本篇論文探討維多莉亞時期的兩部小說，喬治˙艾略特《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》以及亨利˙詹姆斯《一位女士的畫像》裡面的女主人翁受十八世紀思想家對於同理心的影響。藉由追尋十八世紀的感傷主義以及浪漫主義，筆者採取亞當˙史密斯學派對於同理心的詮釋，認為同理心是一有目的、道德性的認知行為且想像力是不可或缺的。筆者以個案分析的形式探討這兩部小說，試著論證同理心的思考模式對兩位女主人翁的發展有決定性的影響。筆者認為異於艾略特小說中的女主角自我放棄式的浸淫，詹姆斯小說中開放式的的敘事方式更貼近史密斯學派的同理心。

This thesis will discuss how Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Isabel Archer in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady are closely influenced by a sympathetic understanding of the eighteenth century philosophers. Adapting a Smithian sympathetic perspective in reading those two Victorian novels, I will identify sympathy as an intentional and ethical cognitive exercise, where imagination is necessary and is associated with aesthetic experiences. By tracing back to the eighteenth century sentimentalism and Romanticism, I will argue that moving from Maggie's self-renouncing absorption, Isabel achieves a Smithian sympathy as James's narrator allows her future to be unknown in ambivalence. Inheriting the values of morality in sentimentalism, Romantic literature shows a more pessimistic attitude that is manifested in the Romantic spirit’s sense of loss. I will indicate how this sense of loss is presented in the romantic tendencies in Maggie and Isabel, who are both depicted as sentimental and imaginative women, though their destinies work out differently. Interpreting the lives of those protagonists as two case studies, I will point out how a sympathetic-thinking determines Maggie’s failures and Isabel’s successes in reconciling with herself and in relations to others through rethinking her past and imagining her future.  Whereas Eliot’s narration in The Mill is closer to the conventional sympathetic type, James further breaks through the convention with a Smithian abstraction.

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