I’ve decided that on Mondays I’m going to revisit the books I read for a course in college called Advanced Reading Survey, taught by the eminent scholar and lovable professor, Dr. Huff. I’m not going to re-read all the books and poems I read for that course, probably more than fifty, but I am going to post to Semicolon the entries in the reading journal that I was required to keep for that class because I think that my entries on these works of literature may be of interest to readers here and because I’m afraid that the thirty year old spiral notebook in which I wrote these entries may fall apart ere long. I may offer my more mature perspective on the books, too, if I remember enough about them to do so.
Author Note: (See last week’s post on Adam Bede.) In her novels, George Eliot often drew from her early life in Warwickshire where she grew up in an ancient red brick house as the daughter of a carpenter. This particular novel, The Mill on the Floss, was first named Sister Maggie, and later the name was changed.
Characters:
Tom Tulliver
Maggie Tulliver, Tom’s younger sister.
Philip Wakem, Maggie’s childhood friend.
Stephen Guest, fiance of Maggie’s cousin, Lucy.
Lucy Deane, Maggie’s and Tom’s cousin.
Tom’s and Maggie’s aunts: Aunt Moss, Aunt Glegg, Aunt, Deane, and Aunt Pullet.
Mr. Tulliver, Tom’s and Maggie’s father.
Bessy Tulliver, Tom’s and Maggie’s mother.
Summary:
Maggie Tullliver, an intelligent and highly introspective young lady, is imprisoned by the expectations of society and of her family. As Maggie grows up all of the men in her life are obsessed with various goals –revenge, money, status –and they thwart Maggie’s growth as a person and her ambitions.
Quotations:
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.
Maggie hated blame; she had been blamed all her life and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.
In natural science, I have understood, there is nothing petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations, and to which every single object suggests a vast sum of conditions. It is surely the same with the observation of human life.
The religion of the Dodsons consisted in reverencing whatever was customary and respectable.
She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel, –that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
Maggie: One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.
Confidences are sometimes blinding even when they are sincere.
Philip: You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one’s nature.
Other bloggers:
Chris at Book-a-Rama: “Maggie grows into a gorgeous dark-eyed woman, receiving attention for being an exotic beauty but misunderstood because of her intelligence. Maggie finds herself trying to choose between two lovers.”
Ready When You Are, C.B.: “Mrs. Tulliver and her three sisters, their husbands and children all make up a very entertaining group and provide George Eliot ample opportunity to show off her skill at creating wide ranging characters.”
Bookish: I didn’t enjoy George Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evans) The Mill on the Floss (1860) as much as other books she’s written – this one was decidedly more Victorian, and what with watching Friday Night Lights and reading this (and living in the world), I’ve just about had it with patriarchal societies.