George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, and Parasitic Form

This article examines natural historical writings by George Henry Lewes and Philip Henry Gosse in order to illuminate George Eliot's understanding and plotting of human relations, particularly in her novel The Mill on the Floss (1860). Inspired by Gosse's studies of seaside ecosystems, in which traditional understandings of parasitism give way to dense and overdetermined parasitic relations, both Lewes and George Eliot take up the "parasitic cluster" as a formal device. For Lewes, the parasite reveals the beauty and interdependence of nature; in environments marked by infinite connection, the parasitic cluster is a "typical form." In George Eliot's darker view, however, the parasite exposes the complex asymmetry inherent to all relationships, especially among humans; as such, it becomes an archetype crucial to her novel's form.