Maggie’s Nature: The Influence of Darwin in Mill on the Floss
Alexandra Fenton
George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) demonstrates the author’s questioning of traditional
belief, human compassion, and personal morality. Maggie Tulliver’s quest for selfhood is
frequently at odds with others’ attempts to mould her into a conventional gender role through
family influence, social expectations, and education. She is alternately described as “a wild
thing,” “a Bedlam creatur,” and a “mistake of nature,” or some kind of small animal, such as
a “Shetland pony” or a “Skye terrier.” These references establish Maggie’s singularity and
demonstrate how other characters perceive her intelligence, passion, and strong will as
unnatural. They also help illustrate Eliot’s great interest in the contemporary scientific debates.
In fact, Eliot read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species (1859) after she had begun
work on Mill, and her partner, George Henry Lewes, was simultaneously researching his
Studies in Animal Life (1862). In her essay, Alexandra Fenton outlines Eliot’s careful
exploration of aspects of social Darwinism and natural selection, particularly the nature-nurture
debate. Maggie’s inherited nature conflicts with the lessons imparted by her family and society,
and, as Fenton argues, it is inevitable that she be consumed by the Floss, a river that “represents
the unpredictability of nature, because she, as a ‘thing out of nature,’ was never expected to
thrive in the society in which she lives.”
- Dr. Vicky Simpson
George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss was published in 1860 against a backdrop of drastic
scientific upheavals in Victorian England. Even before the publication of Charles Darwin’s On
the Origin of Species, there were debates in the scientific community pertaining to the question
of how the human character was defined. One of the most prevalent discussions was the divide
between those who thought traits were inherited through...