The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Classics)

Book Description

New chronology and updated further reading.

Edited with an Introduction by A. S. Byatt.

Customer Reviews:

Eliot is superb as always! I would give this 10 stars if I could.......2007-10-02

This is Eliot's semi autobiographical novel, and tells the story of Maggie Tulliver and her brother Tom. The story takes place in the village of St. Ogg, and at the Mill on The Floss that's been in the Tulliver family for generations. Other reviewers have told enough of the story (in some instances too much) that I don't see the need to go into it again. I thoroughly enjoyed the way Eliot depicted the sibling relationship between Maggie and Tom with all of those ups and downs that we all have experienced with our siblings, and culminating in the final finish of the story that thoroughly blew me away. I think I just sat for a good ten minutes just saying Oh Wow over and over again, and then felt the need to seek out my brothers and give them both a big hug.

The joy of reading this novel or any other by Eliot is her gorgeous prose and brilliant characterizations, even with the minor characters. Just be warned, this is not an action packed, sit on the edge of your seat, can't put it down until it's finished type of novel. This is a story to savor and enjoy the multi-faceted characters and the author's glorious prose like a fine red wine or a box of chocolates (or both). If you are looking for high action and adventure, this is not the book for you. Highly recommended for any lover of 19th century English literature, not as dark and brooding as Hardy can be, but the prose is just as lovely, if not better.

not Dickens, but as good as Dickens.......2007-09-29

Never read George Eliot? If you like Dickens or Wilky Collins, you need to read George. (she's a woman).

unequivocally a great company in times of perplexity.......2007-04-02

George Eliot with her keen observation of human attribute, had written another novel about man's struggle with ephemeral follies and victorious governance of emotion towards what is right.

This story preludes with sibling fondness of Tom and Maggie Tulliver with each other marred by the former's occassional bullyness and the latter's childish peevishness. As manifested on the personality of the brother and sister, Tom's perusal of Latin in boarding school where Philip Wakem also attends and excells fuels his repugnance towards the deformed Philip. During her visits to Tom, Maggie meets Philip whose intellectual interest matches hers and instantly initiates friendship with the physically deformed lad.

To Maggie however, the feud between the Tullivers and Wakem clan doesn't put a damper on her clandestine meetings with Philip in the mill. Until she meets her cousin's lover Stephen Guest. Torn between Philip's undying love and Stephen's fleeting adoration, she finally succumbs to rendezvou with the young and handsome coxcomb.

It is not unusual for a woman of caliber to make indelible mistakes and for a learned man to let his boorishness seeps out of the cracks of his soul. Nonetheless, a woman of higher intellect on command can disengage liquid glue that travels short distance from her brain to mend a broken heart.

The novel ends with poetic justice. For relationships cultivated out of soil of deceit will bear sweet but poisonous fruit; and the toxic seeds will proliferate to feed the mouth hungry for misery.

Nature repairs her ravages.......2007-03-05

The merits of the novel deserve a more worthy arena to be debated and highlighted. It is specifically with the Penguin Classics Edition in mind that I write this review. A.S. Byatt offers an introduction that well-becomes the subject and the now absolutely essential appendix "The Placing of Stephen Guest". Anyone who has read the book or plans to do so in the near future, must read the said appendix for it proves to be of incredible and indelible insight into the awkward presence of Maggie's lover Stephen Guest.

George Eliot's most autobiographical novel is a literary masterpiece.......2006-06-23

George Eliot (1821-1880) is one of the great literary artists in the Victorian (or any!) era. In this novel she tells the tragic tale of Maggie and Tom Tulliver growing up on the Floss
River in the small village of St. Ogg's in Lincolnshire. Maggie and Tom have a complicated relationship which ends in tragedy.
Tom is non-intellectual, something of a bully and a braggart; he
is also loyal to his family assisting his father and looking out for what he thinks is best for his kid
sister Maggie.
Maggie is similar to George Eliot. She is plain, highly intellectual, a bookworm and a romantic who is courted by the
suave Stephen Guest and the physically frail Phillip Wakem. As in Romeo and Juliet the lovers are separated by a hatred between Maggie's father and the wealthy Mr. Waken who owns the Mill.
While I think Middlemarch is her greatest novel this one, in my opinion, is a close second! It is warmer in tone filled with
scenes of rural life in mid nineteenth century England. Some
readers will become irritated with her use of dialogue but I had
no trouble following the story.
Eliot is great in using the rich symbolism of the river as she weaves this classic story which will be perused as long as their are English readers to savor her poetical prose tale of provinical life. They don't write them like this anymore!
Don't miss this classic!

