This article was published in The George Eliot Review, No. 42, 2011, 70-76, and is reproduced here in pre-edited form.
‘The Mill on the Floss’ in the Nineteen-Seventies
Abstract
This article compares the time gap between the present and the year in which the BBC first adapted ‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1979), with the similarly-sized gap between Eliot’s time of writing, and the year in which she set that novel. It contrasts the adaptors’ effacement, and Eliot’s accentuation, of historical distance, and concludes with reflections on how adaptations, Victorian novels, and articles about either show their age, but retain their interest in relation to characters whom readers find compelling.
