ABSTRACT
Critical discussion has addressed a number of ways in which the legacy of Romanticism is apparent in the work of George Eliot. Romanticism has many faces and the distinctions that have been made are particularly relevant to The Mill on the Floss, where two major and very different strains are apparent: the Wordsworthian, and a strain which leads to Schiller, seen as one of the 'fathers' of German Romanticism. If one looks at Maggie's development as a whole, it becomes clear that Wordsworthian model intersects with an overarching structure and ideology of quite another type which is reflected both in aspects of the plot and the passionate moral idealism of Maggie herself. Schiller's description of the sensuous state or 'state of nature' bears a close relation to Maggie's often turbulent childhood experiences. Each phenomenon stands before him, isolated and cut off from all other things even as he himself is isolated and unrelated in the great chain of being.