The Mill on the Floss: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Contemporary Reactions Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)

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The Mill on the Floss: An Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Contemporary Reactions Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)
George Eliot
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393963322

The Mill on the Floss (Oxford World's Classics)

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Maggie, the Interesting Hero
Curl up with this one
Beautifully written, but unsuccessful as a novel
Life Is Determined but Not By You
"It's not right to sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings."

The Mill on the Floss (Oxford World's Classics)
George Eliot
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192833642

Book Description

`But it's bad - it's bad,' Mr Tulliver added - `a woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt.' Rebellious and affectionate, Maggie Tulliver is always in trouble. Recalling her own experiences as a girl, George Eliot describes Maggie's turbulent childhood with a sympathetic engagement that makes the early chapters of The Mill on the Floss among the most immediately attractive she ever wrote. As Maggie Tulliver approaches adulthood, her spirited temperament brings her into conflict with her family, her community, and her much-loved brother Tom. Still more painfully, she finds her own nature divided between the claims of moral responsibility and her passionate hunger for self-fulfilment. George Eliot's searching exploration of Maggie's complex dilemma has made this one of the most enduringly popular of her works. This edition offers the definitive Clarendon text with a new introduction that gives an account of the book's place in Eliot's life and the intellectual context of the time, as well as providing close textual analysis.

Customer Reviews:

Maggie, the Interesting Hero.......2007-01-31

The most obvious thing about "The Mill on the Floss" is the quality of writing. You can't argue with that. It's vivid, with wonderful descriptions, and many lovely parts. George Eliot writes of an incredible place, describing everything and making everything easy to visualize. She writes of characters that are so human and real, and then she describes situations with these real characters and everything works so well. Her writing is undeniably good, so now we need to move onto the plot itself.

Here we have the Tullivers. Maggie is our heroine, starting out as a very young girl. She adores and idolizes her brother, loves her father, and rather disdains everything society wants her to be. She's independent, different, and bold. She'll do anything for Tom, her brother, and at the same time she wants to be herself. As she grows up, she finds that these two parts of her will fight against each other: her independence, or her beloved older brother.

Tom is also an interesting character. Our first view of him is from Maggie's adoring eyes, so we find him to be strong, intelligent, and all-knowing. It becomes clear, though, that Tom also enjoys having a certain level of command over his sister, and he very often gives her ultimatums for their friendship. In situations like these, Maggie, trying so hard to please him, gets very hurt, and then Tom would act superior and ignore her. Tom lives strictly in the "black or the white" - for him there is no gray.

Much of the book is simply about their relationship as they are growing up, but many parts revolve around other, slightly more minor characters. For example, Philip Wakem. Philip, a schoolmate of Tom's and a friend of Maggie's enters and leaves and reenters the story many times. At first he seems like a minor but solid character, but he then becomes very fixed in the plot as Maggie's secret, forbidden friend. He demonstrates a case of Tom's orders to Maggie. Stephen Guest is another example. He fell in love with Maggie and tried to elope with her. Maggie refused, though by the time she was able to return home, Tom had deduced the worst, once again demonstrating his "black or white" policy. Tom rejects Maggie, and Maggie has to leave.

The main character is without a doubt Maggie, Maggie who feels such love for the people around her, wants to please them and receive love in return, and wants to be independent. Maggie struggles against so many things throughout this book (I won't reveal them all) and all sort of lead up to the grand finale, which may possibly be the best part of this wonderful book. Everything is written wonderfully, the characters are so rich and interesting, and the plot is never stale. It's an excellent book that I couldn't put down once I started.

I recommend this whole-heartedly, and urge you to go buy it or borrow it from the library. It's a wonderful piece of writing that is so easy to love.

Curl up with this one.......2006-10-27

Oh, my, this book was wonderful. I devoured all 600 pages in a week. Read it during the winter, curled up in a warm sweater, and drink a cup of hot chocolate while you turn pages. The writing is just beautiful-- the characters fully drawn and interesting. I fully identified with Maggie (the protagonist) as she moved through her very moral, principled life. She has many complicated relationships with people that are just a joy to read about. If you like Victorian novels, do not miss this one. I've heard Middlemarch is even better and I can't wait.

