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Maggie, the Interesting Hero
Curl up with this one
Beautifully written, but unsuccessful as a novel
Life Is Determined but Not By You
"It's not right to sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings."

The Mill on the Floss
Helen Edmundson , and George Eliot
Manufacturer: Nick Hern Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1854592769

Book Description

Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14–18 in English-speaking classrooms. It will include novels, poetry, plays, short stories, essays, travel-writing and other non-fiction. The series will be extensive and open-ended, and will provide school students with a range of edited texts taken from a wide geographical spread. It will include writing in English from various genres and differing times.??The Mill on the Floss by Helen Edmundson is edited by Lib Taylor, Department of Film and Drama, University of Reading.

Customer Reviews:

Maggie, the Interesting Hero.......2007-01-31

The most obvious thing about "The Mill on the Floss" is the quality of writing. You can't argue with that. It's vivid, with wonderful descriptions, and many lovely parts. George Eliot writes of an incredible place, describing everything and making everything easy to visualize. She writes of characters that are so human and real, and then she describes situations with these real characters and everything works so well. Her writing is undeniably good, so now we need to move onto the plot itself.

Here we have the Tullivers. Maggie is our heroine, starting out as a very young girl. She adores and idolizes her brother, loves her father, and rather disdains everything society wants her to be. She's independent, different, and bold. She'll do anything for Tom, her brother, and at the same time she wants to be herself. As she grows up, she finds that these two parts of her will fight against each other: her independence, or her beloved older brother.

Tom is also an interesting character. Our first view of him is from Maggie's adoring eyes, so we find him to be strong, intelligent, and all-knowing. It becomes clear, though, that Tom also enjoys having a certain level of command over his sister, and he very often gives her ultimatums for their friendship. In situations like these, Maggie, trying so hard to please him, gets very hurt, and then Tom would act superior and ignore her. Tom lives strictly in the "black or the white" - for him there is no gray.

Much of the book is simply about their relationship as they are growing up, but many parts revolve around other, slightly more minor characters. For example, Philip Wakem. Philip, a schoolmate of Tom's and a friend of Maggie's enters and leaves and reenters the story many times. At first he seems like a minor but solid character, but he then becomes very fixed in the plot as Maggie's secret, forbidden friend. He demonstrates a case of Tom's orders to Maggie. Stephen Guest is another example. He fell in love with Maggie and tried to elope with her. Maggie refused, though by the time she was able to return home, Tom had deduced the worst, once again demonstrating his "black or white" policy. Tom rejects Maggie, and Maggie has to leave.

The main character is without a doubt Maggie, Maggie who feels such love for the people around her, wants to please them and receive love in return, and wants to be independent. Maggie struggles against so many things throughout this book (I won't reveal them all) and all sort of lead up to the grand finale, which may possibly be the best part of this wonderful book. Everything is written wonderfully, the characters are so rich and interesting, and the plot is never stale. It's an excellent book that I couldn't put down once I started.

I recommend this whole-heartedly, and urge you to go buy it or borrow it from the library. It's a wonderful piece of writing that is so easy to love.

Curl up with this one.......2006-10-27

Oh, my, this book was wonderful. I devoured all 600 pages in a week. Read it during the winter, curled up in a warm sweater, and drink a cup of hot chocolate while you turn pages. The writing is just beautiful-- the characters fully drawn and interesting. I fully identified with Maggie (the protagonist) as she moved through her very moral, principled life. She has many complicated relationships with people that are just a joy to read about. If you like Victorian novels, do not miss this one. I've heard Middlemarch is even better and I can't wait.

Beautifully written, but unsuccessful as a novel.......2006-09-21

From a technical point of view, I think that the writing is superb: the description are vivid (I particularly loved the description of Maggie as a little Medusa with her snakes shorn.) The book is a mixture of the earnest and the farcical, and at points is extremely funny. The structure is carefully built, with the different metaphors of the river reflecting the state of mind of the characters. I found the end very unsatisfying, I was close to the end of the book before I found Maggie sympathetic, and I thought it failed the chief standard of a novel: to be an involving narrative.

