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    The Mill on the Floss: Victorian Romance Novel
    The Mill on the Floss: Victorian Romance Novel
    The Mill on the Floss: Victorian Romance Novel
    Ebook723 pages9 hours

    The Mill on the Floss: Victorian Romance Novel

    By George Eliot

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    About this ebook

    Set in the late 1820s and 1830s, after the Napoleonic Wars, the novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years and details the life of Maggie Tulliver, and her brother Tom, growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St Ogg's in Lincolnshire, England. The story begins when Maggie is 9 years old, 13 years into her parents' marriage. Main focus of the story is on her relationship with her older brother Tom, and her romantic relationships with Philip Wakem (a hunchbacked, sensitive and intellectual friend) and with Stephen Guest (a vivacious young socialite in St Ogg's and assumed fiancé of Maggie's cousin Lucy Deane) constitute the most significant narrative threads.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publishere-artnow
    Release dateMar 26, 2019
    ISBN9788027303755
    The Mill on the Floss: Victorian Romance Novel
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot (1819–1880), born Mary Ann Evans, was an English writer best known for her poetry and novels. She grew up in a conservative environment where she received a Christian education. An avid reader, Eliot expanded her horizons on religion, science and free thinkers. Her earliest writings included an anonymous English translation of The Life of Jesus in 1846 before embracing a career as a fiction writer. Some of her most notable works include Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss(1860) and Silas Marner.

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    Reviews for The Mill on the Floss

    4/5

    1,322 ratings55 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I read this a little too long ago to quite remember it well. I have an image of the mill being swept away by the end of the novel but I don't remember what it all meant.

