AbstractThis article re-reads representations of the self and agency in George Meredith’s The Egoist (1879) by drawing new connections between the novel and Victorian psychological theory. Critical discussions of The Egoist and psychological themes have rightly stressed the many ways in which, in Meredith’s novel, impersonal forces, biological, physiological and ideological, threaten to obliterate any notion of the self as discrete and autonomous. Yet Meredith maintains a strong ethical investment in individual agency. Comparing metaphors of fluidity, used to describe the self and consciousness in Meredith’s text, with similar images taken from the work of G. H. Lewes and James Sully, I argue that Meredith presents the self’s plasticity as crucial to its individuation and potential autonomy, even while that same plasticity also underlines the self’s vulnerability to social and ideological forces which threaten its independence. Clara’s individuality and agency take on distinctive political significance by...

中文翻译：

---

《利己主义者》中的自我、意识和能动性

摘要本文通过在小说与维多利亚时代心理学理论之间建立新的联系，重新阅读乔治梅雷迪思的《利己主义者》（1879）中对自我和能动性的表述。对利己主义和心理学主题的批判性讨论正确地强调了在梅雷迪思的小说中，生物、生理和意识形态的非人格力量有可能消除任何离散和自主的自我概念。然而，梅雷迪思对个人机构保持着强大的道德投资。将梅雷迪思文本中用来描述自我和意识的流动性隐喻与 GH 刘易斯和詹姆斯苏利的作品中的相似图像进行比较，我认为梅雷迪思将自我的可塑性视为对其个性化和潜在自主性的关键，即使同样的可塑性也强调了自我对威胁其独立性的社会和意识形态力量的脆弱性。克拉拉的个性和能动性通过……