The Mill on the Floss: with original illustrations
Drawing on George Eliot's own childhood experiences to craft an unforgettable story of first love, sibling rivalry and regret, The Mill on the Floss is edited with an introduction and notes by A.S. Byatt, author of Possession, in Penguin Classics. Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother; hunchbacked Tom Wakem, the son of her family's worst enemy; and the charismatic but dangerous Stephen Guest. With its poignant portrayal of sibling relationships, The Mill on the Floss is considered George Eliot's most autobiographical novel; it is also one of her most powerful and moving. In this edition, writer and critic A.S. Byatt, author of Possession, provides full explanatory notes and an introduction relating The Mill on the Floss to George Eliot's own life and times. Mary Ann Evans (1819-80) began her literary career as a translator, and later editor, of the Westminster Review. In 1857, she published Scenes of Clerical Life, the first of eight novels she would publish under the name of 'George Eliot', including The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. If you enjoyed The Mill on the Floss, you might like Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, also available in Penguin Classics.
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Community Reviews
Really great book and story. Not quite as good as Middlemarch. As usual with Victorian novels, it gets overly involved in somewhat vague and repetitive descriptions of sentiment. But on the other hand, I really appreciate the psychological realism, nuanced motives, and sympathetic narrator. It can be maddening as a modern reader because Maggie's love triangle (really quadrangle I suppose) seems like such a needless cage, but of course the choices she has available and is making are in part determined by her social context and her relationship to it as a woman, especially one that was raised in a rural on-the-class-barrier's-edge home.
I also really appreciate the humor of the aunts and uncles and the biting critique you find throughout the novel, but especially in the last chapters. It's also really fun to read about the reaction since this was the first novel she published where people knew it was a woman writing - and not just that but someone who had translated Feuerbach and other free thinking texts.
And also as usual, but especially with Victorian novels, it simply does not need to be this long. It's ironic because I think one way for Eliot to have economized would have been to trust her readers to get a bit more on their own, but that would 1. eliminate the interposition of the narrator which is often my favorite stuff and 2. be funny because of course there probably was never a smarter and more literate reading public. On this front, also be aware that she has some mighty complicated sentences which are often quite long. Luckily she also varies that quite a bit. Oh and I can't stand when authors alter spelling to indicate dialect, but luckily there isn't too terribly much of that - but it is front-loaded, so just know it will be mostly over with after book 2 or so.
I also really appreciate the humor of the aunts and uncles and the biting critique you find throughout the novel, but especially in the last chapters. It's also really fun to read about the reaction since this was the first novel she published where people knew it was a woman writing - and not just that but someone who had translated Feuerbach and other free thinking texts.
And also as usual, but especially with Victorian novels, it simply does not need to be this long. It's ironic because I think one way for Eliot to have economized would have been to trust her readers to get a bit more on their own, but that would 1. eliminate the interposition of the narrator which is often my favorite stuff and 2. be funny because of course there probably was never a smarter and more literate reading public. On this front, also be aware that she has some mighty complicated sentences which are often quite long. Luckily she also varies that quite a bit. Oh and I can't stand when authors alter spelling to indicate dialect, but luckily there isn't too terribly much of that - but it is front-loaded, so just know it will be mostly over with after book 2 or so.
My first thought after reading this was that I am fortunate NOT to have been born in Maggie’s time. Then came a deep respect for women, especially women writers and pioneers who fought against all of this to ensure that future generations of women had more autonomy, financial freedom, and fundamental human rights. And finally, I felt a mix of disappointment and ire toward people who are regressing in our current world because of a romanticized view of life in the good old days. The level of patience, tolerance, and composure Maggie had to practice, and that many other women of her time had to, is incredible.
Sidenote: And may I say, Tom is an insufferable, inconsiderate, arrogant idiot.
Read long ago, The Mill on the Floss is among the first books which introduced to a world that books of this magnitude portray. A lot to relate to the character of Maggie Tulliver... the places, the subdued sentiment of the nineteenth century character and a sensibility I could imagine as that of George Eliot's own, everything is still fresh... In the mind's eye doth cherish the mill and the floss.
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