Adam Bede Revisited: Social Stigma and the Formation of Deviant Identity

• Authors: Bonner, Nora , Shayegh, Elham

Abstracts

EN

In Adam Bede, George Eliot explores the way a society divides its members into categories and how these categories contribute to the formation of an individual’s identity. In the mid-nineteenth century authors in the naturalist tradition often discussed this dialogical relationship between individual and society, the specific roles for social gaze, the labeling and degrading. Eliot shows an acute of these labels that no one shapes identity without their influence. According to Nancy Anne Marck, Adam Bede introduces the theme of “emerging social consciousness” where the characters gain broader awareness of human interdependence through an experience of suffering (447). This is particularly evident when examining Eliot’s characters of “lesser fortune.” Once we’ve investigated how Eliot portrays these negative social forces throughout the novel, the labeling and the stigmatization, we will return to how Eliot addresses the larger question permeating her novel of education: how one judges another against the backdrop of community values.

Keywords

EN

stigmatization; social identity; gaze; realism/naturalism; ethics in narrative style

• Publisher: The University of Bialystok
• Journal: Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 8

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

Bonner, Nora

author

Shayegh, Elham

References

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Identifiers

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/11320/4121

DOI

10.15290/cr.2015.08.1.01