Beautifully written, but unsuccessful as a novel.......2006-09-21

From a technical point of view, I think that the writing is superb: the description are vivid (I particularly loved the description of Maggie as a little Medusa with her snakes shorn.) The book is a mixture of the earnest and the farcical, and at points is extremely funny. The structure is carefully built, with the different metaphors of the river reflecting the state of mind of the characters. I found the end very unsatisfying, I was close to the end of the book before I found Maggie sympathetic, and I thought it failed the chief standard of a novel: to be an involving narrative.

I don't mind that the author speaks to the reader per se, but every time I got caught up in the narrative, it wasn't long before the story ground to a halt while Eliot delivered herself of a short essay. The nearly three pages asking the reader to think of villages on the Rhone and castles on the Rhine (neither of which I have ever seen), wore out my patience--it almost seemed like a joke. Both the critics that I read thought that modern readers were put off by the length of the book, but I can think of a lot of long modern novels. It's not so much the number of pages as the way they are filled.

Maggie Tulliver is apparently a seriously disturbed child, surrounded by insensitive adults who certainly can't help her. I feel sorry for her, but I don't like her. Wanting to be loved isn't the same as being lovable. For most of the book, Maggie is pretty self-absorbed. I pity her for her unpleasant relatives, but that doesn't mean that I find her sympathetic by contrast.

Maggie is destructively impulsive, probably hurting herself more than anyone else, but Eliot lost a great deal of my sympathy early on when Maggie allows her brother's rabbits to die of neglect. It is hard to understand how someone who is supposed to be devoted to him could have so completely forgotten his request to take care of them. The critics that I read pointed out that Maggie is always very sorry for what she does, but she is only sorry for how other people's annoyance will affect her. She never, until the end of the book, is remorseful at causing someone else pain. If she were, she would understand that her brother is reasonably angry, and not complain that he is cruel for not instantly forgiving her. Not to mention what the rabbits went through!

Eliot's view of Maggie and her father is that they are as they are, they cannot help themselves, but everyone else is responsible for their own conduct and for accomodating the Tullivers. I find it hard to be sympathetic to them when Eliot was so scathing about everyone else. I am probably projecting 21st century standards back on a 19th century book, but Tulliver acts against the advice of his wife and goes bankrupt in a law suit, which is rather self-centered and bullying. Maggie (and I suppose Eliot) feel that he should not be blamed for this. Certainly there is no point at railing at a person who is nearly comatose with distress, but he is in fact seriously at fault. [added later: I am reminded a bit of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Both wives are presented in a very unflattering light as weak and trivial, but in fact they may be said to have a better grasp of reality than their more sympathetically portrayed but somewhat irresponsible spouses. One has to wonder what the authors were thinking in describing these women.]

I found Maggie much more sympathetic in Book 6 and after, but it and her romantic problems seemed a little contrived. The change in her from Book 5 is only partially accounted for; a lot of it is obviously just a set up for the Dramatic Ending.

I would like the book better if Eliot featured some intelligent resolution to Maggie's problems: she could have learned not to be so emotionally dependent upon her brother, she could have made another life for herself. The problems of her love life are indeed a dilemma and not easily solved, but the ending really seems like a cheat. I hope Eliot didn't mean this as encouragement for woman who found themselves at odds with social expectations. Even the reconciliation between Maggie and her brother makes me scoff. They had a big reconciliation scene earlier in the book and it didn't last, so this one doesn't seem meaningful. It is like the end of a television drama where decades of misunderstanding are permanently resolved in the last 60 seconds.

This is certainly a piece of literary history, and there are some great examples of writing in it, but I don't think it has held up as a novel.

Life Is Determined but Not By You.......2006-08-22

In THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, George Eliot writes of her heroine Maggie Tulliver in such a way that autobiography seems inevitable. Even had Eliot not made a secret of the nearly one to one relationship between her and Maggie, the connection is too obvious to ignore. In George Eliot's personal life, she had an ongoing dispute with her brother that so distressed her that the only way to resolve it was in her fiction. So Maggie spends nearly the entire novel trying to prove her unselfish love to her brother Tom who refuses to see the good in Maggie until the highly controversial ending in which Maggie nobly risks her life to convince Tom that her love for him is unsullied. However much one sees of Eliot in Maggie, Maggie is still a fully-rounded individual whom Eliot has chosen to flesh out in a manner that was unheard of for her time. In presenting the character of Maggie, as well as the others, Eliot presents the unfolding of their distinct personalities against the backdrop of their respective social milieus. Eliot suggests that society has a definite impact on the way each character develops. For Eliot, character is formed partly by his or her environment and exhibited heavily in the ways that she chooses to allow each character to act in their homes, their fields, and their workplaces.

