부산대학교 도서관

The Mill on the Floss, Marian’s first novel to be set before a public aware of its author’s controversial identity, returned to her desire for a natural history of English Protestant life and for a consideration of faith under conditions of relative poverty and a lack of culture and education. The novel dramatizes the existential need for faith in a social system that is not equitable, whether because of gender, class, or other forces, and underscores the fellowship of shared passibility: the “we mortals” so central to George Eliot’s consciousness. In an extended dialogue with Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, Eliot tests the idea of Christian renunciation as a response to temptation, sin, and suffering, suggesting its strength as a basis for the solitary invention of a sufficient faith, made manifest in a life of prayer and meditation.