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In many ways, George Eliot’s
The Mill on The Floss can be viewed as, not merely a continuation
of the aetiology of the Nineteenth Century novel but the very
beginnings of the Twentieth Century novel. Eliot creates the
symbiosis of philosophical discourse and social realism that
we have come, perhaps to associate with writers such as Camus
and Lawrence. In Eliot’s novel, we are not only witness
to the author’s concern over the role of women in provincial
society but, also on the ontological bipolarisation of the
Spinozan ideal characterised in Tom and the almost Kierkegaardian
ideals of Maggie’s rejection of self regulation and
eventual renunciation following her reading of Thomas A Kempis.
As Pauline Nestor writes in her essay A Widening Psychology:
““Maggie..is the very antithesis of any Spinozan
ideal, repeatedly failing to restrain or regulate her passions.
There is a “terrible cutting truth” in Tom’s
jugdement that she is “always in extremes”, and
that she is lacking in “judgement and self-command”
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We can see that Maggie’s outbursts are not merely Eliot’s
dramatic hermeneutics but a clear rejection of the possibility
of the Spinozan ideal in actualization. By questioning the
possibility or more rightly the desirability of Spinozan self
regulation, Eliot sets up the philosophical dialogue between
not only Tom’s taxonomical and regulatory view of existence
and Maggie’s “leap of faith” conclusions
but also these two in the face of fate and the hardships and
suffering of life. Eliot, through Maggie indeed seems to be
echoing Kempis’ assertion that:
“It is a good thing that we have to face difficulties
and opposition from time to time, because this brings us back
to ourselves; it makes us realize that we are exiles and cannot
pin our hopes on anything in this world.”
That both Spinozan self regulation and Kempis/Kierkegaardian
faith are dashed, literally in the same boat at the novel’s
conclusion by the natural waters of fate is testament to the
bleak and material vision of Eliot.
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