George Eliot’s Theatricality

Abstract This chapter investigates George Eliot’s early novels Adam Bede (1859) and The Mill on the Floss (1860) and their respective adaptations by Geoffrey Beevers (1990) and Helen Edmundson (1994). It contends that Eliot’s fiction, especially her early fiction, is eminently theatrical, as demonstrated by its frequent use of entrances and exits, the figure of the Greek chorus, and a type of dramatic self-awareness reminiscent of Shakespeare, for example. Adaptations from the late twentieth century, which were especially successful due to the rise of experimental theatre in Britain, help uncover this theatricality by highlighting theatrical components such as the novels’ vivid dialogue, dramatic irony, and choric intervention. To use the theatrical afterlives as a reading channel, this chapter shows, is to embrace the unexpected and the counterintuitive.