“The Ugly Duckling” andThe Mill on the Floss: A Fairy-Tale Rewriting of the BildungsromaN

What is it about?

George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss is often read as a tragic Bildungsroman which enacts the nineteenth century paradigm of limited female development, or even takes it to the extreme of anti-development. The article proposes that the novel's allusion to Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling”, which has received little attention despite the extensive critical discourse on The Mill on the Floss, supplies it with a context of individual growth, improvement and strength which counters the narrative of Maggie's disempowerment and defeat. Moreover, because it points to a radical, unexpected and bodily transformation, Andersen’s fairytale challenges the blindness of the traditional Bildungsroman towards the physical-bodily aspects of growing up and provides a conception of embodied subjectivity that is split and heterogeneous.

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