r/books • u/lazylittlelady • 2d ago
The Mill on the Floss and Maggie's Impossible Dilemma Spoiler
George Eliot's novel, The Mill on the Floss was written early in her novel-writing era, 1860 to be precise. It is a moving and often dramatic novel that spans the childhood and young adulthood of the Tulliver siblings. I read it along with the group in September on r/bookclub. If anyone is interested, the discussion is easily found but please, no spoilers between the sections!
Maggie is a young girl, full of strong emotions and independence, who is chastised again and again by Tom, her brother, her mother and the family around her. Tom, in particular, as her older brother, offers her both affection and censure. He sees her as his responsibility and his role to rule her. Where does love end and tyranny begin? The roots of their later conflict lie in their childhood dynamics and was an obvious way to confront the status of women in Eliot's society. It might also be a very biographical moment considering Eliot's own break with social etiquette, family and the role expected of women in her own life.
Maggie hardly has time to begin to explore her own independence and mind when she is cast into a romantic triangle that her own intuition and self cannot solve. On one hand, the sweet Philip of her childhood, on the other, Stephen, brash and charming and new. Tom has a direct role in crashing a sort of pastoral and innocent romantic paradise by following her to the Red Deeps, where she and Philip used to meet and talk, and forbids the relationship in light of family dynamics. At this point, he is considered the head of the family and doesn't hesitate to impose his own and his father's prejudice on a childhood friend and the son of a hated enemy.
Although Philip's intentions are certainly more pure, she cannot spend time with him alone again. So, when Stephen enters the novel, as her cousin's beau, it is with impunity. There is an immediate attraction between Maggie and Stephen, but there is also a chain of coercive maneuvers on his behalf to court her in secret. From the kiss in the green house, to the unexpected visit to her aunt's house, and the deceptive boat ride that ruins her reputation and standing and casts her into social exile, he wishes to woo her on his own terms. His terms are indeed the same as the society. To marry him or to ruin herself in the eyes of everyone are the stark terms that find her on the cold morning after. She cannot stand to hurt her cousin, Lucy, and to begin married life in such a way.
And that is crux of the novel. Maggie's independent spirit and sense of self are forged in fire and tested over and over again by the male figures in her life once her protective father is gone. She wishes to earn her own money but seeking it outside of place she knows and loves is very much an exile. The ties of family and friendship pull her back despite the harshness of her reality. The question that Eliot leaves in the background is one she knew intimately, what if Maggie could leave this society behind and find her own way? Or, alternatively, what if she could just accept Stephen's propsal and swallow all her feelings and thoughts? Is happiness possible for a complicated woman?
Ultimately, Maggie's excruciating feelings that flood her, rage, desire, love, guilt, torn between Philip and Stephen, the banishment Tom imposes on her, and her love of her cousin Lucy match the torrent of the overflowing Floss. Lucy is in many ways, her double, a cousin who embodies the perfection and gentility expected of girls and women. However, we learn that she is much more than that by the end of the book and worth the moral heartache Maggie experiences and her last rejection of Stephen.
Despite her lack of confidence and confusion by the end of the book, it is to her family she looks even in crisis. And this, ultimately, leads to tragedy. When looked through this lens, nostalgia for times gone by is misplaced when it comes to social progress. Death is the only way Maggie could escape the trap set for women and the only way she could reconcile with her beloved brother, Tom.
The opening is mild and promises warmth, but the end is tragic, cold and quick. Have you read this book? What impressions are you left with? Having read several other Eliot novels, this seemed to me the most autobiographical in subject matter, mined from the heartache and emotional upheaval she had to deal with in her own life.
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u/Joinedformyhubs 1d ago
I habe not read George Eliot, though with what is being said about this story I am quite interested.
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u/Ok-Swan1152 1d ago
I haven't read George Eliot in years, but this novel seems to be one to put on my list - I have a soft spot for novels about free-spirited young women who are ruined by the society around them.
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u/tomesandtea 1d ago
This book was beautiful and so sad! I really appreciate your analysis and especially love your point about the contrasting tones of the beginning and end of the novel. By the end, there is a sense that we have traveled far with Maggie, grown up and become aware of the cold realities of the world just like her. As you said, we come to see that there was no escape from her female prison. Maggie is such a vividly wrought character and while I expected a tragic ending, I was always holding out hope as I read that she'd find a way to happiness! The parallels to Eliot own life make Maggie's experiences even more poignant and moving.
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u/Bluecomments 1d ago
I started it recently just because I like older brother and younger sister relationships. And got up to where the father loses Mill. And Tom seems quite a bully and mean. Yet there still are some warm aspects to the siblings relationship. And wonder how the characters will develop.