The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

It’s one of my very favourite novels, which I have loved for most of my life.

I first encountered it when I was very little in an anthology my grandfather gave me, and instantly identified with Maggie of the rough unkempt hair who cuts her hair off when she’s criticized. I was so taken with the Apocrypha she mentions that I put it on my birthday wish list, not realizing that the Apocrypha was in the Bible.

I really loved the Mill on the Floss when I was 15 and 16 and read it several times. I so identified with Maggie, tortured, sensitive misfit, too clever, too unusual for her small pond who grows into a beautiful and intelligent woman. Her hot-headed father loses his temper, his health and his fortune, and the family is reduced to poverty.

She find relief during this period of poverty in spiritual adventure. She reads The Imitation of Christ, and becomes a withdrawn pietist, finding real thrill in prayer and scripture study and meditation. Which, oddly, and perhaps this is a romantic idea, makes her attractive to men, especially since she blossoms into a beauty.

I remember crying over the scene in which Stephen Guest, a rich young man, who is engaged to Maggie’s rich cousin Lucy falls in love with her. They row downstream, losing track of time, and spend the night together (in separate rooms, which no one believes.) When they return, Maggie is ostracised. Stephen begs her to marry him, but she refuses. I was full of admiration for Maggie. Most young women in her place would have escaped poverty with a young man they were fond of.

Her beloved, narrow-minded unimaginative brother Tom also shuns her. Maggie dies rescuing him during a flood.

The characters are so vividly drawn that they will stay with me forever. Her weepy Aunt Pullet, her pushy, stingy Aunt Glegg, her scaredy cat mother, her pompous brother Tom, her hot-headed doting father, her first lover, Philip Wakeham, her unbelievably sweet cousin, Lucy.

A wonderful novel, everyone, every girl in particular, should read. Somewhat autobiographical in both the period of religiosity, and the period of shocking society as George Eliot had a long and happy “marriage” with a married man. And this was the Victorian era!!
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