The theme of childhood occupies an evocative position in both Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede: the nuanced and remarkably perceptive psychological elements of George Eliot’s writing are evident in her narrative treatment of children and their relation to the larger social world of the novels. Eliot’s literary insights on childhood incorporate the relevance of memory, temporality, and the notion of the self, and function as thematic signifiers for the respective characterizations of multiple protagonists in both novels. The narrative treatment of children and childhood in The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede has a particular impact upon the psychological representation of characters in each respective text, but the form of this impact differs significantly in relation to each novel. In The Mill on the Floss, a rich psychological portrayal of the complexity and passions of childhood provides the foundation upon which Maggie’s troubling but sympathetic character is formed. In contrast, Adam Bede achieves a sinister psychological impact through its striking representational absence of children, but evokes a disappointingly shallow depiction of youth in the characterization of Hetty Sorrel. This notion of childhood, whether as a temporal vacuum of spiritual harmony or as a site for base selfishness, emerges as a primary recurring theme in both novels, but is used to a far greater effect in The Mill on the Floss.

Early in the narrative of The Mill on the Floss, the narrator intones, “There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the labor of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our own personality; we accepted and loved it as we accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs” (Eliot, MF, 160). Evoking an image of harmony between the self and the outside world, these ruminations upon childhood in The Mill on the Floss illustrate a precedent to the psychological state later described in the works of psychoanalyst such as Jacques Lacan. In Lacan’s paper The Mirror Stage as Formative to the Function of the ‘I,’ identified by Alison Bechdel in the autobiographical Are You My Mother?, a peculiar compromising of the notion of the self occurs when one first encounters a mirror. The conception of the self essentially begins to form in response to the visible world around it: for upon seeing one’s own reflection, Bechdel explains, “…you can see that you’re separate from everything else” (Bechdel, 232).

This dissonance between the private self and outside world, specifically in terms of the conflict between Maggie’s private yearnings and social consciousness, occurs repeatedly throughout The Mill on the Floss, but becomes increasingly relevant as Maggie matures. For as Sally Shuttleworth observes in George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Science, neither the past nor the self is unified in The Mill on the Floss: the narrative structure of the novel echoes this sense of fragmentation as it operates between the discursive meditations of the narrator and the linear cohesion of the story (Shuttleworth, 52). This style of narration correlates to Maggie’s own ever-developing psychology: caught between the compulsions of her social conscience and the allure of her own longings, “…Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences, but what would have happened if they had not been done” (Eliot, MF, 70). In a story riddled with desire and decision, the protagonist’s perpetual awareness of the immutable past is particularly significant. Maggie’s prismatic worldview underscores a conception of memory and time that deeply informs and complicates her character—it is precisely this sense of retrospect and self-awareness that will fold back upon itself in the “One supreme moment” (Eliot, MF, 542) wherein Maggie’s death creates a tragic but thrillingly cathartic final respite from the ambivalence and fragmentation of her social existence.

Childhood in Adam Bede, on the other hand, is symbolized most often through its own absence. Josephine McDonagh discusses the macabre thematic significance of child murder in Adam Bede, writing, “In a covert way the text is preoccupied with the very processes of forgetting. Hence the novel’s dominant motif—burial—specifically child murder-by-burial. Paradoxically, the figure of forgetting is also the bearer of those memories that must be forgotten, so that to forget means also to remember” (McDonagh, 145). In accordance with this notion, representational absences in Adam Bede (‘forgetting’) are as important as representational presences (‘remembering’), with neither providing a complete depiction of the narrative reality, but both providing valuable insight into the psychological nature of the text. In other words, the general lack of (living) children within Adam Bede carries is own thematic relevance. Largely as a result of this, Hetty Sorrel’s murdered child is never described or named: it is formless, selfless, and genderless, and yet its murder propels forms the primary narrative catalyst in the novel. The violent absence of the child dramatically alters the manner of the narrative—the specter of its death haunts the text as a whole, and comes to symbolize not the idyllic past of The Mill on the Floss, but a precarious and terrifying future.

While the representational absence of children in Adam Bede has its own keen psychological impact, however, its representational presence is far more simplistic, and at times even underdeveloped. This is most evident in the character of Hetty who, despite her age, is described as being “almost a child herself” (Eliot, AB, 167). In this context, the notion of a child indicates something simple, vulnerable, and foolish: starkly juxtaposing the psychologically complex child character of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss. When the trauma of the death of her own child is projected outwards through Hetty’s arrest and trial, the event deeply impacts the more multidimensional characters, such as Adam, within the broader community of the novel, but manifests in Hetty as a calculated sense of self-preservation. Indeed, the character of Hetty appears to be nearly devoid of all maternal love: using the term “it” to describe her child, she does not name or even take note of its sex (Eliot, AB, 491). By viewing the child as as a symbol of shame rather than a person worthy of a name or even a gender pronoun, Hetty demonstrates—even in light of her dire circumstances—a profound lack of empathy for a vulnerable human life.

In The Mill on the Floss, Eliot’s rich, nuanced treatment of the psychology of children allows Maggie’s history to provide a necessary foundation for literary transcendence of the controversial decisions that characterize her adult narrative: Maggie’s passionate, though not always sensible tendencies are knitted together in the many facets of an imperfect and deeply engaging psyche. Adam Bede ultimately emerges as the weaker of the two texts, demonstrating characterizations that further the conception of a childlike, psychologically one-dimensional woman who is near irredeemable not only in the selfishness of her actions, but also in the sheer uselessness of her narrative presence. Ultimately, the text of Adam Bede seems to hold too much in common with the androcentric realm of human psychology, with its extensive academic history of presupposing the simplistic, dimensionless natures of its female subjects. In both novels, however, the literary treatment of children manifests as a primary force behind the trajectory of each respective narrative, underscoring the relevance of the complex psychologies of childhood upon which Eliot’s successful conception of sympathetic and engaging protagonists is largely contingent.

Works Cited

Bechdel, Alison. Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.

Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Ed. A. S. Byatt. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Eliot, George, and Margaret Reynolds. Adam Bede. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

McDonagh, Josephine. “A Nation of Infanticides: Child Murder and the National Forgetting in Adam Bede.” Child Murder and British Culture, 1720-1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2003. 123- 53. Google Scholar. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.

Shuttleworth, Sally. “The Mill on the Floss: The Shadowy Armies of the Unconscious.” George Eliot and Nineteenth-century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. 51-77. Google Scholar. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.