Middlemarch
George Eliot
Middlemarch
George Eliot's later masterpiece, where another clever young woman, Dorothea Brooke, looks for something large to do with her life.
Read our takeThe Mill on the Floss
George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
A clever, passionate girl grows up at a mill on a tidal river, loving a brother who never quite forgives her.
- 1860
- 704
- Elegiac
- Melancholy
- voice-driven
- lyrical
- funny
About George Eliot
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeThe Mill on the Floss is George Eliot's second full-length novel, published in three volumes in April 1860. Maggie Tulliver is nine at the start, dark-haired, quick and always in trouble. She adores her brother Tom, who is slower, stubborn and sure he is right. Their father, the miller at Dorlcote Mill near the river town of St Ogg's, loses a lawsuit and everything he owns. Maggie grows up poor and hungry for books, love and a larger life. Her choices set her against Tom and the whole town, until the river rises.
The story, in more detail
George Eliot began thinking about the book as soon as Adam Bede was out. In January 1859 she and George Henry Lewes went into town to look through the Annual Register for cases of floods. In September they made a three-day trip to Lincolnshire, and she wrote that it succeeded in finding the object she was in search of.[1]
The title took a long time. Sister Maggie was the working name. Lewes preferred The House of Tulliver, or Life on the Floss, and The Tullivers was also considered. On 16 January 1860 she noted that they had settled on The Mill on the Floss.[1]
She finished on 21 March 1860, writing the last pages from the moment when Maggie, out on the water, thinks of her mother and brother. She added Magnificat anima mea, my soul magnifies the Lord, to the entry. A few days later she and Lewes left for Rome by way of Paris. The book came out on 4 April while they were away.[1]
The novel opens on a February afternoon beside the mill. The narrator stands on a stone bridge, looks at the full river, and says, I am in love with moistness.[2]
The full plot
Mr Tulliver, the miller at Dorlcote Mill, wants his son Tom to have a better education than his own, so he can deal with lawyers. Tom is thirteen and would rather go fishing. His sister Maggie is nine, clever and wild. Her mother's sisters, the Dodson aunts, disapprove of almost everything she does.[2]
Maggie cuts off her own hair to stop people talking about it and regrets it at once. She pushes her pretty cousin Lucy Deane into the mud out of jealousy. Then she runs away to live with the gypsies, who take her home. Tom goes to be taught by a clergyman, Mr Stelling, at King's Lorton. His only fellow pupil is Philip Wakem, the hunchbacked son of the lawyer Mr Tulliver hates most.[2]
Mr Tulliver goes to law over the water rights to his mill and loses. He is ruined, and the shock makes him ill. The family's furniture and linen are sold. Tom, at sixteen, leaves school to find work. When his father recovers, he makes Tom write in the family Bible a vow to make Wakem and his family feel it, if the day ever comes.[2]
Maggie, now a lonely teenager, finds an old copy of Thomas à Kempis and tries to live by giving up everything she wants. She meets Philip again in the Red Deeps, a hollow of old quarries near the mill, and they keep meeting there in secret. Philip loves her. Tom finds out and makes her swear on their father's Bible never to see Philip alone again.[2]
Tom works hard and pays off his father's debts. Soon after, Mr Tulliver meets Wakem, thrashes him with his riding-whip, falls ill and dies. Years later Maggie comes to stay with Lucy in St Ogg's. Lucy is all but engaged to Stephen Guest, the son of the town's leading businessman, and Stephen and Maggie fall in love.[2]
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Stephen takes Maggie out rowing, and they drift past the place where they were meant to stop. He begs her to go on and marry him. They are taken aboard a Dutch vessel bound for Mudport. There Maggie refuses Stephen, because she cannot build her happiness on Lucy's and Philip's pain. She comes home alone, unmarried, five days later.
Tom turns her away from the mill. St Ogg's decides she is ruined, although Lucy and Philip both forgive her. Maggie lodges with Bob Jakin, Tom's boyhood friend, who has stayed loyal to her. One September night the river floods. Maggie takes a boat through the water to the mill and rescues Tom. Tom takes the oars, and a mass of wreckage from the wharves bears down on them. The boat overturns, and brother and sister drown in each other's arms.
They are buried together in one tomb, and two men who loved Maggie visit it. Years later one of them comes with a sweet face beside him. The other always comes alone. The tomb reads: In their death they were not divided.
