| Summary | Theme Analysis |

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By Hang Cheng Zheng

Index: Summary | Character Analysis | Theme Analysis | My Favorite Quotation

| A Letter to the author | Creative Written | Illustration | Quiz

Summary:

Book Title

The Mill on the Floss

Author

George Eliot

Setting

St. Ogg in English midlands in 1829–1839

Main characters

Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver, Stephen Guest and Philip Wakem

Major conflict

Maggie has to make a decision between a life of romantic love with Stephen or her moral responsibility and her brother’s love.

Climax

At the age of nineteen, Maggie chanced to meet a handsome young man named Stephen Guest. Maggie’s desire of sensuous life and passionate love is first time fulfilled while she gets along with Stephen.

Conclusion

Maggie cannot bear the repudiation from everyone and especially her beloved brother. Relinquishing her desire of passionate love with Stephen, Maggie runs away.

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Character Analysis:

Maggie Tulliver is the protagonist of The Mill on the Floss. Her distinctive personality, imagination, and appearance make her different from the rest of her family. Her passionate personality shows her need for love that she was unable to receive from her family. Although Maggie’s childhood was a painful memory, she uses her imagination and hope to overlook sorrow. Her mother and her aunts always viewed her dark skin, hair, and eyes as an imperfection. However, Maggie only cared about her brother, Tom’s opinion.

Maggie encountered a book that was written by Thomas Kempis and it became the most important part of her teenage years. During her teenage years, Maggie’s family was bankrupted. She searched for an answer to explain the adversity in her life when she encountered this book. The book told her abandoning one’s cares for oneself and focusing instead of unearthly values and the suffering of others.

Maggie’s friendship with Philip Wakem reflects her deep compassion and she realizes she finally found someone that truly appreciates her. Although it is against her father’s wish to be friends with Philip but she continued. Disobeying her father, her desire of keeping a friendship put her in a dilemma.

A passionate love and a sensuous life were something that Maggie always dreamed of. When she meets Stephen Guest, she finally has her dreams fulfilled. He brings her into the upper society of St. Ogg’s. Maggie felt that Stephen was the person that opened up the world to her. They love each other deeply, which reminds Maggie of her responsibility towards her family. She didn't know what to do.

Maggie’s past memories kept holding her back and she thinks the best way to let go of them is to escape. Just like one of the quotes in the book “The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.” A woman will only be happy when she’s free from her history. Maggie’s struggle with her history caused her pain and regret.

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Theme Analysis:

In The Mill on the Floss, the author clearly demonstrates that present is the product of the past. Maggie and Tom’s childhood was influenced by the competition between the Tullivers and Dodsons. As they grow older, the memories from their childhood didn’t got left behind. Contrarily it follows them through every part of their life. The past is something that a person can not escape nor rise up again to threaten them. For Maggie growing up from a family with many strict rules teaches her the importance of human morality and sympathy toward the people around them. Even when she became an adult her way of treating people always shows sympathy. However her brother Tom on the other side stands up for his own right, and he only does things for his own benefit.

The book also expresses the society’s view of knowledge. During Tom and Maggie’s teenage years, Tom’s practical knowledge helped him associate with the people around him. However, Maggie’s knowledge and her creative imagination were being judged as weird. They both received the same education, but Tom felt the bookish knowledge he learned was not useful at all during daily life. Maggie loves books and she likes them even better than the realistic life. She views books as the key to find herself.

In the novel, the society had a great influence on individuals’ values, economic condition and social circumstances. The society divided people by their economic condition. The author often uses Maggie and Tom as an example to expresses the society's effect. Tom is a boy and he received more freedom on his own. This kind of tolerance from his parents gave Tom the chance to have a wider vision. Maggie on the other hand was seized by her parents in many ways because she‘s a girl. Her appearance and her intelligence were often being judged pessimistically.

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My Favorite Quotation:

“The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.”

This quotation is from Chapter III of Book Sixth. In this quotation, Eliot subtly reveals the fact that women are evidently absent from history. It also implies the struggles and difficulties that a woman has to go through in her progressive life.

A Letter to George Eliot:

Dear Ms. Eliot:

Your book inspired me in many ways. I found a close connection between Maggie and myself. As teenagers, we both feel unsure about our future, and the pressure around us seem to become heavier each day, especially when we are facing our parents’ censures. With their judgments of our behaviors and thoughts, repeating around us day by day, our own opinions seem to be washed away.

I remember in the book, Maggie encountered a book that was written by Thomas Kempis and it became her guide of her young life. I also have a book that’s guiding me through my life. The name of the book is “The streams in the Desert” written by L. B. Cowman. This book teaches me what’s right and wrong just like Maggie’s book teaches her moral lessons. This shows the teens’ need for emotional and spiritual support, which many parents neglected to give their children.

Maggie’s fear for the world was also one of my fears. When we were young, we were living in a world that has not been polluted. As we grow older, more and more of the adults’ world’s phoniness, superficiality, and animosity reveal to us. However we have two choices either get used to it, or spend the rest of our life denying the truth. Thank you for writing this great book. I learned a lot from you.

Sincerely yours,

Hang Cheng Zheng

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Creative Writing:

Lost in the Sea

There once was a dream called Love,

It was so fragile that whispering it,

Could make it disappear.

As I look into your eyes,

I’m reminded of my duty.

Past has always been part of me,

And I’m not willing to let go.