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

Abstract

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.