1) The document is a presentation about George Eliot's ecological philosophy in her novel "The Mill on the Floss" from an ecofeminist perspective. 2) It discusses how women, gypsies, and nature are portrayed as "the other" and oppressed in the novel, using examples from the text. 3) Val Plumwood's ecofeminist theory of dualisms that position women and nature as inferior is used to analyze Eliot's philosophy, which presents a "natural philosophy" through her works like John Constable's philosophy of art. 4) The flood in the novel is interpreted both as nature's revenge and a metaphor for the unstoppable industrialization, while

1. A Return to Nature: George Eliot’s
Human and Ecological Philosophy in
The Mill on the Floss
19th Century Women’s Literature
31 July 2013
Presenter: Yi-Wei Evan Chin

2. Outline
• I. Introduction
• II. Part One: Woman, Gypsy and Nature as the
Other
a. The Dominant’s Oppression of Women and Nature
b. The Gypsy as a Symbol of Escape
• III. Part Two: George Eliot’s Life Philosophy
a. Val Plumwood’s Ecofeminist Theory
b. The Flood as a Pun
• IV. Conclusion
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 2

3. John Constable(1776 - 1837)
• John Constable is one
of the major European
landscape artists of the
19th century, whose art
was admired by
Delacroix. To a greater
degree than any other
artist before him,
Constable based his
paintings on precisely
drawn sketches made
directly from nature.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 3

4. John Constable's Discourses
• Painting is a science and should be
pursued as an inquiry into the laws of
nature. Why, then, may not a landscape
be considered as a branch of natural
philosophy, of which pictures are but
experiments?
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 4

5. A Mill at Gillingham in Dorset (1826)
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 5

6. I. Introduction
• Margaret Homans’ article “Eliot, Wordsworth,
and the Scenes of the Sisters‘ Instruction”, she
mentioned that Donald Stone called The Mill
on the Floss is Eliot’s “most Wordsworthian
novel” (226).
• My paper provides an ecofeminist approach to
read Eliot’s philosophy of humanity and nature
in The Mill on the Floss.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 6

7. • One of feminist critics Zelda Austen criticizes
Eliot in her article “Why Feminist Critics are
Angry with George Eliot” that “the particular
anger against George Eliot rises from her failure
to allow this freedom for her heroines even
through she achieved it herself” (551).
• Since this paper is an ecofeminist reading of The
Mill on the Floss, I also defend the ending is
Eliot’s manifestation, which is as Virginia Woolf
says “Eliot gathers in her large grasp a great
bunch of the main elements of human
nature…[and keeps] her figures fresh and free” .
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 7

8. Part I. Woman, Gypsy and Nature as the
Other
• Following Simone de Beauvoir’s
demonstration, Susan Gubar indicates that
woman’s self has been turned into “the other”
by the phallus (244).
• Like Woman, the Gypsy and the nature are
also treated as the other or the object.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 8

9. a. The Dominant’s Oppression of
Women and Nature
• Example for Woman
“Go, go!” said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily,
beginning to feel rather uncomfortable at these
free remarks on the personal appearance of a
being powerful enough to create lawyers; “shut
up the book, and let’s hear no more o’ such talk.
It is as I thought—the child ’ull learn more
mischief nor good wi’ the books. Go, go and see
after your mother.” (17)
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 9

10. a. The Dominant’s Oppression of
Women and Nature
• Example for Nature
It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that
pretty child; I’m sure Lucy takes more after me nor
my own child does. Maggie, Maggie,” continued the
mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this
small mistake of nature entered the room, “where’s
the use o’ my telling you to keep away from the
water? You’ll tumble in and be drownded some day,
an’ then you’ll be sorry you didn’t do as mother told
you.” (12)
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 10

11. b. The Gypsy as a Symbol of Escape
• The Gypsy is also “the other” in British society;
hence, many woman writers would connect the
relationship between women and gypsies.
• In Abby Bardi’s article “The Gypsy as Trope in
Victorian and Modern British Literature”, she
contends “the Gypsy is a ubiquitous figure in
British literature, often functioning as a symbol of
escape from the dominant social mores governing
sex and gender roles and the ownership of capital”
(31).
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 11

12. III. Part Two: George Eliot’s Life
Philosophy
• As Constable’s philosophy of art, Eliot also
presented a “natural philosophy” in her literary
works, especially The Mill on the Floss.
• Eliot uses her pen to criticize the human
ideology and social structure, which I would
suggest that it is Eliot’s philosophy of human
and ecology.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 12

13. What is Ecofeminism?
• According to Joni Seager, men of science
struggled to subdue nature/woman. Thus the
scientific revolution is seen by many ecofeminists
as heralding the era in which women, as well as
nature, came to be dominated, controlled and
exploited.
• As Seager notes, the literature of male exploration
is rife with metaphors of raping the wilderness,
penetrating virgin lands, conquering a capricious
Nature, mastering the wild and subduing untamed
lands.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 13

14. a. Val Plumwood’s Ecofeminist Theory
• In her her book, Feminism and the Mastery of
Nature, an ecofeminist Val Plumwood states in
the second chapter that “both feminist
philosophy and ecological feminism have
given a key role in their accounts of western
philosophy to the concept of dualism, the
construction of a devalued and sharply
demarcated sphere of otherness” (41).
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 14

15. a. Val Plumwood’s Ecofeminist Theory
• There exist no occult forces in stones or plants.
There are no amazing or marvellous
sympathies or antipathies, in fact there exists
nothing in the whole of nature which cannot be
explained in terms of purely corporeal causes
totally devoid of mind and thought.
- Descartes
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 15

16. a. Val Plumwood’s Ecofeminist Theory
• To understand Cartesian mind/body dualism
requires “an understanding of its intimate
connection to human hyperseparation and to
the dualisms of human/nature, male/female
and subject/object, as well as its political
origins in the wider network of reason/nature
dualisms” (120).
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 16

17. Example
• The Dodsons were a very proud race, and their
pride lay in the utter frustration of all desire to tax
them with a breach of traditional duty or
propriety—a wholesome pride in many respects,
since it identified honour with perfect integrity,
thoroughness of work, and faithfulness to
admitted rules: and society owes some worthy
qualities in many of her members to mothers of
the Dodson class, who made their butter and their
fromenty well, and would have felt disgraced to
make it otherwise. (223-4)
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 17

18. b. The Flood as a Pun
• Eliot uses the flood as a pun and metaphors to
instruct the problems in the reality.
• On the one hand, the flood is the revenge from
nature, and on the other hand, Eliot realizes
that the industrialization is a kind of flood,
people in that time cannot resist its destruction.
• Bardi even interprets that the Gypsy is another
kind of flood, which can be seen as a threat to
the society (36).
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 18

19. IV. Conclusion
• Plumwood provides her philosophical concept of
holism as a solution to human/nature dualism.
Breaking down dualism is the resolution, which
involves “remaking the relationship so as to
remove the features of denied dependency” (123).
• In my conclusion, the flood represents nature, and
nature is holistic. Eliot is more realistic to make
such kind of ending due to she knows that the
industrial flood cannot be avoid.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 19

20. IV. Conclusion
• Furthermore, the ending is another pun, that is,
Maggie and Tom is a representation of dualism,
and Eliot makes the ending holistic. Human
and nature cannot be separated.
• The ending of the novel is Eliot’s
manifestation, which can be considered as an
ecofeminist philosophical idea of life: a return
to nature.
2013/7/30 Yi-Wei Evan Chin 20