I don't mind that the author speaks to the reader per se, but every time I got caught up in the narrative, it wasn't long before the story ground to a halt while Eliot delivered herself of a short essay. The nearly three pages asking the reader to think of villages on the Rhone and castles on the Rhine (neither of which I have ever seen), wore out my patience--it almost seemed like a joke. Both the critics that I read thought that modern readers were put off by the length of the book, but I can think of a lot of long modern novels. It's not so much the number of pages as the way they are filled.

Maggie Tulliver is apparently a seriously disturbed child, surrounded by insensitive adults who certainly can't help her. I feel sorry for her, but I don't like her. Wanting to be loved isn't the same as being lovable. For most of the book, Maggie is pretty self-absorbed. I pity her for her unpleasant relatives, but that doesn't mean that I find her sympathetic by contrast.

Maggie is destructively impulsive, probably hurting herself more than anyone else, but Eliot lost a great deal of my sympathy early on when Maggie allows her brother's rabbits to die of neglect. It is hard to understand how someone who is supposed to be devoted to him could have so completely forgotten his request to take care of them. The critics that I read pointed out that Maggie is always very sorry for what she does, but she is only sorry for how other people's annoyance will affect her. She never, until the end of the book, is remorseful at causing someone else pain. If she were, she would understand that her brother is reasonably angry, and not complain that he is cruel for not instantly forgiving her. Not to mention what the rabbits went through!

Eliot's view of Maggie and her father is that they are as they are, they cannot help themselves, but everyone else is responsible for their own conduct and for accomodating the Tullivers. I find it hard to be sympathetic to them when Eliot was so scathing about everyone else. I am probably projecting 21st century standards back on a 19th century book, but Tulliver acts against the advice of his wife and goes bankrupt in a law suit, which is rather self-centered and bullying. Maggie (and I suppose Eliot) feel that he should not be blamed for this. Certainly there is no point at railing at a person who is nearly comatose with distress, but he is in fact seriously at fault. [added later: I am reminded a bit of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Both wives are presented in a very unflattering light as weak and trivial, but in fact they may be said to have a better grasp of reality than their more sympathetically portrayed but somewhat irresponsible spouses. One has to wonder what the authors were thinking in describing these women.]

I found Maggie much more sympathetic in Book 6 and after, but it and her romantic problems seemed a little contrived. The change in her from Book 5 is only partially accounted for; a lot of it is obviously just a set up for the Dramatic Ending.

I would like the book better if Eliot featured some intelligent resolution to Maggie's problems: she could have learned not to be so emotionally dependent upon her brother, she could have made another life for herself. The problems of her love life are indeed a dilemma and not easily solved, but the ending really seems like a cheat. I hope Eliot didn't mean this as encouragement for woman who found themselves at odds with social expectations. Even the reconciliation between Maggie and her brother makes me scoff. They had a big reconciliation scene earlier in the book and it didn't last, so this one doesn't seem meaningful. It is like the end of a television drama where decades of misunderstanding are permanently resolved in the last 60 seconds.

This is certainly a piece of literary history, and there are some great examples of writing in it, but I don't think it has held up as a novel.

Life Is Determined but Not By You.......2006-08-22

In THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, George Eliot writes of her heroine Maggie Tulliver in such a way that autobiography seems inevitable. Even had Eliot not made a secret of the nearly one to one relationship between her and Maggie, the connection is too obvious to ignore. In George Eliot's personal life, she had an ongoing dispute with her brother that so distressed her that the only way to resolve it was in her fiction. So Maggie spends nearly the entire novel trying to prove her unselfish love to her brother Tom who refuses to see the good in Maggie until the highly controversial ending in which Maggie nobly risks her life to convince Tom that her love for him is unsullied. However much one sees of Eliot in Maggie, Maggie is still a fully-rounded individual whom Eliot has chosen to flesh out in a manner that was unheard of for her time. In presenting the character of Maggie, as well as the others, Eliot presents the unfolding of their distinct personalities against the backdrop of their respective social milieus. Eliot suggests that society has a definite impact on the way each character develops. For Eliot, character is formed partly by his or her environment and exhibited heavily in the ways that she chooses to allow each character to act in their homes, their fields, and their workplaces.

