The mill on the floss door George Eliot

Publisher: Everyman’s Library
Year of publication: 1991
Year of first publication: 1860 Summary In this novel we see the development of Maggie Tulliver, from child to young woman. In this development plays her intense relationship with her brother Tom an important role. Tom and Maggie Tulliver live at the mill of Dorlcote on the river the Floss and his wife who is accommodating by nature. The mill is already generations long in possession of the family. Tom is a robust, not very intelligent boy. He dominates his more intelligent sister Maggie, who idolises him from her early youth. Tom plays a cat-and-mousgame with Maggie’s strong feelings for him. He creates a cruel, though unintentional pleasure in her every time when she does something that does not please him, punishing her by keeping his love from her. Maggie suffers when he does this. At the same time she is conscious of his injustice behaviour. Maggie’s frustration are strengthened when Tom, though he has nothing with books, is sent to school and is getting a good education, while nobody in the family thoughts it fit to stimulate and develop her intelligence and her hunger for knowledge. Al her efforts to develop her personality run up against lack of understanding and resistance from her environment. She search for comfort in the “Christian Year” by Thomas à Kempis, but the acquiescence that this book brings her, is only temporarily. Maggie is attracted to Tom’s classmate Philip Wakem, the son of a lawyer from the neighbourhood. Philip is lame and his life has many limitations, just like the life of Maggie. That is why he understands her frustrations better than anyone else. Mr. Tulliver is locked in a conflict with a farmer from the neighbourhood, who irrigates his land, that lies upstream of the mill, with water from the Floss. Energetic as always, the miller institutes proceedings about this case. His opponent is represented by the lawyer Wakem, who wins the case for him. That is the reason why the father of Philip is the reason why the miller is ruined. In a fit of rage the miller gave the lawyer what for. A short time later the miller dies of a stroke. Tom remains true to his father, who he promised that he get revenge at Wakem, and does everything to separate Philip and Maggie. He even forces his little sister to swear on the bible that she will never she Philip again. A few years later Maggie meets Philip again when she stays with her niece Lucy Deane, in the nearby town St. Oggs. During her stay with Lucy, Maggie gets to know Lucy’s fiancé, Stephen Guest, a friendly, well-bred, but a bit foppish young man, who radiates a certain sensuality. Ever since they first met, Maggie and Stephen felt strong attracted to each other. The intuitive, sensual character of their feeling for each other confuse them both. Other than Philip, who loves Maggie and always sensed her feelings dead-sharp, Lucy does not notice what is enacted between Stephen and her niece. She is happy that her fiancé is getting on so well with Maggie. She hopes that Maggie en Philip get married. Maggie is in a big dilemma: if she admits her feelings for Stephen and allows him to break off his engagement with Lucy (like he wishes to do), she betrays her niece, and if she admits to Philip’s feelings for her and marries him, she betrays her brother. Lucy and Stephen, Maggie and Philip make plans for a boat trip on the river. Because Lucy did not understand the appointment so well and Philip gets sick at the last moment, only Stephen en Maggie appear on the place of appointment. Maggie hesitates, but joins Stephen. Half Stephen’s doing, half outside of their fault, the two get too far away from home to get back the same day and are forced to spend the night together on a fishing boat. Now that she spend the whole night in company of a man, Maggie is irrevocable under a cloud. But she refuses to marry with Stephen, because she does not want to hurt Philip and Lucy even more than she already did. By this denial she is expelled through the society. Her brother tells her to leave and she is treated by almost everybody as pariah. Heavier lies upon that Maggie can not forgive herself for her “mistake”. A couple of months after these events, in the autumn, the whole area is under water. Tom is surprised in the mill by the water, but is heroically saved by Maggie, who came to rescue Tom in a boat. Brother and sister regret everything that happened and they made up. Short after that the boat is dragged along with the tide. It capsizes and Maggie and Tom drown. Characters The two characters I liked the most were Maggie Tulliver and Philip Wakem. First I will tell something about Maggie Tulliver and then I will tell about Philip Wakem. Maggie Tulliver