      I remember there was a sentence about a third of the way through the novel describing the state of the marriage between an aunt and uncle of the protagonist. The sentence was about a page long and started out indicating that the uncle was in the garden and as in a long spiral seemed to draw out the psychology of the marriage between the aunt and uncle and the aunt's philosophy of marriage and the uncle's manner of coping with his wife. It left me delirious. Twice in my life when I have walked into a book store that stocked "The Mill of the Floss" I have looked for and found this sentence. It bolsters me to still be entertained in rereading it even though I have no idea what the novel means.
    • 4/5
      This is an epic Northern tale of a chalk and cheese brother and sister, Maggie and Tom Tulliver, trying to make their way in the world. Much of the time I feel they are both round pegs in square holes, neither cut out for what conventional life has in store for them. However brother and sisterly love seems to be the thread that binds them together thoughout their entwined and estranged lives to the dramatic climax of their story.
    • 4/5
      I finished it! Less than 24 hours until the book club meets and I've finished this 600-page odyssey. (Forgive me if I spend a little time congratulating myself.) Anyway, this novel is primarily a brother and sister story, as the trials of Tom and Maggie Tulliver are chronicled and explored. Maggie certainly emerges as the more sympathetic sibling (a bias of the author, perhaps?), but the influence of society and gender roles weighs heavily on both Tom and Maggie throughout the novel. Nevertheless, George Eliot brings this novel to a perfect close and I have never felt so satisfied with such a sad conclusion.
    • 2/5
      I liked the book okay until the end. I won't spoil it for anyone; however, once I finished the book I felt so let down! I hope other people had a better reaction to Eliot's version of realism.
    • 5/5
      Some people really dislike the prose of George Eliot, but I disagree. This was the first novel of hers which I read and I thoroughly enjoyed. The plot is entertaining and she has great character development. I also remember going to my professor and saying that I wanted to write about nature, religion and something else (probably romance) in this novel, and then realizing that there was no way that a roughly six page essay could encompass all of those topics. I really enjoyed watching how these characters relationships with others affected their emotional journeys throughout the book. A great read.
    • 5/5
      What a pleasure this book was. Oh Maggie you're such an annoying but endearing thing why didn't you just marry the gorgeous Stephen, you had to let your silly morals get in the way and don't we love you for it in the end. I was captivated to see how it could ever end and would my longing for Maggie and Stephen to be together be satiated or not, you'll have to read it to find out.
    • 4/5
      What a pleasure it is to read the novels of George Eliot. The sheer intelligence of the author shines on every page. In this, her second novel following closely after Adam Bede, she draws on her own experience to create a world of characters surrounding her hero & heroine, Tom and Maggie Tulliver.The story develops at a leisurely pace with the first two books devoted to the childhood of Maggie and Tom. As Tom goes off to be tutored, Maggie must stay at home and their lives slowly diverge until in subsequent books, as their father's world disintegrates in debt, they are found on opposite sides with their filial love tested again and again. One of the most impressive aspects of the novel is the complexity of these characters as created by Eliot. Tom distinguishes himself at the trading firm of his Uncle Deane and matures into a confident and courageous young man, repaying the debts of his father. Yet, his character is flawed in both his inflexibility and his inability to appreciate the needs of his sister Maggie. Maggie, who is significantly more intelligent than Tom, and self-taught, has developed from a somewhat over-emotional young girl into a sort of Christian ascetic based on her reading of Thomas a Kempis. She is forbidden friendship with Philip Waken, the son of the lawyer who bought her father's mill, and is prevented from developing the potential that is central to her character. The denouement of the novel leads it down the path of the tragic side of life if not true tragedy, but the complexity of the characters and realism of the world in which they live continues to impress.
    • 5/5
      If you can find an introduction or timeline with "George Eliot"s life prior to reading this story, it will be all the more poignat. I am pretty sure she is writing her own story- the social context is totally amazing, and makes it all the more meaningful. Major themes surrounding the plight of women in the late 1800s, but also incredibly humourous. "This is a puzzling world, if you drive your wagons in a hurry you may light on an awkward corner!"
    • 2/5
      While a "Classic," The Mill on the Floss is not up par. Dry and entirely too many pages for the story told.
    • 5/5
      I got this book out as i thought, oh, i better read a classic as i hadn't read one for a while. I loved it! It is about Maggie, a frustrated girl who feels there should be more to life than the path she feels is mapped out for her. Her mother is rather vacuous, concerned with reputation and her father is feckless. She has a strong relationship with her brother Tom. It is difficult to sum up the storyline succinctly but Maggie's father loses a legal battle over the ownership of the river which leads him to financial ruin, in the meantime Maggie develops a friendship with Philip. Her brother discovers their friendship and makes Maggie swear she will not see Philip any more as he is the son of the lawyer who won who sent their father into financial ruin. Their father dies and Maggie goes away to teach. Some time later she returns to visit her cousin Lucy and she meets her fiance Stephen, a friend of Philip and they become helplessly attracted to one another. Maggie takes a boat ride with him and is on the verge of running away with him when she resolves to return. After this, Maggie is considered a fallen woman, disowned by Tom. Stephen takes all the responsibility and she is forgiven by Lucy and Philip, however Tom continues to shun her until the fateful night that the river floods, Maggie rows to rescue Tom however the water is too powerful and they drown in each others arms. I became so immersed in this book and moved at the level of understanding and eventual forgiveness in the characters, also Maggies stoic acceptance that she must live her life with the burden of her actions weighing upon her is so sad. Reunited at last Tom and Maggie return to the river that dictated the course of their lives. Well written, deeply moving,a skilled and beautiful book. I had tears in my eyes at the end...
    • 4/5
      I think, to begin, that Maggie did not ever love Stephen. Obviously, she never loved Phillip. The love story of the book was between Maggie and Tom. I don't mean any kind of icky illegal brother/sister whatever. I do think that if she had had a larger sphere of experience, more people to know, more exposure to the world, she would have found someone to feel truly "in love" with, in the way that Phillip and Stephen were in love with her. In the passionate, married, adult kind of way. However, she never did find that kind of love. Her love for her brother was the only one that was true. That was eternal, endless, that she would give up everything for, that would have been completely sustaining for her. Look at the structure of the love story for Tom and Maggie. They were together, they were separated by events and circumstances, they came together in the end -- it's a classic story arc for a very traditional love story, except that it's as if the genders are reversed.When I say it's like a gender reversal... I mean a reversal of the traditional stuff that you expect to happen in a romance novel. Tom is the one who rejects Maggie for being "bad" as he pursues his relentless morals and virtues. He sends her away, corrects her and refuses her for all her traits that he sees as flaws. Ultimately, as they come together at the end, he sees (I think) that she was essentially herself, and that the flaws were actually her consistency with her own strange (to him) nature. So, Tom is kind of the girl, and Maggie is kind of the man who redeems himself at the end through a heroic, pure act. And they die in each others arms. I mean... come on. The inscription on the tombstone of their shared grave is: "In death they were not parted." That's what you'd expect to see on the grave of two lovers. Stephen and Phillip are just distractions... obstacles and problems. THey aren't really love interests. They're things that keep Maggie from Tom, things she does to disappoint him and alienate him. You know, this story kind of reminds me of A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy. I have to reread that one, I guess. There was some kind of a train ride or something, reminding me of Maggie's float down the river with Stephen. I just can't remember how it all went together. This is why I need to reread