The Problems of Ethics and Metaphor in George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil”

구승본 현대영미어문학회 2012 현대영미어문학 Vol.30 No.4

This essay purports to illuminate how Eliot’s ethics of sympathy is twisted in her gothic novella “The Lifted Veil.” Unlike her other novels that explicitly emphasize the mission of realist fiction in terms of its emphasis on sympathetic morality, this aberrant tale presents a first-person narrator whose supernatural powers of clairvoyance and telepathy mainly function as a misanthropic vision of the other. The narrator’s previsional and telepathic insights further interrogate the validity of sympathy because the self’s knowledge of the other is deeply intertwined with the self’s narcissistic desires for postulating the stable self and for encapsulating the other’s otherness within the linguistic category of metaphor. The narrator’s zeal for explicating Bertha’s otherness is nothing but a verbal description of Bertha on the basis of figurative language apart from the referent of the other. Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil” sheds light on the limits of sympathy stirred by the self’s narcissistic endeavor to complete the enlargement of the self-consciousness by conceptualizing the other’s irreducible otherness via the verbal trope of metaphor.

The Logic of Subjection and Circumvention in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

구승본 한국영미어문학회 2017 영미어문학 Vol.- No.124

The aim of this essay was to examine the circumventive logic of subjection in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The Victorian classical novel has been lauded as a feminist revolutionary text because it portrays a heroine’s achievement of self-identity and self-assertion against the domination of patriarchy. From Michel Foucault’s theoretical perspective with regard to subjectivity, however, an individual cannot become a subject without the regulatory restrictions of external power. For Jane, the coercive and restrictive powers from the Reeds, Lowood institution, Mr. Rochester, and St. John Rivers contribute to the making of her subjectivity. To borrow Louis Althusser’s terms, the ideological interpellation of those external powers constructs Jane’s soul and her consciousness, although her decisions both to get married to the wounded Mr. Rochester and to sacrifice herself for taking care of him derive from her misconception that her moral and ethical enactments are firmly based on her own self will and her natural promptings as an independent female individual.

『모로우 박사의 섬』에 나타난 동물 윤리와 감정 이입의 한계

구승본 국제언어문학회 2022 國際言語文學 Vol.- No.53

본 논문은 H. G. 웰스의 모로우 박사의 섬을 인본주의적 관점과 동물 윤리의 관점에서 파악하고 감정이입의 한계를 살피고자 한다. 19세기 유럽에서 동물을 대상으로 시행된 생체해부 실험은 동물을 대상으로 잔혹한 고통을 주는 것이 합당한가의 논란을 야기했다. 웰스의 과학로맨스는 독자들에게 과학자는 실험동물들에게 감정을 배제하고 다루어야만 한다는 근거에 대해서비판하도록 한다. 모로우 박사는 인간 우월주의에 사로잡힌 인물로과학은 궁극적으로 동물적 본능에서 자유로운 완벽한 인간을 만들어줄수 있다고 믿는다. 그의 자아몰입적인 과학 탐구와 동물을 끔찍한 생체실험의 대상으로 삼는 모습을 통해서 인간이 비인간 동물에 대한 지배를 정당화하고 있음이 드러난다. 동물 윤리에 대한 최근의 연구는 인간이 비인간 동물들에게 가하는 고통을 제거해야 한다는 필요성을 강조할 뿐만 아니라, 그들의 권리와 존엄성을 인정해야 한다고 조명한다. 본 논문은 동물 윤리의 관점, 특히 타인의 정서와 감정을 이해하기 위해서 타인과 자아를 연결시키는 시도라고 정의되는 감정이입의 개념을통해서 소설의 등장인물이자 화자인 에드워드 프랜딕의 감정이입에 한계가 존재함을 밝히고자 한다. 타자가 고통 받는 현장에서 자아의 생명보호를 우선시할 뿐만 아니라, 과학이 동물적 본능에서 자유로운 문명화된 사회를 지켜줄 것이라는 프렌딕의 인간중심주의적 태도가 그의감정이입을 무력화시키고 있다고 본 논문은 비판한다. This paper examines the limits of empathy in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau from the perspectives of anthropocentrism and of animal ethics. The nineteenth-century scientific experiments of vivisection on animals sparked controversial debates over the legitimacy of the matter of inflicting inhumane pain on the animals. Wells’s scientific romance invites the reader to interrogate the rationale that scientists must adopt dispassionate attitudes toward the experiment animals. Doctor Moreau in the novel exemplifies a scientist preoccupied with the idea of human supremacy, believing that science will ultimately create perfect and ideal humanity exempt from animalistic instincts. His self-obsessed pursuit of scientific knowledge and his hideous enactment of vivisection on animals can be regarded as justifying the domination of humanity over nonhuman animals. Recent studies on animal ethics has shed light on the rights of nonhuman animals and their dignity as well as on the necessity of eliminating pain on animals inflicted by humans. Through the lens of animal ethics, paying particular attention to the concept of empathy, an attempt to connect one with another person in order to understand her emotions and feelings, this paper sees Edward Prendick as a character and narrator who reveals the limits of empathy, not only because he seeks to preserve his own life under the potentially precarious circumstances but also because he has a firm belief that science will defend civilized society immune from animalistic instincts.

