Trouble in Paradise: How Milton’s Eve Paved the Way for Eliot’s “Mistake of Nature,” Maggie Tulliver
Date of Award
Spring 4-30-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Joseph Cermatori
Abstract
In George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, the protagonist, Maggie Tulliver, is ultimately punished for possessing the same, inherently Miltonic, qualities present in the Eve of John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost: a thirst for knowledge and the refusal to ever be satisfied. Eliot writes Maggie to be a reinterpretation of Eve in Paradise Lost, but grounds Maggie’s transgressive character within the context of a more secular nineteenth century. While Maggie’s attempts to enact her free will, like Milton’s Eve, result in punishment, unlike Milton, who sought to balance human reason with the existence of the divine, Eliot’s punishment is not a religious one, but is instead embodied through the natural world in the form of a flood. Maggie’s destruction in The Mill on the Floss is assured by the social forces of the Victorian patriarchy, and it is through this lens of social determinism that Eliot responds to Milton’s characterization of Eve and female identity as the harbinger of all evil in Paradise Lost and into the fallen world as a whole.
Creative Commons License
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Recommended Citation
Kanter, Abby, "Trouble in Paradise: How Milton’s Eve Paved the Way for Eliot’s “Mistake of Nature,” Maggie Tulliver" (2026). English Honors Theses. 95.
https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/eng_stu_schol/95