these books. A few thoughts on the characters:It seems to me like Eliot's task is to take these outwardly simple, perhaps typical characters, turn them inside out and examine their hidden complexities. This is, I think, a common desire for all fiction writers, but Eliot takes her cases from a class of people she herself says would be outwardly kind of crass and uninteresting:It is a sordid life, you say, this of the Tullivers and Dodsons, irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no active, self-renouncing faith; moved by none of those wild, uncontrollable passions which create the dark shadows of misery and crime; without that primitive, rough simplicity of wants, that hard, submissive, ill-paid toil, that childlike spelling-out of what nature has written, which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here one has conventional worldly notions and habits without instruction and without polish, surely the most prosaic form of human life; proud respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without side-dishes. It reminds me of DH Lawrence, in a way, who made me doubt how incredibly complex and sensitive and insightful all these coal miners could really be. Beyond just the vocabulary, but to have the time, the attention, and the innate desire to feel things soooo so deeply and be so overcome by things like moons and whatnot. I guess he should know, having been the son of one, but still. I certainly don't have any desire to feel anything deeply. Maybe because I'm one of those awful, over-educated people who know nothing but extinct languages and who can't lift a bale of hay. Although, I could lift one, if one were here. I might even still be able to lift two. But never mind. Dickens had caricatures, and Eliot also has characters who are objects of sarcasm or ridicule, but they also have complexity. Take Aunt Glegg, who was sooo horrid and strict with the children early on in the book. The passages depicting her martyrdom, her conversations with her longsuffering husband, and her self-imposed exiles to her room accompanied by a book about saints and a bowl of gruel -- are hilarious. However, it is this Aunt, by the same rules and internal system that made her awful initially, who is most generous and protective of Maggie later on, after the disgrace. That's what makes these characters good, and real -- they are not just meant to be lessons for us, or walking ideologies to be criticized, but they are living under human systems, each to their own. Maggie has hers too. And Tom. Both could have made different decisions to make their lives easier, but they strictly adhered to their own way.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book, surprisingly, particularly the first half of Maggie's youth. She is an extremely attractive and likeable character. I do agree with the reviewer below me that the ending was a total cop-out, though. I think a more striking view of femininity and Maggie's individuality would have been her breaking away from her family, particularly her brother, and her friends and going off into a new life for herself. She was different, more intelligent as a child, and I believe that should have continued. Just my opinion, though - perhaps Eliot is trying to show that the world wasn't ready for Maggie yet.
    • 4/5
      The only Eliot novel to end tragically, it is also the most autobiographical. For example, depicting the pain of her own brother's disapproval, as shown by the rejection of the impetuous Maggie's choices in the judgments of her duty-bound brother Tom Tulliver.
    • 5/5
      This novel has the best characterisation of any novel I've ever read, every motivation rings true, and every act falls from motivation. Eliot seems to have a perfect understanding of why men and women act the way they do: of how they are trapped by the past into certain patterns of behaviour; patterns that seem wilful from the outside, yet seem fated and unavoidable from within. I enjoyed the book, unreservedly, for the first two-thirds, then, after the death of Mr Tulliver, the book became irritating. Maggie Tulliver became spiritual, then lovelorn, then melodramatic. Tom Tulliver became withdrawn and mean-spirited. This may have been exactly how they would have acted, but they began to depress and annoy me, and I was glad when they drowned.
    • 5/5
      This is the second of Eliot's books I have read (the first being Middlemarch), and I found the reading as compelling as the first. Eliot has a power of evoking characters that literally live off the pages as you read them; they make you laugh, weep and fume at what life tosses their way, much as the waves and floods of the Floss. The ending, I found, to be poignant rather than a cop-out. Whilst I too would have loved a happy ending where Maggie finds social vindication and true marital and lifelong bliss, it's all too unfortunate that life doesn't end that way. Eliot's brief but powerful portrayal of St Ogg's women and their condemnation of Maggie's so-called sins, highlights the impossibility of such an ending.While Eliot does indulge in an obvious parallel with the Virgin myth, and some might call this 'convenient', I found it critical to the enlightenment of Tom's infamous narrow mind. Debatable though the denouement may be, I found the experience of reading this work entirely engrossing and enjoyable from beginning to end. You can't help but care for the characters that Eliot creates, she is a brilliant artist at her usual best in this work.
    • 4/5
      Another GE novel that made me cry... although I found the ending a bit weak, it is grand literature as only Eliot can write.
    • 5/5
      This book continues, sort of, the story started in Three Day Road. Xavier, the WWI soldier who came home missing a leg and with a dependence on morphine in Three Day Road, lived a long life and fathered at least 3 children, Antoine, Will and . One of the narrators of the book is his son Will and the other narrator is his granddaughter, Annie. Will's narration is from a hospital bed where he is in a coma although we don't know, until the very end, what caused it. Annie's story is told to Will in the hopes that the words will get through his coma.Will used to be a bush pilot until something happened to his wife and children when he gave up flying. The story about his family is a tragedy that Will never really got over. He drinks a lot and hunts and traps for a living. One day he runs afoul of Marius Netmaker, a drug pusher and all round bad guy. Marius' younger brother, Gus, and Will's niece, Suzanne, had run off south together. Suzanne is gorgeous and becomes a highly sought after model in Toronto and Montreal and New York City. Gus, it appears, is the southern connection for the Netmaker drug enterprise but suddenly he and Suzanne disappear. Annie goes to Toronto for a holiday with her friend Eva but ends up staying to look for Suzanne. She meets a mute Anishinabe, Gordon (also known as Painted Tongue), when she is beaten up by some white punks and Gordon saves her. He becomes her protector but not her lover as Annie travels in the path of Suzanne.Will and Annie share a lot of characteristics and when I think about it, Xavier had many of those characteristics as well. They are all impulsive and jump into situations without a lot of forethought. Xavier and Will and to a certain extent Annie developed dependencies on drugs and alcohol. However, on a positive note, they all care deeply about their friends and when they fall in love it is long-lasting. Of course, they all have a deep tie to the natural world. Will spends months living by himself and supplies his needs with fish and game. Annie teaches Gordon how to trap when they come back to Moose River. They acknowledge the gifts of the Creator and don't take more than the land can spare.I've grown quite attached to the Bird family. This past week the Globe and Mail had a question and answer session with Joseph Boyden and my question to him was whether he was going to fill in the events of the intervening years between Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce. This was his answer:Indeed, in the third instalment of the trilogy, I've figured out a way where I can both look back through history to the time when Xavier returns home from the war and even move forward a few years into the future in a way that I hope works well. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...Well, I'm waiting Joseph and I hope it won't be too long.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this. The opening chapters are very funny and Maggie is adorable. I like it when she pushes Lucy into the pond and how this and other early things pre-figure events later in the novel. Very clever. I liked how the aunts act as a Greek chorus early on, later replaced by the authorial voice. It must have been a very personal novel for Eliot to write. I heard that her brother refused to speak to her for 20 years, but she never let's herself be overcome by emotion. My sister refused to speak to me for 12 years for the same reasons.
    • 3/5
      This book starts strong; with quirky, believable characters and a poignant setting that was obviously a well-loved memory of the author's childhood. I frequently laughed out loud at some antic of Maggie's or a description of her woodenheaded, morally upright Aunt Glegg.