허먼 멜빌의 「필경사 바틀비」에 나타난 전유로서의 자선 서사

구승본 새한영어영문학회 2020 새한영어영문학 Vol.62 No.1

This paper examines the ways in which the lawyer-narrator appropriates both Bartleby, a scrivener he employs in his office, and himself, a bourgeois capitalist with a strong belief in the Christian principle of pre- determination. Recent criticism of “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” has focused attention on either the potentialities of Bartleby’s passive resistance, “I would prefer not to,” in constructing a new order of social community, or the lawyer-narrator’s self- indulgent story-telling which aggravates the condition of Bartleby as an alienated worker. Borrowing Rahel Jaeggi’s conception of alienation and appropriation, this essay sheds light on the mode of the lawyer-narrator’s restricted and rigid role appropriation in which he fails to become the authentic and genuine self who could truly sympathize with and actively engage in the plight of Bartleby.

The Existence of the Other in Counter-Melodrama: George Eliot’s “Mr Gilfil’s Love-Story”

구승본 현대영미어문학회 2011 현대영미어문학 Vol.29 No.4

This essay purports to examine Eliot’s emphasis on the existence of the other in a new literary style, counter-melodrama, in which she underscores the subversive power of the other against the ontological desire of the self to reduce the other to the realm of familiarity and sameness maintained by the discourse of appropriation and domination. The novelist’s concern with the existence of the other irreducible to the imperialistic ego of the self can be examined in light of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of the Other as the presence of strangeness and skepticism resistant to the ontological dogmatism of the transcendental self. On the other hand, the subversive power of Caterina’s otherness paves the way for exercising a harmonious union between the self and the other, revealing that the practice of love in Christianity can be achieved in the secular and reciprocal relationship between human entities who end up recognizing their own flaws and limits conditioned in the worldly life.

『제인 에어』에 나타난 파레시아의 한계

구승본 현대영미어문학회 2018 현대영미어문학 Vol.36 No.4

. This essay examines the limits of Jane Eyre’s ‘parrhesia,’ truth-telling or the courage of truth. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been regarded as a novel of a feminist critique against patriarchal discourses restricting women into the boundary of household where they should serve as care-givers of affection for their children and their husband. The Foucauldian notion of ‘parrhesia’ emphasizes the individual’s efforts to practise ethical self-governance. In accordance with the parrhesiates’ self-adjustment, Jane in the novel seems to express her voice of truth courageously against male figures’ dominant discourses of subordination and obedience. However, Jane unconsciously entraps herself into the mid-Victorian ideologies of political economy, domesticity, and Christian religion when she extols the fulfillment of her fantasized self-image supported by wealth and the hegemony of class consciousness.