Maggie Tulliver is the daughter of the miller, Mr. Tulliver, of the Dorlcote Mill. In the beginning of the story she is a little girl, but during this book she is growing up, with all the difficulties of growing up. Her intelligence and emotional capacity outflank those of her family and cause problems. She becomes jealous at her brother Tom, when he is sent to school. And she does not understand why he does not like it at school, because she wants to learn very much and wants to have a lot of knowledge. One time when she visits her brother at school, she meets his schoolmate Philip Wakem. She can talk very good with him and they understand each other very well. She becomes friends with him and they are attracted towards each other. But their love is impossible: Philip is the son of the lawyer Wakem and Maggie’s father is in a conflict with a farmer in the neighbourhood and Wakem represents the farmer and wins for him. Because Mr. Tulliver lost his case, he is totally ruined and he attacks the lawyer. Short after that he dies and Tom forbids Maggie to meet and get involved with Philip. Maggie is in a big dilemma, should she be loyal to her brother or should she follow her strong feelings for Philip? This dilemma gets even bigger when she develops feelings for her niece fiancé Stephen. Philip Wakem
Philip Wakem is the son of the lawyer, Wakem. During the stay of Maggie at his school, he develops feelings for her. Although we do not see the story through his eyes, I still like his character. He is very understanding towards Maggie and is attracted to her. But, like I have told before, this love was impossible. But after a couple of years he still senses what Maggie feels and does notice Maggie’s feelings for Stephen. Also Philip develops strong in the story, just like Maggie, although he is older, he is still growing up during the story. Story The story is told by a storyteller and most of the times through the eyes of Maggie Tulliver. The story encloses somewhere about ten years, because in the beginning Maggie is still a little child and at the end she is almost a woman. The places where most of the story takes place are: the Dorlcote Mill, St. Ogg’s, the school of Tom and Philip and Park House. The novel belongs to the civil realism. I think that the theme of this book is Maggie’s struggle of growing up and dealing with all the unhappiness in her life. But I think that the relationship with her brother is also important in the story. The author George Eliot was the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, who, just like the sisters Brontë, preferred publishing under a masculine name. She knew better than anybody how much critics a woman writer with progressive ideas and an unconventional lifestyle in the Victorian society could get. George Eliot came from a pious evangelic environment. Under influence from progressive-liberal philosophers like Strauss and Feurbach, from who she translated a couple of works, she lost her belief off her youth. From 1854 she lived together with the critic George Lewes. Under his influence she began her career as writer and she developed into one of the most important English novel writer of the 19th century, next to Dickens. The novels of George Eliot, who belong to the civil realism, that grew fast in the 19th century, have a strong philosophic character. George Elliot tries to show in her novels how certain persons – with who she shows a struggle between the intellect and feelings almost every time – react on the challenges with who they are confronted. These challenges are usually presented in a form of universal dilemmas. Because of the important place that the character development occupies in her novels, her work had a big influence on the development of the 20th century psychological novels, not only in England, but also in France and America. Beside that, George Eliot’s work had a big influence on the work of famine authors, like Virginia Woolf. The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s second novel. My opinion I think it is a good story. There were times I thought I would never finish this book, because it was quite boring and tedious. But I did finish it and although it was sometimes a little boring, I could empathise good with Maggie. This book gave me an idea of how the world would seems to be for a girl who is growing up in that time, something like two ages ago. The women were discriminated, for example Maggie was not send to school, even though she would like that very much. But her brother, who is not so smart as Maggie, is sent to school and that makes her jealous and she searches for someone who understand her frustration and finds Philip. The end of the story was not a happy end, but a dramatic one. I like that, because it is more realistic than a happy end. And I did not expected that they would drown, so it was also a surprising end. I also think it was a beautiful end, and the text on the gravestone was very beautiful.