Abstract
In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot contrasts the paths of
individual development and emphasizes the crucial role played by
society's expectations and conventions on the lives of individual
characters, especially on the basis of gender. By depicting the
development of Maggie Tulliver in contrast to male characters, the
novel discloses the dystopian effect of a society that not only
arbitrarily inhibits individual growth and diminishes potential but
also condemns and expels the nonconformist individual. The utopian
vision that this bodies forth is of a society, desirable but
unattainable, that is ideal and more perfect than the author's
community in encouraging the potential of individual growth by
providing an open and nurturing environment. The more positive
vision emerges from the novel's critique of the dystopian conditions
which render Maggie abject, in contrast to an ideal society that
facilitates all kinds of differences and possibilities regardless of
gender, race, or class hierarchy. In tracing the history of Maggie's abjection from its origins in her childhood through its various stages from transgression, to renunciation, and to death, and thus the most extensive exploration of women's lot in her fiction, Eliot criticizes the kind of society that produces and ultimately destroys the abject like Maggie as a way of suggesting utopian possibilities.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 129-159 |
Number of pages | 31 |
Journal | Feminist studies in English literature |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 2003 |
Keywords
- utopias and dystopias
- abjection
- agency
- subjectivity
- intersubjectivity
- female Bildung