The Mill on the Floss

Human relationships are such complicated, tangled, painful things. George Eliot understands this exactly, and has written this book about them. Mr and Mrs Tulliver; the comic but complicated aunts and uncles; Tom; Philip; Stephen; Lucy… Maggie's relationships with them are conflicted and full of paradox. There is nothing simplistic, nothing easy, in the way Maggie must deal with all the complications that lie jumbled within herself and within the people she loves.

Maggie herself is a character of the heart. I think it would be impossible to read the book and really engage in it without loving Maggie. She is not dissimilar to Dorothea of Middlemarch - but Maggie is wilder, more instantly self-destructive. Her faults are more passionate, show more more sudden, more selfish. Something inside her must be on fire, all her life - poor Maggie.

I must mention the minor characters also. Mr Wakem, Aunt Moss, Tom's tutor whose name I forget - are all real people who would be ordinary except that they are depicted by George Eliot and are therefore interesting. Bob Jakin is a marvellous minor character, for all that he is simple and comic, and occasionally plays the role of a kind of deux et machina. Every word that comes out of his mouth is vivid and unexpected, often hilarious, and could come from nobody but himself.

A substantial part of this book is essentially about the conflict between romance and love - it sounds so trite, put into bald words, and many other authors would make it disgustingly so. But the reality of this conflict is anything but trite, and Eliot shows us this with her trademark depth of understanding and compassion. She shows, with power, the strange hold another person can have over us - the obsession, the fierce beauty and enormous pain, and the insane things this imaginative power can make us do.

I wanted to say it is a book for the young, because it is about the young, and what it is to be young. But I have a feeling this would be underestimating George Eliot, whose complexity and vast maturity must surely apply to anyone, regardless of her subject matter and themes. (And far be it from me to think I might have grasped everything she has put into this novel - of course I have not.)

This feels more like a Victorian novel than Middlemarch did for me. This one is more emotional, more sentimental - particularly the ending. It is of course an earlier work. But for all that, it is beautiful, it's powerful, and essentially, it is true.

How can I describe Eliot's truth, and our recognition of it? It's the same quality that stood out to me on reading Middlemarch. This truth lies not only in the big things, but in the small also. Eliot briefly describes some reaction or emotion in her characters, or some quality that they possess - and we see ourselves in it, in a way we haven't seen ourselves before. Or she will write about some ordinary thing, perhaps some evocation of childhood, or some comment on society, and we recognise its truth with a sense of surprise. Our reaction to it is not only in our minds, but somehow in our memory as well. We experience a sense of familiarity and a sense of discovery at the same time. I think out of all things, this is what I love most about George Eliot.

Insight, beauty, power, depth - it's all there. George Eliot is still my gold standard of literary fiction. show less

http://literalminded.com/george-eliot-mill-floss

When I picked up The mill on the Floss, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I was aware of several rave reviews and extensive discussions of Middlemarch and Romola, but apart from a warm recommendation by one of my professors at university practically no-one else I know had mentioned this book to me. In other words, I wasn't really wanting to like this book, and I had formed very few preconceived notions about it. That is why, I think, it turned out to be such a good read: Eliot's character study of siblings Maggie and Tom Tulliver kept on serving pleasant surprises throughout.

Put briefly, the novel describes the troubled relationship between a brother and sister who have very different show more views of what is right and proper. they are shaped and bent against their will by family ties, society's expectations, and by their father's obstinate insistence on wanting to be right. Throughout the novel, as the focus shifts to Maggie, the relationship between the pair becomes more and more strained, as either considers self-sacrifice to be the only viable road to the happiness of others. But this brief description of the plot fails to give a good impression of what The mill on the Floss is actually about.

Instead, I would like to copy out a brief passage from this book. It isn't one of the important passages, nor is it particularly famous, but is is one of the many instances where I realised just how much I was enjoying this book.

*** He had the room all to himself, and a man requires nothing less than that when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high, brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying 'the giant Python'. The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgements, founded on a mere comparison of actions. ***

This passage describes Stephen Guest, Maggie’s friend and her cousin’s fiancé, who is facing a moral dilemma and sits down in an abandoned room to mull over his past and future conduct: whichever option he chooses will cause pain and suffering to him and to those he loves; choosing neither will make all parties involved suffer; and choosing both is impossible.

