyzing various philosophical conceptions from Aristotle to the socialist thinkers of the 19th century, could be defined as “fragility, passivity, and dependence – both economic and emotional”.

Economic and emotional, Mara is not dependent on anyone. She is a widow with two children. She has learnt the power of money. She knows that without money, her children won’t be respected in the community. Bent on making money, she spends long hours at the market selling products for a profit, while her children run around filthy and unsupervised. Clever and shrewd, she peddles goods from one town to another and never comes back home before selling all her merchandise: “She’d sell whatever she could and buy whatever she could find. From Radna she’d take what you couldn’t find in Lipova or in Arad; from Arad she’d bring back what you couldn’t find in Radna or in Lipova. What mattered most for her was not to bring back what she had taken to market, and she’d rather sell with little gain than let her merchandise get moldy”.

Determined to succeed financially in spite of obvious hardships, Mara puts money aside every night in the three stockings she keeps-one for Persida, one for Tricã, and one for her own funeral. Her toughness and relisience recommend her as an early Mother Courage, Bertold Brecht’s heroine with whom Mara seems to share more than a passing similarity. As in Brecht’s play, the image of a preeminently courageous mother who tries to do best for her young hovers over Slavici’s novel. Like Mother Courage, the itinerant trader who pulls her wagon of ashes containing her children, always preoccupied with her business of boots and brandy, Mara starts out as a petty trader and fierce single parent who soon becomes engaged in endless business transactions, from the selling of fish and vegetables at the town market, to taking on lease the bridge over the Mureș River to collect the toll, and to selling lumber loaded unto rafts to the merchants in Arad.

As for Mother Courage, business for Mara is but one of life’s schemes by which she hopes to do well in spite of being an impoverished widow with two small children. The business transactions and her economical way of life are necessary, for they allow Mara to be in control of a life ultimately meant to ensure public respectability and social advancement for her children.

Willing to put her financial gain above religious and ethnic xenophobia, Mara negotiates an advantageous arrangement with Sister Aegidia, the convent’s treasurer, and sends Persida to the Catholic convent to be raised by the nuns (even though, like most Romanians, she is Orthodox). When Tricã is expelled from school, Mara gives him as an apprentice to Steva Claici, a prosperous Serbian furrier from Arad. Mara’s actions, which leave no doubt about her role as a transmitter of conventional values, impose control on her children’s lives and reflect her attempt to fit the proper image of what she conceives her children should be and do. In moments of crisis, such as when Tricã is expelled from school, Mara’s ambitious plans for her children also reflect the Biedermaier values of her community: the belief in social opportunity for self-betterment, and the unwavering confidence that learning and knowledge are supreme values:

“Never mind, dear,” she said to her son, steeling herself. “I’ll find you a better school! I’ll make you a man, a scholar, someone top-rank, so you won’t be like your father or your mother, but will compel these peasants and their children to stand still in front of you, the way we have to now! I can. I have the means,” she went on impetuously. “The Lord has given me and will continue doing so. He makes no distinctions between people.”

Mara’s love for her children and the pride she takes in them when she exclaims every so often that “Nobody has children like mine” are matched by Mara’s preoccupation with money. Convinced in an almost Calvinist fashion that money is evidence of a self-worth that “will raise you in your soul as much as in the eyes of others”, Mara tells Persida that “money is a great power, it opens all doors and breaks all laws”

CONCLUSIONS

Every historical period shapes its own characteristic society; the English one had its financial support due to the 19th century conquests; a major cause for the birth of the Victorian mentality (which is definitely one of the strongest and most persistent – like plague) is the bloom of industrialization. This era of a mercantile society begins with the taste for a faster, more qualitative life in general; the leaning for a more comfortable life nourishes the earthly needs but empties the spirit. Industrialization gives birth to a richer man with a poor heart. Capitalism generally turns human kind attention to earthly life and its basic needs, but estranges humans from spirituality.

Victorianism is the last pulse of stupidity in a modern world at a height of changing; industrialization finally succeeds in transforming mentalities, after a century in which they have strived to maintain. Victorianism represents an era of transition from a slow-motion lifestyle to a faster one; like all the transitory periods, the Victorian Age proves to be harsh.

The great victim of Victorianism is, doubtless, the woman, this tragic actress struggling in her own drama i.e. the household one. Even the development of industry, the era of machines, shadows her importance; a machine, a servant or a governess who takes over her tasks replaces the insignificant work she does. Living in a house she does not own, raising children, she does not educate, having a life she does live, the woman loses her meaning and utility. She becomes futile in man’s acceptance, and this status correlated with her poor education gives her a plant attitude.

The new social order generates also new strata: there are the great opportunists who become rich overnight, and the miserable poor. In what the rich concerns, the ascension of man on the social hierarchy implicitly shadows his matrimonial half, who declines to an inferior level than she has been before. The wealthy Victorian families are the nest of a domestic drama: a god – the man and a slave – the woman. Middle class and the poor stratum do not disconsider the woman the way the rich one does.

Humankind betrays its weakness whenever one finds himself/herself in a desperate situation. The good part is that the unfortunate experiences steel us, and when there is faith, the future cannot be but promising. Modesty seems to characterize the simple, poor people.

In the two novels discussed in this work the main characters Maggie Tulliver and Mara are both characters that break with the established rules regarding women of the 19th century. We can now formulate several ideas related to the 19th century society and the way in which it regarded the woman. Two centuries before, the universe of the woman regardless of her belonging to a certain social class was that of the home and family. Scientists of the time tried to prove that nature endowed her with the attributes necessary to care for the home and children, and that she was physically and intellectually inferior to the man. From official discourses of the time one can discern the image of a mature, woman, virtuous mother and wife, who is supposed to follow the example of mythological characters or exemplary historical personalities.

Both characters try to prove that a woman is more than what the 19th century society thinks it is. They are both endowed with physical and moral qualities that could help them in their attempt. But, although Maggie continuously tries to excel her condition and status, she is all alone in her attempts. She is a beautiful girl, eager to learn, but the traditions of the society which she lives in force into being a common girl. Mara, on the other side, wants to keep to the traditions, but she realizes which the power of money is. Money brings respect. But her being too much involved in the transactions with products in the town market results in the replacement of her love for children with the love and greed for money. Both are strong, complex and representative characters for their author’s artistic vision.

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