The Mill on the Floss

“Maggie’s cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement: she thought Mr Riley would have a respect for her now—it had been evident that he thought nothing of her before.”

This quote highlights Maggie’s desire to be respected instead of disregarded. As a girl, people tend to ignore Maggie unless they are criticizing her for not being ladylike enough. Though Mr. Riley is a minor character and a minor person in Maggie’s life, her desire for him to respect her and acknowledge her demonstrates her awareness at a young age of how people view her, and her belief in herself that she is more than a silly little girl.

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it—if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?”

Eliot’s novel explores the connections between land and identity. In Eliot’s view, setting impacts characterization because of the experiences people have growing up in a certain place during a certain time. The quote also juxtaposes the subtle tensions in the novel between the traditional rural society the countryside represents—full of “sweet monotony”—and the novelty of the rapidly changing, industrializing urban world beyond the town.

“Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action. She didn’t want her hair to look pretty—that was out of the question—she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her and say she was like the idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect.”

This quote highlights important elements of Maggie’s characterization and how she rebels against the societal pressures placed upon her as a young girl. Maggie’s wild hair is representative of her free spirit, while the teasing and criticism she faces due to her appearance represents the expectations others have for her as a Victorian female. When Maggie’s attempts at cutting her hair go awry in this passage, she feels both helplessness and shame in the face of her failed rebellion.

“We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place, but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain.”

This quote provides a direct connection between the text and Eliot’s reader. In telling the story of Maggie as a child in Part 1, Eliot relies on drawing her reader into their memories of childhood. Furthermore, this quote is resonant with a more modern audience. Whether Eliot’s reader lived in 19th century England or contemporary America, readers can relate to her ideas about how children deal with the world and how adults react to children. This quote ensures that Maggie’s emotions are taken seriously even though she is a child while foreshadowing that Maggie’s childhood emotions might calm with time and age.

“That arrow went straight to Mr. Tulliver’s heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Tom’s relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her?”

Here, Eliot confirms the parallel between Mr. Tulliver and his sister with Tom and Maggie. As a girl in the 19th century, Maggie doesn’t have many options and can’t work for herself. Thus, she will always be reliant on the support of men, such as her father, husband, or brother. Mr. Tulliver resents his sister for needing money from him and marrying a financially unstable man, but here he is reminded that what happened to his sister can easily happen to his own daughter. Mr. Tulliver’s wondering if Tom will ever be “rather hard upon [Maggie]” also foreshadows the rejection and hardship Maggie will face when Tom disowns her after the boating incident later in the novel.

“And his second subject of meditation was the ‘contrariness’ of the female mind, as typically exhibited in Mrs. Glegg. That a creature made—in a genealogical sense—out of a man’s rib, and in this particular case maintained in the highest respectability without any trouble of her own, should be normally in a state of contradiction to the blandest propositions, and even to the most accommodating concessions, was a mystery in the scheme of things to which he had often in vain sought a clue in the early chapters of Genesis.”

This quote characterizes Mrs. Glegg as contrary and argumentative, very much not in keeping with standards of women in the 19th century. This is an ironic characterization because Mrs. Glegg criticizes Maggie for being unfeminine and disobedient. This quote reveals that Mrs. Glegg has more in common with her mischievous niece than she would like to acknowledge. This quote also highlights the attitude men have towards women in Maggie’s society. Though Mr. Glegg is a devoted and patient husband, it is notable that he finds his wife odd because she doesn’t fit into the submissive wifely role he believes women inherently need to be.

“He had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, and knew exactly what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers—which poor Mr. Tulliver himself did not know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide and not at all wiser.”

Mr. Tulliver’s eagerness to educate Tom and open the way to a good career for him reveals both his anxiety over social mobility and his expectations for his son. Although Tom is not academically inclined, Mr. Tulliver can only think of making Tom into “a match for the lawyers”—an allusion to both the sort of respectable middle-class profession he envisions for his son, and to the ongoing lawsuit that preoccupies Mr. Tulliver.

“He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly stupid lad, for though by hard labour he could get particular declensions into his brain, anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations could by no means get such a lodgement there as to enable him to recognize a chance genitive or dative. This struck Mr. Stelling as something more than natural stupidity: he suspected obstinacy or, at any rate, indifference, and lectured Tom severely on his want of thorough application.”

