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Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss dramatizes emotional conflict rather than…
Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss dramatizes emotional conflict rather than broader social questions.’ Discuss.
ECOCRITICISM Uprooted by modernity- an interdisciplinary field of study that analyses how the natural world is portrayed in literature, typically in relation to modern environmental concerns.
THE D OWNFALL-after they have lost the ownership of the mill, deepen Maggie’s yearning for the queenly urbanatural life full of social interaction, art and excursions into both exotic and homely landscapes
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and elopes with Stephen, who offers her a life of sexual and intellectual pleasure, she could recover some kind of
nature–culture balance, but at the cost of being alienated from her family by this transgression of social mores.
Even the less transgressive option of a marriage to Philip Wakem, the son of her father’s rival, would uproot
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Maggie does participate in St
Ogg’s cultural and social events, the town cannot simply be classified as an urban environment.
St Ogg’s is a small-minded,
provincial town rather than a cosmopolitan city welcoming different
cultures and world views.
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industrial capitalism: shallow, egoistic and centred on profit. But just as this new era involves both positive and
negative developments, Stephen’s intentions are not entirely dishonest, since he offers Maggie a life filled with art
and stimulating conversations. During their tragic boat trip, it once again becomes clear that the anthropomorphic
Floss can be read as a metaphor for Maggie’s sexual and intellectual instinct, which is ‘like a hungry monster’ (Eliot,
1986, 44) carrying her away to Torby, and then to Scotland, where she and Stephen can be married. As his name
Maggie senses that it would be wrong to marry Stephen: he can only be a passing guest in her life, but
she wishes that it were not so difficult to ‘beat and struggle against this current, soft and yet strong as the summer
By *burning Stephen’s letter, rowing to the mill to rescue Tom, and embracing him in death, she ulti
mately
chooses duty over instinct.
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takes her back to the sexless unity with Tom that constituted her childhood, before
the demands of Victorian womanhood created a rift between the natural and the human worlds
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under the pressure of free market economics, while his daughter in like manner struggles to strike a compro
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The black freighters from the novel’s opening passage, sailing inland on the Floss, can thus indeed be read as
an image of economic modernity entering the old-fashioned
town of St Ogg’s
improved living conditions, social mobility, better transport, and so on.
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and foreboding image, the ‘fresh-scented’
and ‘glitter[ing]’ (Eliot, 1986, 11) goods they carry are attractive, and
the visual interplay between the ships’ sails and the trees behind even possesses an urbanatural dimension. Just as
her portrayal of these cargo ships is not wholly negative, Eliot generally recognises that industrial capitalism brings
idealisation of reality: she sought to represent life as it was rather than as it should be. Eliot wished
to draw attention to the damaging effects of modernity upon a class previously neglected in realist fiction, that
‘of the small shopkeepers, artisans, and peasantry’ (Eliot, 1990c, 112).
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based on Arbury Mill, the water-mill
on the estate where Eliot grew up. In her novel, the inhabitants of St Ogg’s
and the farmers along the Floss and Ripple have acquiesced in an anthropocentric and cornucopian view of nature
and therefore no longer expect a serious flood. When the flood does come it can be considered as a warning,
demonstrating that nature can never be completely subjected to man’s will. Even in an industrial age in which mill
ers
treat the river and its water power as a machine instead of an unpredictable force of nature, the river retains
the agency to affect human community. The Tullivers’ saying ‘when the mill changes hands, the river’s angry’ (Eliot,
1986, 261) seems to contain a kernel of truth, as if the river has avenged itself for the farmers’ agri-business
and
The novel’s ending stresses the irreparable losses suffered by small property owners: ‘Nature repairs her rav
ages—
but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred: if there is a new growth,
the trees are not the same as the old […] To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair’
(Eliot, 1986, 510–511). Th
the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were
busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading’ (p. 510).
new tide of global econ
omy
has engulfed the house of Tulliver, the optimistic ring of its voice drowning out Maggie and Tom’s tragedy
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Stephen is indeed Lucy. Since their marriage can be understood as an alliance between custom (Lucy’s Dodson
spirit) and capitalism, The Mill eventually does effect the compromise between tradition and modernity so typical
of the classic Bildungsroman. Even so, the couple’s regular visits to the grave remind them of the personal loss that
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between their urbanatural roots at Dorlcote Mill and the demands of the busy outer world. But for the children of
a middle-class
miller who has lost his property due to increasing agricultural industrialisation, such a compromise
is difficult to achieve. This is especially true for the passionate Maggie: out of fear of ostracism from family and
community, she renounces her intellectual and sexual freedom, a decision that is symbolised by her death in the
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