This essay argues that the understudied micronarrative of St. Ogg in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss serves as a hermeneutic key to the significance of the novel's affectively perplexing conclusion. In this way, it also offers a productive, if difficult, model for ethical action in the world beyond the text. Integrating Talia Schaffer's insights on the ethics of care with narratological analysis and personal reflection, I show that care—as an action, not an emotion—can both catalyze and result from the narratively informed recognition of the gaps in one's knowledge about the lives of others. In the tale of Ogg's beatification—a passage regularly overlooked by critics of the novel—he aids a stranger precisely because he recognizes that he does not understand the reason for the needs she expresses. "It is enough that thy heart needs it," Ogg declares, and he is divinely rewarded when he accepts her unknowability and provides the material care the stranger requests. In this process, which I call "caring through the gap," Ogg's narratively informed awareness of his lack of knowledge stimulates, rather than stymies, his care-action. Caring through the gap is further developed as a flexible, intersubjective narrative process in the wrenching final scene between protagonists Maggie and Tom Tulliver. By refusing an affectively satisfying conclusion, Eliot's novel enacts the realist truth that giving and receiving care is ethically meaningful, even—perhaps especially—when resolution remains elusive. This dynamic also illuminates how the adaptable process of caring through the gap becomes urgently relevant in today's divided social worlds.

本文认为，乔治·艾略特的《弗洛斯河上的磨坊》中对圣奥格的微观叙事进行了充分研究。是解释小说令人困惑的情感结论的意义的关键。通过这种方式，它也为文本之外的世界中的道德行为提供了一种富有成效的（尽管有些困难）模式。将塔莉亚·谢弗（Talia Schaffer）对护理伦理的见解与叙事分析和个人反思相结合，我表明，护理——作为一种行动，而不是一种情感——既可以催化，也可以通过叙事认识到一个人对他人生活的知识差距而产生。 。在奥格列真福的故事中——小说批评家经常忽视的一段——他帮助一个陌生人，正是因为他认识到自己不明白她所表达的需求的原因。“你的心需要它就足够了，”奥格宣称，当他接受她的不可知性并提供陌生人所要求的物质照顾时，他就会得到神圣的回报。在这个我称之为“跨越鸿沟的关怀”的过程中，奥格通过叙述方式意识到自己缺乏知识，这刺激而不是阻碍了他的关怀行动。在主角玛吉和汤姆·塔利弗之间令人痛苦的最后一幕中，跨越鸿沟的关怀进一步发展为一种灵活的、主体间的叙事过程。通过拒绝情感上令人满意的结论，艾略特的小说阐明了一个现实主义的真理：给予和接受护理在道德上是有意义的，即使——也许尤其是——当解决方案仍然难以捉摸时。这种动态也说明了在当今分裂的社会世界中，跨越鸿沟的适应性护理过程如何变得迫切相关。