SOCIAL STEREOTYPES AND FEMALE INTELLIGENCE IN GEORGE ELIOT’S THE MILL ON THE FLOSS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of social stereotypes and female intellectual capacity as depicted in George Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss (1860). Through the character of Maggie Tulliver, Eliot systematically exposes the Victorian ideological apparatus that constrained women’s cognitive and moral development. Drawing on feminist literary theory, gender studies, and Victorian cultural history, this analysis demonstrates how Eliot uses Maggie’s trajectory to critique the epistemological hierarchies that devalued female intelligence and creativity. The article argues that the novel functions as a sustained fictional argument against the cultural codes that rendered intellectual women socially illegible and personally tragic. By foregrounding the conflict between Maggie’s inner life and external social expectations, Eliot anticipates twentieth-century feminist discourse on gender, power, and the politics of knowledge.