The Mill On The Floss From The New Historicist Perspective

The Mill on the Floss, an autobiographical novel, has been regarded as one of the mostsuccessful early works of George Eliot. The novel has attracted many critics’ attention sinceits publication. Eliot portrays her heroine Maggie based on her personal experiences.Maggie’s childhood anecdotes, her confusion at adolescence, the affection between her andher brother, and her love unacceptable by others, all of which are the memories of Eliot. LikeEliot, Maggie is abandoned by her family and the society, and brought into the depth ofmisery by her narrow-minded morality. Thus she is always regarded as a victim. However,there are some other potential powers in the novel that are usually ignored by others.This paper analyzes The Mill on the Floss from a New Historicist perspective. Eliotrecords many marginal voices in The Mill on the Floss. With her recording of marginal voicesand her anti-traditional experiences, this paper interprets Maggie’s resistance againstmainstream ideology and social authority. The paper also explains what brings Maggie’sself-restraint based on Greenblatt’s “subversion-containment” theory and Foucault’s powertheory. For Foucault, power is realized with the shift between subversion and containment andaccording to New Historicists, subversion is the product of power, and serves for containment.The paper consists of five parts. Chapter1is an introduction. It mainly introducesGeorge Eliot’s early novels and the researches on her The Mill on the Floss at home andabroad and briefly explains Greenblatt’s “subversion-containment” theory and Foucault’spower theory. Chapter2explores the marginal voices and “micro-history” embodied in TheMill on the Floss, and demonstrates the consonance between Eliot’s humanism and NewHistoricism. Chapter3explains Maggie’s subversive behaviors to mainstream ideology andsocial authority at the different periods in her life span, especially the subversion to the imageof “angel in the house”. Chapter4analyzes how Maggie’s subversions are contained in herchildhood, adolescence and adulthood. The conclusion points out that The Mill on the Flossrecords a “micro-history” and the marginal voices. Maggie struggles for her ideality, but at thesame time she is contained by many factors, which bring the realization of power. But the interpretation of The Mill on the Floss from a New Historicist perspective stillexists deficiency. A case in point is that when the flood is approaching, Maggie, a weakwoman abandoned by her family and the society, boats to rescue Tom, who symbolizes theauthority. Maggie’s action is a kind of eruption after her unbeatable suppression. Her deathdoesn’t mean her complete containment. However New Historicists usually ignore thispotential power in Maggie’s tragedy.