The Mill on the
Floss is George Elliot’s second book and reportedly her most
autobiographical. Elliot, who was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819,
used the male pseudonym George Elliot in order to be taken more seriously as a
writer. Her first novel, Adam Bede, won
critical acclaim until the critics found out it was written by a woman. In the nineteenth century, women were not
supposed to be intellectual beings, after all, and widely read Elliot, who
spoke and read several languages, and populated her texts with scientific
debate, was a conundrum for the critics and reading public.
Along with her novels, George Elliot may be most famous
for openly living with a married man.
Having met George Henry Lewes in 1851, the pair chose to live together,
and called each other husband and wife, despite being unable to marry due to
the fact that Lewes could not divorce his wife.
Elliot’s decision caused quite the rift between her and her family, and resulted
in her brother choosing not to speak to her until many years later when Elliot
finally lawfully married John Cross in 1880.
Getting back to The
Mill on the Floss, which I mentioned was purported to be very
autobiographical, it is a story about a brother and sister, Tom and Maggie
Tulliver, and the trials and tribulations of their lives from childhood to
adulthood. Maggie is an incredibly
smart, well-read young girl who doesn’t quite fit into her society, a society
that expects girls to dress prettily, learn to sew and keep house, and be
proper young ladies. Her older brother
Tom also struggles with his place in society.
His father wishes him to receive a gentleman’s education but Tom is not
interested in book learning and would rather build animal traps. Both children, however, have little choice
but to be molded into their required place in society, despite how against
their nature that place is. When Maggie,
as an adolescent, begins an innocent, but forbidden friendship with the son of
her father’s nemesis, Tom chastises her for it, and forces her to end the
dalliance. But it is not until later,
when Maggie spends a night away from town with their cousin’s fiancé, does Tom
cut all ties with her, refusing to listen to the truth or acknowledge Maggie as
his sister, for she has disgraced the family irreparably. Shades of Elliot’s life story, no?
The novel is a superb example of high realism, in that
the characters and their lives are fully realized and simply jump of the page,
easily coming to life for the reader.
Elliot also intersperses the story with interesting commentary on the
nature of man, evolution and various other debates engaging Victorian minds of
the day: class issues, scientific
advances and discoveries, the woman question, etc. Because of this, it is not an easy read. Most people either love or hate Elliot’s
books. I, unfortunately, had to read it
in a very short period of time as it is required reading in my Victorian
Literature course, and so I am of two minds about the book. I think, had I really taken the time to immerse
myself in the novel, I would have enjoyed it far more than I did. I generally read from a feminist critical
perspective, and Maggie’s tragic story of being forced to choose between duty
to her family and duty to herself and never feeling like she could be happy in
life is one that truly resonates.
If you’re looking for a meaty piece of fiction to sink
your teeth into, definitely give this one a shot. I’ll be looking forward to the summer when I
can give it a more slow and thorough going over in order to tease out all the
delightful subtleties. That’s just the
English Lit geek I am!
Till next time, happy reading!
L J
“There are perhaps
no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favourite
book”
~ Marcel Proust
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