Egyptian Mythology in Eliot’s Major Works

Abstract

Youngkin traces Eliot’s reading of key sources about ancient Egypt, as documented in her notebooks, and her use of Egyptian mythology in her major fictional works. In these works, Egyptian mythology is used in contrast to Christian, Hebrew, and Greek mythologies, but through Eliot’s association of Egyptian imagery with the symbolic, it plays an important role in the writing of realistic fiction. Eliot uses Egyptian mythology to develop new kinds of “heroes,” an element of character development important in critical mythological readings of her work. Examining most of Eliot’s major works—Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Romola (1863), The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Middlemarch (1871), and Daniel Deronda (1876)—this essay extends readings by earlier critics to emphasize how references to Egyptian mythology enhance our understanding of the complex ways in which diverse mythologies structure fictional narratives.