      Once the characters grew up, however, it degenerated into a tragic romance with Maggie as `Mary Sue', and the ending! - don't get me started.
    • 5/5
      [SPOILER] This book really caught me. The super-charged melodramtic ending really hit me. The utter rapidity of its all-embracing solution jolted me: "The boat reappeared--but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted, living through again in one supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together." In this line, the whole book appears as a carefully sculpured whole--the long and rather dreary opening chapters are seen as an essential part to create the drama of the closing. The impact of the closing is so vivid, that the one-age Conclusion at first disturbed: but even it is just right: the following I thought overwhelming: "Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was visited at different moments by two men who both felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there." What a story--I now will certainly have to read more Geroge Eliot.
    • 3/5
      It is easy to fall in love with the heroine of this story, Maggie Tulliver. Although she wants to be the ideal Victorian female, she can't help herself. She is bold, affectionate, impulsive and passionate and just can't fill the role of the passive and obedient daughter. What Maggie wants more than anything is the love and approval of her older brother Tom. Tom is the opposite of Maggie. He is responsible and steady and where Maggie's personality overflows with warmth and affection, Tom is more cold and deliberate. Although Tom loves his sister, he can't help but disapprove of her inappropriate behavior. The Mill on the Floss follows Maggie and Tom as they grow from children into adults. The Tulliver family has owned the mill for several generations, but Maggie and Tom's father makes some poor choices and ends up losing the mill due to a legal dispute. Maggie and Tom's lives change as they have to work hard to survive, Tom entering business on the docks and Maggie working as a teacher. Although Maggie works hard to help out and be the obedient daughter, she continues to disappoint her family by first falling in love with the son of the man who caused the Tulliver bankruptcy and then falling in love with a man who is betrothed to her cousin.



