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Antigone적 비극모형에 비추어 본 The Mill on the Floss
설준규 한신대학교 1985 한신논문집 Vol.2 No.-
Not a few critics have already commented upon the fact that George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss has many affinities with classical Greek tragedies, and especially with Sophocles' Antigone. But none, to my knowledge, has ever offered a thorough analysis of the relation between the two works. This paper, therefore, attempts a re-examination of some major issues concerning The Mill on the Floss in the light of Antigone. First, by elaborating on G. Eliot's. and F.W. Hegel's opinions about Antigone, this paper constructs a working tragic model. Next, this paper sketches some vital issues which have been the subjects of wide discussion among commentators on The Mill on the Floss, from the time of its publication up to the present. And then these major issues are re-examined from the vantage point of the tragic model formulated through Antigone. The fundamental tragic power of Antigone is generated in the "conflicts between two valid claims": Creon's social, political duty on the one hand, and Antigone's filial one on the other.The Mill on the Floss fails to establish the equal validity of the opposing claims which vie for Maggie's acceptance; Stephen's claim sound weak beside Maggie's own inner demands. Therefore, the tragic potential in this novel is never fully realized. The tragic convincingness of Antigone is to a large part due to the concrete dramatization of the suffering that Creon and Antigone undergo as the outcome of their moral choices: Creon witnesses the death of his wife and son, while Antigone all but loses faith in human relationship and finally hangs herself. In The Mill on the Floss, when Maggie ritualistically and symbolically drowns in a flood, the tribulation resulting from her moral choice is deprived of its due development; consequently, the conclusion of the novel loses much of its artistic persuasiveness. By clearly delineating the moral dilemmas of Creon and Antigone, and by forcefully presenting the tragic outcome of their one-sided choices, Antigone succeeds in elevating the commonplace virtue of moderation to an artistically proved moral vision. The Mill on the Floss neither offers a clear depiction of the moral dilemma that confronts Maggie, nor concretizes the dreary result of her moral choice; hence, the lack of a firm moral vision, and the subsequent flaw in the thematic unity of the novel.