Abstract
In this conclusion of my discussion of The Mill on the Floss, I want to comment on the adequacy of George Eliot’s concept of human purpose as I take it to be embodied in her novel. This is to stray into an area regarded as taboo by ‘sensitive’ critics; but not to meet at that level a great novelist, who in Leslie Stephen’s words ‘ventured to speculate on human life and its meaning’, seems to me failure of nerve rather than observance of professional discipline.
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© 1985 Peter New
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New, P. (1985). The Mill on the Floss: ‘Which is the way home?’. In: Fiction and Purpose in Utopia, Rasselas, The Mill on the Floss and Women in Love. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07704-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07704-5_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-07706-9
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