Eliot traces a gradual connection between theme and character. Since environment is one of the two primary factors that impact on the push-pull connection between theme and character, she is careful to delineate early on that the same environment that houses Maggie and Tom nevertheless pushes each to a sociological fork in the road from which each takes a divergent turn. This divergence leads to the book's primary theme: the evolving nature between brother and sister is both cause and effect of the ultimate maritime tragedy that concludes the book. Maggie, even as a young child, is seen as perpetually in conflict, the causes of which are beyond her control. Maggie has an internal conflict in that she is often called to make a choice between that which her heart calls for (say, her love for Stephen Guest) and that which her duty forbids (the vast class gap between the two that forbids a relation). Maggie also has a direct conflict with Tom, whose brutishness and inexplicable meanness toward her impel both toward the book's tragic close. Finally, she has an ongoing conflict with society at large, symbolized by a collective mass of family, friends, lovers, and a cobwebbery of implicit rules that Maggie breaks unwittingly and to tragic effect.

The ending of THE MILL OF THE FLOSS has created a controversy that has lingered from Eliot's day to ours. When Maggie chooses to literally die with Tom than to live without him, the reader is faced with passing judgment on its credibility. Has Eliot taken the cheap way out and sought the conventionally tragic ending of the sentimental Victorian novel? Or is Maggie's final act of unselfishness to be viewed through the lens of autobiography in which the author is vicariously healing the rift between her and her real life brother with the sacrifice of Maggie for her fictional one? The question was raised then and is often raised now with no resolution. What remains is a novel whose ongoing charm lies in its depiction of a style of life that was seen as far removed even in Eliot's day and for which retains a nostalgic charm that the passing of the centuries cannot lessen.

"It's not right to sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings.".......2006-06-06

The Mill on the Floss, published in 1860, traces the turmoil in the life of Maggie Tulliver, a young woman who has a streak of independence but who also feels close to her father and her brother and believes that she must always honor their feelings and wishes. Maggie's father is the owner of the Dorlcote Mill on the Floss River, a failing business drawing him into increasing debt to his relatives and creditors. Her brother Tom, with no interest in the mill, is encouraged to learn other skills which may suit him for a higher level of society. When the mill fails and is sold at auction to Lawyer Wakem, the Tullivers become social outcasts, at the mercy of creditors and dependent on their extended family.

Philip Wakem, son of Lawyer Wakem, is a hunchback who has been a school friend of Tom Tulliver and a special friend of Maggie, who treats him kindly and appreciates his intelligence and thoughtfulness. When the mill is sold to Wakem, Tom and Mr. Tulliver end all contact with the Wakem family, and though Maggie continues to see Philip privately, Tom eventually forces her to choose between the family and Philip. Another relationship with Stephen Guest, who has been courting her cousin Lucy, unleashes Maggie's passions and leads to a dramatic conclusion.

Throughout the novel George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) explores the many kinds of love in Maggie's life--her devoted love of her father, her dependence on and love for her brother, her intellectual and kindly love for Philip, and her passionate love of Stephen Guest. Creating a fully drawn character in Maggie, Eliot shows a full picture of a young woman of 1860, trying to be independent, trying to live according to society's strictures, and trying to be true to her own feelings, despite pressures from family and society. Eliot, who herself made the scandalous choice to live openly with a married man for twenty-six years, was thoroughly familiar with these issues herself, and her depictions of such themes as family loyalty and the social conventions and limitations of class carry the ring of truth.

Psychologically astute in the exploration of themes as they affect Maggie, Eliot amplifies these themes through imagery from nature, legend, and even religion. Often melodramatic in plot, the novel remains realistic, even autobiographical, in its attention to character. Though it is not as fully developed as her later novel Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss is still a well developed, thoughtful novel which goes far beyond the pulp fiction being serialized in newspapers and magazines during that time. n Mary Whipple

Mill on the Floss (Collins Classics Plus)

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Mill on the Floss (Collins Classics Plus)
Sue Sanders , and George Eliot
Manufacturer: Collins Educational
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0003230767

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The critical research essay
Raymond Stanley Nelson
Manufacturer: Morningside College
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: B0007HBPHI

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