"Error that is anguish to its own nobleness": shame and tragedy in the Mill on the Floss

In George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, early unresolved emotional conflicts in Maggie set a pattern that leads her to "tragic error" as a young adult. Eliot links Maggie's dilemma with Sophocles's Ajax, in which the Greek hero takes his life after shame pushes him blindly to an action that results in only deeper humiliation and a shattering of his social being. In both works, emotional conflict is driven by a desire to transcend shame and ultimately leads to a mortifying error that is recognized only after the fact as tragic in its consequences.