SOURCE: "Men of Maxims and The Mill on the Floss," in Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism, Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 62-79.

In the following excerpt, first published in Critical Inquiry in 1981, Jacobus applies a critical feminist perspective to the language of The Mill on the Floss.

Nancy Miller's "maxims that pass for the truth of human experience" [in her "Emphasis Added: Plots and Plausibilities in Women's Fiction," PMLA, January 1981] allude to Eliot's remark near the end of The Mill on the Floss that "the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules." Miller's concern is the accusation of implausibility leveled at the plots of women's novels: Eliot's concern is the "special case" of Maggie Tulliver—"to lace ourselves up in formulas" is to ignore "the special circumstances that mark the individual lot." An argument...