Themes and analysis
The Mill in French
Paris met the novel quickly. On 15 June 1860, about ten weeks after it came out in England, the Revue des Deux Mondes printed Dorlcote-Mill, scènes de la vie anglaise, by Émile Forgues. The review's own index dates it and lists Forgues's earlier piece on George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life.
Forgues did not review the book in the usual way. He retold it in French, with long passages translated or reworked, and explained that the review had used the same method for a couple of other English novels. The river, the red roofs of St Ogg's and the mill all come through almost line by line.
Small things changed. In the English opening, the narrator envies the white ducks dipping their heads in the water. In Forgues's French, they became white swans. His narrator also hints that he had known Maggie himself and that their lives had been tied together, which George Eliot's narrator never says.
A full translation followed. François d'Albert-Durade, the Geneva friend who was translating Adam Bede, took on The Mill as well. Dentu published it in Paris in 1863 as La Famille Tulliver, ou le Moulin sur la Floss. Hachette reissued the translation in 1887 as Le Moulin sur la Floss.
The ending she would not change
The novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton sent Blackwood a critical letter about the book. On 9 July 1860 George Eliot answered it. She agreed with two points. Maggie is too passive in her quarrel with Philip in the Red Deeps. And the tragedy is not properly prepared, because she had spent too long on the first two volumes and squeezed the third.
She would not give way on Maggie and Stephen. If art could not show a noble character who makes a great error, she wrote, then the ethics of art are too narrow, and must be widened to correspond with a widening psychology.
Readers took Maggie's side. Late in 1860 the writer Arthur Helps told George Eliot that Queen Victoria had spoken of her books with great admiration, especially The Mill on the Floss. Later, Virginia Woolf wrote that George Eliot showed herself far more openly in Maggie than in Dinah, the heroine of Adam Bede.
Character is not the whole of destiny
Halfway through Book Sixth, the narrator stops to quote the German poet Novalis: character is destiny. But not the whole of our destiny, the narrator answers. Hamlet was indecisive, and that made a tragedy. If his father had lived to a good old age, Hamlet might have married Ophelia and got through life with a good reputation.
The whole book works that way. Maggie's temper and her hunger for love get her into trouble, but so do things she did not choose. Her father's lawsuit, his hatred of Wakem, Tom's hard sense of justice and, in the end, the river all shape her life as much as she does.
Quotes from The Mill on the Floss
In their death they were not divided.
The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.
“Character,” says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms,—“character is destiny.” But not the whole of our destiny.
Why we recommend it
The best childhood in Victorian fiction
Maggie's Fetish doll in the attic, her self-cut hair and her flight to the gypsies are funny and painful at once.
The Dodson aunts
Mrs Glegg, Mrs Pullet and Mrs Deane, with their linen, their wills and their opinions, are among George Eliot's great comic creations.
A heroine who does not fit
Maggie is cleverer than her brother and gets less schooling. George Eliot defended her against critics who thought her behaviour with Stephen unforgivable.
Paris read it in weeks
The Revue des Deux Mondes retold the whole novel in French in June 1860, about ten weeks after it came out in England.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Maggie Tulliver
The miller's dark-haired, clever, impulsive daughter, who wants to be loved and to know everything.
Tom Tulliver
Maggie's older brother, honest, hard-working and unbending, who judges her by his own strict idea of right.
Mr Tulliver
The proud, hot-tempered miller of Dorlcote Mill, who goes to law over water rights and loses everything.
Mrs Tulliver
Maggie and Tom's mild, anxious mother, one of the Dodson sisters, who grieves most for her linen and china when they are sold.
Philip Wakem
The lawyer Wakem's clever, sensitive, hunchbacked son, who paints, sings and loves Maggie from boyhood.
Stephen Guest
The handsome, confident son of the leading businessman in St Ogg's, courting Lucy when he falls for Maggie.
Lucy Deane
Maggie's pretty, good-natured cousin, all but engaged to Stephen Guest.
Mrs Glegg
The eldest and sharpest of the Dodson aunts, strict about money and family, who unexpectedly takes Maggie's side at the end.
Bob Jakin
Tom's rough boyhood friend, later a packman, who stays loyal to Maggie when the town does not.
Bring it to book club
- Tom is never cruel on purpose, yet he hurts Maggie more than anyone. Is he a villain?
- Why does Maggie give up Stephen, and do you think she was right?
- St Ogg's judges Maggie harshly and forgives Stephen. What is George Eliot saying about the town?
- Is the flood a fitting ending, or a way out that the author admitted she had not prepared?