There is a particular 19th-century charm to passages such as this one, quite apart from the fact that sprinkling your narrative with observations about Life that are supposedly General and Applicable To All is not done any more. And much more importantly, none of these stylistic mannerisms are just that: none of them are irrelevant adornments.

This novel contains numerous observations just like the one above. They don’t make the book any more quotable, or any more directly relevant or applicable to anyone else but the characters that are directly involved. But then again: that is not the point, is it? Generic quotes on the human condition or ready-made moral lessons aren’t the focus of the novel; in fact, those are a fairly marginal feature overall. The mill on the Floss is fundamentally concerned with a meticulous dissection of Maggie Tulliver’s struggle with her irreconcilable inclinations and her inner self-strangulation, as well as the careful analysis of Tom Tulliver’s stubbornly righteous character. It is this psychological study that makes up the core of the novel. This is the focus that justifies all events, additions and observations, and all decisions her characters make. All 19th-century-style observations are firmly tied to the novel’s core intentions.

George Eliot simply wasn’t interested in making up people, merely to expound her views on human behaviour or to depict social practices in rural settings: she was concerned with something much more interesting. For The mill on the Floss she took a likable, believable and pitiable 3-D character, gave her a decent and realistic psychological barrier that affects practically all aspects of her entire life and all the decisions she has to make, and then she went on to carefully study how that character fares amidst other, more or less 3-D characters. She also adored indulging in all sorts of psychological and ethical justifications for various kinds of contrasting behaviour along the way. It’s wonderful!

Maggie Tulliver’s sensitive nature is essentially divided over two inherently incompatible inclinations, and it makes her life intolerable. Her brother, Tom Tulliver, clings obsessively to one single idea of what constitutes correct behaviour, to which all else must submit. He will tolerate neither objection or adversity, and he will set things straight, and that, too makes life for him, and for those around him, rigid, smothering. There is no attempt at light-hearted approach here: George Eliot is ruthless. Oh, it’s not that she doesn’t take pity on her characters, because she does, very much so. But that pity is uttered in the author’s cool and distant voice, an omniscient observer who sits and watches while her characters writhe in anguish, struggle with fate, with society, and with each other.

The final pages are perhaps the least interesting ones, in that they are too short and rush things to completion. By the time I had reached the ending, the novel had me so engrossed in watching Maggie suffer that I didn’t see Eliot’s solution coming. At the end of a carefully developed novel, her rushed way of wrapping it up first left me thinking: “what a cop-out,” and in a way I still think about it that way. It’s not that I don’t agree with Eliot’s solution. On the contrary, I think she’s opted for the one that follows most logically from everything that has come before. It’s the sudden, hurried execution of it that leaves me dissatisfied.

On the whole, though, my first George Eliot has been a marvellous read. It’s well plotted, with amazing psychological characterisation, and a great deal of intelligence — it is impossible not to notice that this book was written by a very intelligent person indeed. And I absolutely love the way Eliot makes us care for poor Maggie Tulliver by letting her own love and understanding shine through, all the while refusing to relent. A sappy, sentimental approach would have ruined the novel. A hasty ending takes away some of it, but overall it’s been a great read. show less

