Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss

Yeşim İpekçi

doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1909208

Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss

Abstract

This article reads George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) as a Victorian bildungsroman that stretches rather than rejects the conventions of the genre. Critics have frequently classified the novel as an anti-bildungsroman because Maggie Tulliver fails to achieve social integration. I argue instead that Maggie’s development takes the form of an affective formation grounded in love and sympathy. Bringing Gilles Deleuze’s conception of love into dialogue with Eliot’s ethics of sympathy, the article examines how Maggie’s childhood experiences of disciplinary love, shame and self-negation produce an alternative mode of subject formation. Focusing on Maggie’s relationships with Tom Tulliver, Philip Wakem and Stephen Guest, this paper shows that love in the novel does not stabilise identity through marriage or social reconciliation. Rather, it unsettles the boundaries of both the subject and the genre by expanding the capacity for sympathetic relations. From this perspective, Maggie’s death in the flood appears not as the failure of development but as the culmination of an ethical-affective bildung. The article therefore positions The Mill on the Floss as a text that reimagines maturation as affective transformation rather than social integration.

Keywords

Thanks

This article is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation titled “Affective Contradictions of Subject-Formation and the Bildung Paradox in the Victorian Bildungsroman,” submitted to the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Middle East Technical University in 2026, and represents a revised and condensed version of Chapter 5 from the thesis.

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

British and Irish Language, Literature and Culture

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Yeşim İpekçi ^*
0000-0002-9343-9770
Türkiye

Publication Date

May 17, 2026

Submission Date

March 13, 2026

Acceptance Date

May 17, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 20 Number: 1

DOI

https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1909208

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA48KZ49HB

Cite

RIS / Bibtex

APA

İpekçi, Y. (2026). Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 20(1), 279-292. https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1909208

AMA

1.İpekçi Y. Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss. CUJHSS. 2026;20(1):279-292. doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1909208

Chicago

İpekçi, Yeşim. 2026. “Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss”. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 20 (1): 279-92. https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1909208.

EndNote

İpekçi Y (May 1, 2026) Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 20 1 279–292.

IEEE

[1]Y. İpekçi, “Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss”, CUJHSS, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 279–292, May 2026, doi: 10.47777/cankujhss.1909208.

ISNAD

İpekçi, Yeşim. “Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss”. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 20/1 (May 1, 2026): 279-292. https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1909208.

JAMA

1.İpekçi Y. Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss. CUJHSS. 2026;20:279–292.

MLA

İpekçi, Yeşim. “Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss”. Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 20, no. 1, May 2026, pp. 279-92, doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1909208.

Vancouver

1.Yeşim İpekçi. Beyond the Limits of the Bildungsroman: Love, Sympathy, and Affective Formation in The Mill on the Floss. CUJHSS. 2026 May 1;20(1):279-92. doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1909208