- What does Thomas à Kempis give Maggie, and what does it cost her?
Timeline
12 January 1859
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes look through the Annual Register for cases of floods.
September 1859
A three-day trip to Lincolnshire finds what she was looking for.
16 January 1860
She settles on the title The Mill on the Floss, instead of Sister Maggie.
21 March 1860
She finishes the novel and writes Magnificat anima mea in her journal.
4 April 1860
Blackwood publishes it in three volumes while she is in Italy. About 6,000 copies are printed in the first weeks.
15 June 1860
Émile Forgues retells it in French in the Revue des Deux Mondes as Dorlcote-Mill.
9 July 1860
She answers Edward Bulwer Lytton's criticisms and refuses to change Maggie and Stephen.
1863
Dentu publishes François d'Albert-Durade's French translation in Paris.
1887
Hachette reissues the translation in Paris as Le Moulin sur la Floss.
2003
Penguin Classics publishes its edition with an introduction by A. S. Byatt.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- William Blackwood and Sons
- 1860
- Paperback
- Penguin Classics
- 2003
- 9780141439624
Ebook
- Ebook
- Project Gutenberg
- 2004
Paperback
- Paperback
- E. Dentu
- 1863
- François d'Albert-Durade
Reader reviews
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Adam Bede
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Read our takeSilas Marner
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Silas Marner
The short novel she wrote next, set in the same kind of Midlands countryside.
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Great Expectations
Charles Dickens's novel of a boy growing up beside a river, serialised in 1860 and 1861, just after The Mill on the Floss.
Read our take
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf's essay on women and education, written by the critic who saw George Eliot most clearly in Maggie.
Read our takeThe Mill on the Floss: frequently asked questions
What is The Mill on the Floss about?
Maggie Tulliver, a clever, passionate girl, grows up at her father's mill and adores her strict brother Tom. Her father's ruin, a secret friendship and a love affair set her against Tom and the town. A flood brings them back together.
When was The Mill on the Floss published?
On 4 April 1860, in three volumes, by William Blackwood and Sons. George Eliot had finished it on 21 March and was on her way to Rome when it came out.
Is The Mill on the Floss autobiographical?
Partly, in feeling rather than in events. Virginia Woolf thought George Eliot showed herself more openly in Maggie than anywhere before. Like Maggie, she was a clever girl growing up in the Midlands countryside.
How does The Mill on the Floss end?
In a flood. Maggie rows to the mill to rescue Tom, and they drown together when wreckage hits the boat. Their tomb reads: In their death they were not divided.
What was the original title?
The working title was Sister Maggie. George Henry Lewes and George Eliot also considered The House of Tulliver and The Tullivers before settling on The Mill on the Floss in January 1860.
Does The Mill on the Floss have a Paris connection?
George Eliot left for Rome by way of Paris just before it came out. In June 1860 the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes printed a long French retelling, and a full French translation came out in Paris in 1863.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Mill on the Floss, its publication, and its place in literary history.
3Dorlcote-Mill, scènes de la vie anglaise — Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 June 1860 (volume 27), Wikisource page transcriptions from page 811 (the opening pages)
PeriodicalRevue des Deux Mondes, Paris, 1860Used forThe Paris retelling of June 1860.
4Revue des Deux Mondes, Table générale 1831-1874, page listing articles on English novels — Wikisource transcription
PeriodicalRevue des Deux Mondes, Paris, 1875Used forThe review's index, which dates Forgues's retelling.
5The Common Reader (1925), including the essay "George Eliot" — Project Gutenberg ebook 64457
EssaysHarcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1925Used forVirginia Woolf on Maggie Tulliver.
6La Famille Tulliver, ou le Moulin sur la Floss, trans. F. d'Albert-Durade (Paris: E. Dentu, 1863), 2 vols — catalogue record
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de France, 1863Used forCatalogue record for the first French translation.
7Le Moulin sur la Floss, trans. A.-F. d'Albert-Durade (Paris: Hachette, 1887) — catalogue record
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de France, 1887Used forCatalogue record for the 1887 Hachette edition.
8The Mill on the Floss: Penguin Classics paperback, ISBN 9780141439624
WebsitePenguin Random House Library MarketingUsed forSelected ISBN, on-sale date, page count and introduction.
9The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics, ed. A. S. Byatt) — Open Library edition record OL3708700M
WebsiteOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forLibrary record confirming ISBN 9780141439624 as the Penguin Classics edition.
10The Mill on the Floss
NovelGeorge Eliot, 1860Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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