This novel was Eliot’s follow-up to her successful Adam Bede. While I didn’t feel it was consistently as strong as that book, and my attention wavered at times, I enjoyed it overall. In particular, the crisis that destroys Maggie Tulliver���s reputation while at the same time strengthening her moral conviction, as well as the denouement that followed, swept me along like the raging waters of the Humber (sorry, Floss).
As for what bothered me: I felt the relationship between Maggie and her beloved, implacable brother Tom was too closely modeled on that of Eliot and her brother Isaac, who never reconciled with her after she set up house with George Henry Lewes. And the depiction of Maggie’s four aunts was, to me, overdone; I felt the show more same effect could have been achieved with fewer pen strokes. In addition, the juxtaposition of satire and pathos pulled the narrative in opposite directions. And the repeated foreshadowing of Maggie’s eventual fate was, to my taste, heavy-handed.
Balanced against that is the lovingly detailed realism of rural life evident in every one of her works I’ve read so far. In addition, there is her characteristic analysis of the dynamics of small-town society. For me, the contrast of the demands of competing modes of “morality” — Christian and societal — in the wake of Maggie’s ordeal is a strong point of the book. The ground had been prepared for it at the midpoint, the opening chapter of Book 4, “A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet.” I continue to be struck by Eliot’s “post-anti-evangelicalism,” her sympathetic depiction of a faith she no longer shares. In this book, this is not only embodied by Maggie but also by the local vicar, Dr. Kenn (well-named; he is the one who truly knows).
As a child, Maggie is so impetuous and clumsy that it’s hard to imagine, given her precocious intelligence, that she can’t foresee the consequences of her actions.
This trait of the childhood Maggie returns at the book’s climax, when she awakens to the reality of having allowed herself to be swept away with the tide (literally) in the company of her cousin’s intended, Stephen Guest. At this book’s heart, as in most of Eliot’s work, is the theme of the restricted life chances for women in early nineteenth-century England. Her behavior throughout this episode must be read in the context of the options of a young woman in her time. When so read, it’s clear that alongside her acquiescence to her fate is the fierce struggle to support herself and achieve self-determination. At heart is a profound ethical resolve. show less

Here is a book that creates conflicting emotions, lots of them.

The description of the mill in chapter 1 almost made me miss my stop during my commute. There is a peculiar magic in the writing. It’s lyrical and sharp all at once.

I loved Maggie so much. Oh, how I felt for her. All these people telling her what books not to read, and wishing she was a boy (too clever for a girl, you know…), and reminding her at every turn that there are things you cannot do because you are a girl. George Eliot sees this so clearly. How I wish that Maggie had been loved *enough* when she was a child. How I wish she had a brother that knew that showing affection did not mean being a narrow-minded misogynic idiot.

“She loved Tom very dearly, but she show more often wished that he cared more about her loving him.”

Here is Maggie, saying no to a gift and breaking readers’ hearts:

“It would make me in love with this world again, as I used to be, it would make me long to see and know many things; it would make me long for a full life.”

George Eliot’s insights into human nature, relationships, and society are wonderful and often funny, it was a bit like talking to a good friend in a cozy place, nodding “I know! I know! You’re so right!”

“It is always chilling, in a friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.”

“...but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without private fortune it is difficult to see how they could all live genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or government.”

The thing that was woven with great skill and that impressed me the most, was the story of two people who have no idea how to handle a sudden and strong sexual attraction (this is exactly what it is and all it is, Eliot does everything but scream at the reader).

I certainly wish that Elliot would do less Victorian moralizing; fewer sentimental and very long Victorian asides. These either bored me to tears or made me react in all the wrong (cynical) ways. Also, the story keeps coming apart at the seams when you look at the novel from a distance, having finished it. The plot meanders, it goes every which way, gets predictable at times, drowns in details and aforementioned asides. If it weren’t for the ending, it might still have been a four star read, because the book had grown on me. But what was that ending for, where did it come from? Nobody knows and out of nowhere! It seems like the author said, “I have no idea how to get my characters out of this situation and finish my story, so let me just…”. Oh, PLEASE. show less

Tom was a heartless, self-righteous ass. Maggie was an insipid sop of a fool, self-righteous in her own way. The one was a mindless roar, the other a detestable whimper. Such wonderful writing, but I ceased caring about any of these hateful characters at least halfway through the book. I had to force myself to finish it. By the end, I was earnestly hoping that Maggie would fling herself into the Floss and make a pleasing end of things for everyone. It isn't hard to imagine how happy I was about the ending, at least, though no auto de fé could suffice to redeem these two obnoxious characters.

Why did you do this to me, George Eliot? I won't soon forgive this offense.

George Eliot paints people in a way that brings them to life. This book, is all about the contrast of personalities, the resonating effects of prejudice, and the challenges of conflicting ties. I loved it, even as I cringed at the behavior of many of the characters.

I did not like the ending. Not because Maggie died. I had been expecting her death from the moment she woke up on the boat, fleeing with her lover. What I hated was that in the end, it was the acceptance and love of her emotionally abusive brother Tom that brought Maggie peace. He didn't change at all, and I have no doubt that if he hadn't died, it would have only a matter of time before he was pushing her away and condemning her excessively once again.

