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Uprooted by modernity
Author(s) -
Hacke Melanie
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12217
Subject(s) - modernity , mill , bourgeoisie , interpretation (philosophy) , george (robot) , capitalism , literature , reading (process) , aesthetics , natural (archaeology) , art , philosophy , history , art history , sociology , law , epistemology , linguistics , archaeology , politics , political science
Through a close reading of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss , this paper argues that the genre of the Bildungsroman is particularly suited to an ecocritical interpretation. As a realist Antibildungsroman depicting the tragically problematic Bildung of Maggie Tulliver and her family, The Mill on the Floss counters conventional nineteenth‐century coming‐of‐age novels, which tended to become scripts of industrial capitalism and bourgeois culture. Eliot's portrayal of life at Dorlcote Mill confirms that the human and the natural worlds are inherently intertwined, but also demonstrates that capitalist modernity constructs nature as an entity separate from and inferior to man, thus estranging people from their roots.