The novel opens with the narrative character, not simply a voice inthis case, in an act of reconstructing the past which
anticipates, andstrongly influenced, Proust. Unlike George Eliot's
earlier narrators,this voice is feminine.The absence of the intrusive and artificial assertions of maleness inthe
narrator, such as are frequently found in the earlier work, uniteswith a new impressionistic sensibility in the narrator of'Outside Dorlcote Mill' to give the reader the impression that thenarrator is female. In Maggie's life, George Eliot explores anunrealized possibility of her own life. Maggie is the other possibleMarian Evans who never left her home, never broke the ties mostsacred to her .