My happy world ending show more would have had Maggie eventually realize how to navigate the narrow space between severing any tie that seems onerous, as Stephen Guest would have her do, and severing those that are truly unhealthy, as Maggie herself is unable to do, and thus finding happiness. But even an ending where Maggie dies miserable because she is trying to be true to a set of conflicting demands would have been preferable to giving way before the slightest friendly look from her brother.

All that said, I don't think we're supposed to be satisfied with the ending. I think this is supposed to be a tragedy, a tragedy not just because of death, but because Maggie, in the end, is never able to overcome the weakness that has haunted her from her earliest days. Eliot does not, I think, expect us to like or forgive Tom. show less

4.5/5

But until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid, too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg’s were not all brave by any means; some of them were even fond of scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an effeminate character if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual hatred of women. It was a general feeling of the masculine mind at St. Ogg’s that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other.

Pay no heed to the stars. There's Marian (Mary Ann) Evans, and then there's everyone else. The show more only meaning that four-and-a-half signifies is that I do not feel this to be as masterful as [Middlemarch], an achievement few novels and even fewer established classics accomplish.

Childhood has no forebodings, but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

I have a sister, or rather I have a tie to this world that I will not break. If nothing else, I have her, and when I no longer have her, I do not know what I will do, but those are not thoughts that need be dwelt upon today. It is because of her that I have those "memories of outlived sorrow", and as such this portrayal of siblinghood that only Evans could create cut me to the quick. Not as deep as it could, however, for with my own kindred I share the solidarity of gender, a bond that eases the translation of one's pain from one to the other and back again. I might not be as forthright a feminist as I am today had I a brother in place of a sister.

You thank God for nothing but your own virtues; you think they are great enough to win you everything else. You have not even a vision of feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are mere darkness!

You could call this a romance, a tragedy, a bildungsroman of highest order, but as with [Middlemarch] Evans writes life in all its entanglements, every lazy dichotomy of good and evil skeined forth in veins that mix and match in that stringent mess humanity has made of life in an effort to live. It is a heartbeat that equates knowing with feeling and seeks to raise both to the utmost, a rare genius that does not excuse its oppression by way of its omniscience. Here is high society, here is high knowledge, here is the patriarchy laid bare with a keen and empathetic glance that transcribed in ink an effort to convey her insight to others, and if there are those who say 'twas a shame the author lived in the times she did, forbear. It's a shame that for all the respect accorded to her in the echelons of literature, for all the phenomenal works she composed in earnest, for all the readers she has inspired ever on, here and there and everywhere she is brought into existence through the letters of her pen name. Marian Evans is her name; you do her no respect by calling her otherwise.

Many things are difficult and dark to me, but I see one thing quite clearly: that I must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others.

For all the gorgeous resonance this novel called forth, for all the strength and endurance of its anti-gaslighting measures that should be heralded in every tale of love involving a woman and/or others with less power in their inherent lot in life, I did not give it five stars because of the ending.While the afterword rhapsodized on about tragedy and the Greeks and all that ancient jazz, I do not hold by a system of thought that proclaims the mental disturbance of a man a true tragedy and the death of a woman a mere accident. What I love most about Evans is her ability to make prominent and noteworthy the conflicts and resolutions of daily life, and while I respect her efforts to take a different path, it is not the one for me. When it comes down to it, making a meaningful conclusion with everyone alive is far more difficult than sacrificing a few to theme and pathos; I admire far more those writers who choose life over death.However, whatever the anathema accredited to spoilers, it is a poor piece of work indeed which may be utterly ruined by the single turn of plot. As here we have the very opposite, (indeed, I would be amazed if Evans were even capable of turning out a poor piece of work), my quibble is a personal one, and should not affect your eagerness to read this in the slightest. And eager you should be; you'll never look at soap operas in fiction, or or romantic relations in real life, or women, or yourself, the same way again.

I am not resigned; I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson.

P.S. If ever you come across a copy of this book with every single 'George Eliot' crossed out and 'Marian Evans' written above where it counts: it was once mine. show less