A Paradox in the Birth of Romola's Subject in George Eliot's Romola

구승본 현대영미어문학회 2013 현대영미어문학 Vol.31 No.3

This essay purports to examine how the formation of subject is intertwined with the authoritative powers of social norms in George Eliot's historical novel Romola. Special attention must be paid to a paradox of Romola's self-crafting in relation to disciplinary powers, especially exercised by Girolamo Savonarola as her mentor. Michel Foucault's idea of subject is essential to understanding the interlocking relationship between the operation of normative powers, or technologies of power, and the individual's desire for freedom and independence, or technologies of the self, since although one is willing to resist the intervention of social norms, one cannot wholly escape from the networks of prevailing normative horizon. Romola is indeed portrayed as an ethical subject who can perform her sympathy for others, but her ethical subjectivity is conditioned by Savonarola's authoritative interpellation emphasizing the necessity of duty, self-abnegation, and charity. Although the novel dramatizes the heroine's effort to accomplish her own freedom exemplified in the scene of her drifting away, Romola in effect returns to a realm of reality where a set of normative rules has already prescribed her mode of ethical subjectivation. The affirmative and authoritative voice of Savonarola as a regime of truth indeed preconditions Romola's voluntary and ethical performance both for the formation of her subjectivity and for the benefits of others.

서구인본주의 담론의 의도와 지식인의 비판의식

구승본 경희대학교 대학원 영문과 1995 경희영문학 Vol.1 No.-

Esther and the Politics of Multiple Tastes in George Eliot’s Felix Holt, the Radical

구승본 한국영미문학페미니즘학회 2011 영미문학페미니즘 Vol.19 No.1

The purpose of this essay is to re-evaluate the significance of Esther regarding her enactment of sympathy, as opposed to critics’ contention that Felix Holt is a mouthpiece of George Eliot in the novel Felix Holt, the Radical. It examines how sympathy functions in subverting the discourses of moral imperatives and instrumental reason. In the novel, the hegemonic authority exercises its dominant power over working-class habits and female aesthetic tastes in order to discipline them under the categorical and preemptive imperatives of a morality sustained by Enlightenment reason. Felix Holt is a novel of feminine resistance against male desire to categorize women as morally inferior objects and as values of economic exchange. The novel presents Esther Lyon as the sympathetic agent of a hybridity that combines her natural aesthetic taste with her acquired moral taste. The hybridity of her tastes denotes Esther’s renewed feminine subjectivity, which empowers her to invest her libido in both the domestic and the public spheres. Eliot endorses Esther by revealing that the female subject is not only able to adjust herself to the moral, economic, political, and sexual discourses of patriarchy but is also able to resist them for the fulfillment of her libidinal desires and for the enlargement of her sympathy for others.

The Dynamics of Confessional Sympathy in George Eliot’s “Janet’s Repentance”

구승본 19세기영어권문학회 2010 19세기 영어권 문학 Vol.14 No.2

George Eliot's “Janet's Repentance” illuminates her concern with the enactment of sympathy in binding the self and the other through the unraveling of the known reality and the unknown truth suppressed in the mind of the sufferer. Janet's sorrow arises from the harsh reality in Victorian domesticity involving the patriarchal husband's violence along with the issue of drinking. The agonized voice of Janet represents the cries of Victorian women resonating from their life restricted in the domain of household. Janet's confession to Tryan about her life of agony and her addiction to alcohol is a story of trauma which attests to the oscillation between a crisis of death and her ongoing experience of life as a survivor. The reciprocity of the sympathetic communication between Janet and Tryan corroborates the capability of the female confessor's traumatic narrative to connect the two people by invoking from the Evangelical minister a kind of uncanny repetition of another traumatic scene of his past which bears resemblance to the confessor's narrative of guilt and suffering. The encounter between Janet and Tryan does not simply indicate that a devout Evangelical minister guides a dejected, afflicted, and guilty woman to a life of regeneration, but it also sheds light on a bond between the two human beings with sympathy triggered by the narratives of each other's past. Thus the third story of Scenes of Clerical Life dramatizes the dynamics of confessions whereby one's own trauma is bound up with the trauma of another.