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Literature Essay on The Mill On The Floss

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.