The Mill on the Floss

This powerful and moving 1860 novel is believed to be George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. She was certainly referencing personal experience when she wrote the character of Maggie Tulliver. The protagonist’s siblings, Tom and Maggie, are brought up in Lincolnshire, at Dorlcote Mill, on the banks of the imaginary River Floss. Maggie adores and worships her brother. As a young boy, he has adopted a chivalrous, manly, moral code, but also displays a reluctance to learn, and he fails dismally to apply himself to his education. His father, anxious to see Tom formally educated (“So as he might be up to the tricks o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish”) opts to send him to board with a tutor. Tom struggles with Latin and dreads the inclusion of Greek in the syllabus. Maggie outshines him intellectually, showing herself to be astute and intelligent, which goes against the expectations for a girl in the society of the day and of her family. Her development into adulthoo