“Survival of the Fittest” and George Eliot’s Critique of Capitalism in The Mill on the Floss

Abstract

In The Mill on the Floss, the ruthless rules of social Darwinism play out even before the term “survival of the fittest” was coined, and the fiction translates the “survival of the fittest” that Darwin identified in nature to a human community in the early stages of industrial capitalism. This article aims to demonstrate how George Eliot evaluates laissez-faire capitalism through her use of the Darwinian struggle for existence among the Tullivers and the Dodsons, and how George Eliot’s criticism of materialism and Mammonism of the early industrial capitalism in The Mill on the Floss works as a warning for her Victorian contemporaries who are devoted to “economic survival of the fittest.”