This essay aims to analyze George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss in terms of a failed female growth which is embodied in a gender-specific tragic form and to explore the way in which a mid-Victorian femme fatale emerges as a prototypical modern feminine subject who painfully takes up the full agency of her action. A tragic conflict between female desire and social constriction produces a continuous tension between the generic modes―Bildungsroman and tragedy—and ruptures any harmonious developmental narrative for Maggie Tulliver, the heroine of the novel. However, the novel shows that Maggie takes up a more empowering subject position, by subverting the patriarchal construction of the dichotomy between a domestic woman and a fallen woman. Drawing on Rebecca Stott’s idea of the femme fatale as a ‘cultural sign’ of the feminine other positioned beyond the limit of social order and Slavoj Zizek’s concept that femme fatale never cedes her desire, my point is that Maggie Tulliver is a mid-Victorian female fatale who firmly gives voice to her feminine desire despite her suffering, loss, and fragility. In the catastrophic ending of the novel, Maggie emerges as a subject of radical tragic sensibility, precisely because she bravely accepts the death inscribed in the narrative of the witch she has been performing throughout. Far from being a simple victim who is passively punished for her transgression or for the desire she embodies, Maggie chooses to make an ethical decision and willingly accepts the tragic consequences of her actions. As a subject of her action, Maggie emerges as a prototypical instance of modern feminine subjectivity.

This essay aims to analyze George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss in terms of a failed female growth which is embodied in a gender-specific tragic form and to explore the way in which a mid-Victorian femme fatale emerges as a prototypical modern feminine subject who painfully takes up the full agency of her action. A tragic conflict between female desire and social constriction produces a continuous tension between the generic modes―Bildungsroman and tragedy—and ruptures any harmonious developmental narrative for Maggie Tulliver, the heroine of the novel. However, the novel shows that Maggie takes up a more empowering subject position, by subverting the patriarchal construction of the dichotomy between a domestic woman and a fallen woman. Drawing on Rebecca Stott’s idea of the femme fatale as a ‘cultural sign’ of the feminine other positioned beyond the limit of social order and Slavoj Zizek’s concept that femme fatale never cedes her desire, my point is that Maggie Tulliver is a mid-Victorian female fatale who firmly gives voice to her feminine desire despite her suffering, loss, and fragility. In the catastrophic ending of the novel, Maggie emerges as a subject of radical tragic sensibility, precisely because she bravely accepts the death inscribed in the narrative of the witch she has been performing throughout. Far from being a simple victim who is passively punished for her transgression or for the desire she embodies, Maggie chooses to make an ethical decision and willingly accepts the tragic consequences of her actions. As a subject of her action, Maggie emerges as a prototypical instance of modern feminine subjectivity.

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