SOURCE: "The Intrusion of Tragedy: The Ordeal of Richard Fever el and The Mill on the Floss," in Laughter & Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Era, University of California Press, 1971, pp. 109-35.

In this excerpt, Knoepflmacher compares Eliot's The Mill on the Floss to George Meredith's The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, noting that these novels do not effectively negotiate the split between romance and realism.

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son (1859) and The Mill on the Floss (1860) are shaped by a vision of change and disorder which, though inherent also in the comedy of Trollope and Thackeray and in Emily Bronte's romance [Wuthering Heights], acquires far more despairing overtones in the form chosen by George Meredith and George Eliot. Both novels are relatively early works written by intellectuals who were newcomers to the field of Victorian fiction. Meredith, who started out...