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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The notion of physical and moral well-being : relationship and interaction in George Eliot's literary works

subject

description

This dissertation analyzes the concept of well-being in the writings of George Eliot in order to account for the question of the individual in his/her relationships with the other and others such as animals and the environment so as to obtain physical, moral as well as personal and social well-being along the resulting ethics and aesthetics. For the novelist, well-being finds its source in the individuals’ suffering in British nineteenth-century society. Conceiving well-being from Eliot’s point of view therefore means giving priority to individual relationships and interactions. This relational vision of well-being amounts to considering the social regularities related to community life, the emotional and symbiotic bond of the individual with the flora and fauna nature, as well as his uniqueness and that of the environment in which he lives.