      Although I enjoyed the story and the writing, I was so disappointed with the ending. Maggie gives up everything to try to be that obedient daughter and finally get Tom's approval. It almost seemed like the 'moral' to this story is that reason is better than heart or passion. And Tom - what a smug condescending idiot! So undeserving of a sister like Maggie.
    • 4/5
      I think it will take me a few days to process this novel. Eliot brilliantly made me feel, care and relate to the characters. The novel follows Maggie and her family the Tullivers through happiness, loss and redemption. I absolutely loved Maggie but her striving to goodness drove me crazy. As I said I need more time to wrap my mind around the ending which was so devestating to me.
    • 4/5
      This is a beautifully written novel. Its got some journeyman flaws, its a little uneven and lumpy in a few spots, but on the whole its exceptionally well drawn, all the characters are wonderful and it has an unshakeable sense of place, of being rooted in all the complex interlinking minutiae that make up the ecology of a real landscape and a real society.

      So why four stars? Because eventually I just got fed up with watching people kick Maggie Tulliver around. If she'd ever once gotten even a little bit angry with any of the many mostly well meaning people who treat her like complete crap, if she'd ever even tried to fight back, even if she failed, well I'd be so on her side. But as it is, its like reading an exceptionally beautifully written Mr Bill show. Watch Sluggo and Mr Hand take away absolutely everything that makes Maggie's life worth having one by one by one, and stomp on her head in passing. Oh NOOOO Mr Bill!

      At some point, for me, it just becomes too melodramatic, too "may I have some more sir," and I end up just irritated with the character and the author. Get up and DO something woman! Stop letting everybody kick you around the landscape, what are you, a punching bag?

      YMMV*

      *Your mileage may vary.
    • 5/5
      I suspect between this novel and Middlemarch, George Eliot is becoming my favorite nineteenth-century novelist. I wish she were still alive so that I could write her fan letters.