This quote highlights Mr. Stelling’s lack of understanding and empathy of Tom Tulliver. Tom is not smart in the way Mr. Stelling expects people to be because Tom’s intelligence is different than that of Mr. Stelling’s. This early judgment doesn’t change for the years that Tom spends with Mr. Stelling, setting Tom up for humiliation and making Tom insecure and resentful of his intellectual superiors, Maggie and Philip.

“Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Tom became more like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising Old Goggles and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights, but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr. Stelling’s standard of things was quite different – was certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, appeared uncouth and stupid. He was by no means indifferent to this, and his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite nullified his boyish self-satisfaction and gave him something of the girl’s susceptibility.”

This passage reveals the gap between the masculine self-image Tom has nurtured over the years and the reality he confronts at Mr. Stelling’s school. Tom’s pride has, until this point, been nurtured by a “sense of unquestioned rights” that he has enjoyed as a much-loved only son. When forced into an environment in which he endures “bruises and crushings” due to his intellectual shortcomings, Tom immediately feels dehumanized, thwarted and vulnerable—becoming “more like a girl” in terms of his experience. In feeling the pressure of Mr. Stelling’s expectations and the weight of his own ignored preferences, Tom begins to experience the kind of vulnerability and sense of limitation Maggie lives with by default.

“As for Maggie, she had hardly ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to be called ‘quick’ all her little life, and now it appeared that this quickness was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow, like Tom.”

In Mr. Stelling, Maggie again meets a man she respects, from whom she is eager to win attention and praise. Mr. Stelling, in a parallel to Mr. Riley from Part 1, puts her down instead of admiring her intellect. Mr. Stelling can’t admit, or won’t acknowledge, that a girl could be smart enough to learn the material that he teaches to boys. He dismisses Maggie’s intelligence as “quick” and therefore superficial, humiliating her. This quote exemplifies how Maggie’s sense of self is constantly threatened by men who expect her to conform to their feminine ideals.

“Education was almost entirely a matter of luck—usually of ill luck—in those distant days. The state of mind in which you take a billiard cue or a dice-box in your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of old-fashioned fathers, like Mr Tulliver, when they selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily take their chance as to the conscience and the competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way, and appeared to promise so much more than they would ever have thought of asking for, including the return of linen, fork and spoon.”

Here, Eliot criticizes the institutionalization of education. Though Eliot does not claim that education itself is flawed, she points to the arbitrariness of institutionalized education as evidence of a flawed society. Because the 19th century saw an increase in people whose socio-economic status was improving, men could afford an education for their sons that those men had not received themselves. Therefore, ignorance and ambition combined to create a complex misunderstanding of what makes an education good.

“She hoped he would think her rather clever too, when she came to talk to him. Maggie, moreover, had rather a tenderness for deformed things. She preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed to her that the lambs which were quite strong and well-made wouldn’t mind so much about being petted, and she was especially fond of petting objects that would think it very delightful to be petted by her. She loved Tom very dearly, but she often wished that he cared more about her loving him.”

Maggie projects her desire for respect and connection onto Philip, whom she pities. Though she appreciates Philip’s intelligence, Maggie’s pity for Philip is also born out of her own pity for herself—she feels a kinship with Philip because she understands what it feels like to be taken for granted by family and society. This quote is also notable because it is the first instance in which Eliot gives Maggie the acknowledgement that Tom doesn’t love her as much as she loves him.

“Philip coloured. He had meant to imply, would she love him as well in spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he winced under her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her mistake. Hitherto she had instinctively behaved as if she were quite unconscious of Philip’s deformity. Her own keen sensitiveness and experience under family criticism sufficed to teach her this as well as if she had been directed by the most finished breeding.”

Maggie unwillingly embarrasses Philip in the same way that other people embarrass her. Philip and Maggie have the potential to create a good friendship, but here, because Maggie projects pity onto Philip, they lose their common ground. Maggie senses that she’s made a mistake, emphasizing her empathetic nature. In repeating the emotional abuse Maggie is a victim of, Maggie becomes perpetrator and victim.

“This promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach—impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.”

Eliot alludes to imagery and symbolism from the Bible to imply a romantic connection between Philip and Maggie. The “promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided” alludes to the moment before Eve eats from the Tree of Knowledge, when they lived idyllically and in ignorance. This allusion implies that time spent apart and interference from society teaches Philip and Maggie to be wary of one another and ashamed of their own desires, rendering their promises and intentions “void” in spite of their own intentions.

“Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom’s mind. His father had always ridden a good horse, kept a good house and had the cheerful, confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon. Tom had never dreamt that his father would ‘fail’. That was a form of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace, and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family respectability was part of the very air Tom had been born and brought up in.”

This quote reveals a major plot twist, in which the Tullivers lose their home and Maggie and Tom lose their sense of security in the world. Maggie and Tom grew up in an idyllic and safe space. Their privileged upbringing was not meant to end in ruin, so this plot twist deeply moves Tom and unmoors him from his sense of self. Everything that they had been raised to believe about themselves has turned out to be false.

“Maggie’s heart went out towards this woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow—that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.”

While Tom becomes bitter and angry over the ruin of his family by the failed lawsuit, misfortune teaches Maggie that people can be kind. Although she and Mrs. Stelling don’t necessarily like one another, Mrs. Stelling is compassionate when Maggie is in need. These two different women are brought together by a shared sense of humanity.

“The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt. It seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?”

While the Tulliver family deals with the loss of their public dignity and finances, Maggie turns to reading as a source of escapism. This quote is notable because it contains the recurring motif of books as a source of solace and connection. Books are so important to Maggie that they are like a lifeline for her in times of need.

“That new inward life of hers, notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with the gradually enriched colour and outline of her blossoming youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of puzzled wonder that Maggie should be ‘growing up so good’; it was amazing that this once ‘contrary’ child was become so submissive, so backward to assert her own will.”

This passage notes some of the changes that take place in Maggie as she grows and matures in the midst of the family’s misfortunes. Maggie’s mother shifts from feeling perpetually exasperated by Maggie’s unconventional appearance and “contrary” nature as a young child to being pleasantly surprised by the changes taking place. Maggie is now “blossoming” and becoming more conventionally attractive, which foreshadows the admiration she will inspire in men later in the novel. Furthermore, her apparent “submissive[ness]” and more pliable attitude seems to suggest that Maggie is beginning to conform to some of the societal expectations placed upon her as a young woman, instead of operating in open rebellion against them.

“[T]he first thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Tom by the side of the Floss, while he held my hand. Everything before that is dark to me.”

This quote exemplifies the core love Maggie has for Tom. Tom is not just a brother to Maggie—Tom is present at the very beginning of her memories and the center of her world. Maggie’s ties to her home—the beautiful countryside by the Floss—are inextricably connected to Tom’s presence. This quote emphasizes the imbalance in Tom and Maggie’s relationship, while foreshadowing the ultimate end that awaits both Maggie and Tom at the close of the novel, when they will die together in the flood.

“’Joy and peace are not resignation: resignation is the willing endurance of a pain that is not allayed—that you don’t expect to be allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation: and it is stupefaction to remain in ignorance—to shut up all the avenues by which the life of your fellow men might become known to you. I am not resigned: I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. You are not resigned: you are only trying to stupefy yourself.’”

In this quote, Philip challenges Maggie’s sense of peace during the fraught and lonely times of her family’s poverty. Philip’s claim that Maggie is only “stupefy[ing]” herself reveals the possibility that Maggie’s resignation is holding her back from living a different and better life.

“Memory and imagination urged upon her a sense of privation too keen to let her taste what was offered in the transient present. Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing. She found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder. She found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.”

This quote highlights Maggie’s internal conflict and foreshadows how this conflict overtakes her. Maggie has spent years of her young adulthood trying to resign herself to poverty and loneliness. But this quote reveals that Philip was right in identifying that Maggie was only playing a part. In fact, Maggie does want a different, happier, more lively life. Meeting Stephen Guest and seeing Lucy’s avid social life tantalizes her with the idea that she could embrace love and happiness. What is more, seeing other people’s happiness makes her more unhappy because she has internalized a belief that happiness is not meant for her.

“Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind, who had had all the advantages of fortune, training and refined society. But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her. Her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written, for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.”

While Maggie longs for a peaceful life, peaceful and polite lives do not make good stories. The narrator’s claim that “the happiest women” lack “history” and that there is therefore no reason to write about them, suggests that it is women who live rich and complex lives that are worthy of notice, even if—or perhaps because—they are imperfect or unconventional.

“But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity—strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control and a disposition to exert control over others—prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth.”

This quote provides an important characterization of Tom. At his core, Eliot characterizes him as severe and inflexible, leaving him prone to myopic thinking. Unfortunately, the main victim of this trait is Maggie, whom Tom does not attempt to understand even in her moment of crisis—“complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking [ . . . ] truth” remains too challenging for him, and he retreats into assumption and prejudice.