      The Mill on the Floss is funny and moving and philosophical. Eliot does so many different things well; she's witty and detached, and then she writes a love scene that makes your knees go wobbly. Middlemarch struck me the same way - it's incredibly romantic, and then it does things with that romance, crazy thematic plot things, that sometimes make you feel like the author has punched you in the stomach.

      I think George Eliot and Joss Whedon would probably get along.

      The novel is also cool because it's sort of a novel about adultery without actually being about adultery. It feels very modern and unflinching, the more so because George Eliot actually spent much of her adult life in a happy but socially-isolating relationship out of wedlock, so she had perspective on The System.

      The last couple hundred pages are incredibly intense, perhaps the more so because I read them in one go on a very long train ride, most of which was spent on the edge of my (not very comfortable) seat. It's one of those novels whose ending is absolutely unguessable and yet feels vitally important; "Holy crap," I asked myself, "how is this going to end, and will I be able to live a happy and well-adjusted life after I finish it?"

      I'm still working on that happy and well-adjusted part. The ending... well, is it ever an ending. Words like "mythic" and "apocalyptic" do not give it justice. I'm still not sure how I feel about it - in some ways she gave me just the ending I didn't want, but she did it in such a way that I had to admire. Also, it is very, very intriguing and makes me want to write essays about it, which is usually a good thing.

      Great characters, great plot, great themes. A very well-rounded novel.
    • 3/5
      Wonderful characters and dialogue, but I shall never forgive Eliot for what she does to them at the end.
    • 3/5
      After beautiful opening descriptions, an energetic plot, beginning and concluding with an embrace in the Floss, is slowed to tedium by the endless Tulliver and Dodson womens' conversations and their fixations.Maggie Tulliver showed a wonderful rebellious strength in a family with an often cruel older brother, a flighty mother,and an over indulgent father. Unfortunately for her and George Eliot's readers, she descends into a pointless chasmof self-chastising morality, broken only when she overcomes pity to agree to marry one man, then falls in love withher cousin's boyfriend. The only mystery in the predictable plot comes when Maggie and Tom, river people who knew better, take a rowboat out into a flood.
    • 2/5
      Story of a family/girl's life. It drug on for far too long. Father loses mill after a lawsuit. Son and daughter have to leave school. Son has to support family. Father dies in disgrace. Daughter falls in love with cousins love. Girl disgraces family. No happy ending for any of the characters.
    • 5/5
      Maggie's story is tragic, and the ending left me in tears. She was a character that acted impulsively, and drew my sympathies. Her brother Tom may have been annoying and sometimes cruel, but he was her connection to her past ... who she was, and with her in the end. The end...no longer divided, Maggie and Tom will be forever immortalized by unconditional love, despite their dysfunction.
    • 4/5
      Ooh, what an abrupt ending! I hadn't read any George Eliot, to my shame, and found this on my bookshelf. I'm so glad I picked it up, I thoroughly enjoyed all her observations and explanations of character and actions - a really mature, inspiring piece of writing. And I laughed so often. I think my favourite passage is her take on destiny: "'Character' - says Novalis, in on eof his questionable aphorisms - 'character is destiny.' But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia and got through life with a reputation of sanity notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fair dughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in law."Eliot is a really generous writer. Tom is pretty reviled by some of the readers who have written reviews here, but I think that's unfair. Maggie's love can be pretty incomprehensible, towards Tom and more so towards Stephen Guest, who isn't drawn particularly clearly but doesn't seem to merit the devotion of either Maggie or Lucy. But Tom is drawn in great detail, and Bob's affection for him, Uncle Deane's respect for him and the aunts' frustration with hm together with his own pride and moodiness all make sense. How delightful that awful Aunt Glegg comes good at the end as well with regards to Maggie. And Philip's last letter to Maggie is a beautiful piece of sincerety, deep love and a tremendously powerful understanding of a strength of reasoning, introspection and thoughfulness that saves him (and everyone else) from his suicide.
    • 4/5
      The Mill on the Floss details the isolation and evntaul death of Maggie Tulliver - a courageous, intelligent and likeable heroine too good for the narrow society she's condemned by, and certainly too good for her censorious, half-witted brother.

    Book preview

    The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

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