Eliot traces a gradual connection between theme and character. Since environment is one of the two primary factors that impact on the push-pull connection between theme and character, she is careful to delineate early on that the same environment that houses Maggie and Tom nevertheless pushes each to a sociological fork in the road from which each takes a divergent turn. This divergence leads to the book's primary theme: the evolving nature between brother and sister is both cause and effect of the ultimate maritime tragedy that concludes the book. Maggie, even as a young child, is seen as perpetually in conflict, the causes of which are beyond her control. Maggie has an internal conflict in that she is often called to make a choice between that which her heart calls for (say, her love for Stephen Guest) and that which her duty forbids (the vast class gap between the two that forbids a relation). Maggie also has a direct conflict with Tom, whose brutishness and inexplicable meanness toward her impel both toward the book's tragic close. Finally, she has an ongoing conflict with society at large, symbolized by a collective mass of family, friends, lovers, and a cobwebbery of implicit rules that Maggie breaks unwittingly and to tragic effect.

The ending of THE MILL OF THE FLOSS has created a controversy that has lingered from Eliot's day to ours. When Maggie chooses to literally die with Tom than to live without him, the reader is faced with passing judgment on its credibility. Has Eliot taken the cheap way out and sought the conventionally tragic ending of the sentimental Victorian novel? Or is Maggie's final act of unselfishness to be viewed through the lens of autobiography in which the author is vicariously healing the rift between her and her real life brother with the sacrifice of Maggie for her fictional one? The question was raised then and is often raised now with no resolution. What remains is a novel whose ongoing charm lies in its depiction of a style of life that was seen as far removed even in Eliot's day and for which retains a nostalgic charm that the passing of the centuries cannot lessen.

"It's not right to sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings.".......2006-06-06

The Mill on the Floss, published in 1860, traces the turmoil in the life of Maggie Tulliver, a young woman who has a streak of independence but who also feels close to her father and her brother and believes that she must always honor their feelings and wishes. Maggie's father is the owner of the Dorlcote Mill on the Floss River, a failing business drawing him into increasing debt to his relatives and creditors. Her brother Tom, with no interest in the mill, is encouraged to learn other skills which may suit him for a higher level of society. When the mill fails and is sold at auction to Lawyer Wakem, the Tullivers become social outcasts, at the mercy of creditors and dependent on their extended family.

Philip Wakem, son of Lawyer Wakem, is a hunchback who has been a school friend of Tom Tulliver and a special friend of Maggie, who treats him kindly and appreciates his intelligence and thoughtfulness. When the mill is sold to Wakem, Tom and Mr. Tulliver end all contact with the Wakem family, and though Maggie continues to see Philip privately, Tom eventually forces her to choose between the family and Philip. Another relationship with Stephen Guest, who has been courting her cousin Lucy, unleashes Maggie's passions and leads to a dramatic conclusion.

Throughout the novel George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) explores the many kinds of love in Maggie's life--her devoted love of her father, her dependence on and love for her brother, her intellectual and kindly love for Philip, and her passionate love of Stephen Guest. Creating a fully drawn character in Maggie, Eliot shows a full picture of a young woman of 1860, trying to be independent, trying to live according to society's strictures, and trying to be true to her own feelings, despite pressures from family and society. Eliot, who herself made the scandalous choice to live openly with a married man for twenty-six years, was thoroughly familiar with these issues herself, and her depictions of such themes as family loyalty and the social conventions and limitations of class carry the ring of truth.

Psychologically astute in the exploration of themes as they affect Maggie, Eliot amplifies these themes through imagery from nature, legend, and even religion. Often melodramatic in plot, the novel remains realistic, even autobiographical, in its attention to character. Though it is not as fully developed as her later novel Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss is still a well developed, thoughtful novel which goes far beyond the pulp fiction being serialized in newspapers and magazines during that time. n Mary Whipple

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Signature Classics : Mill on the Floss
George Eliot
Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

The new high quality, hardcover series of timeless classics features the finest works of world literature in 6 X 9 formats. The standard edition has an attractive jacket design. Each title chosen for it's literary quality and for the untold pleasure it will give readers of all ages.

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The Mill on the Floss (Naxos Audio)
George Eliot
Manufacturer: Naxos Audiobooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 9626343710

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The mill on the Floss
George Eliot
Manufacturer: William Blackwood and Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Popular Classics)

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The Mill on the Floss (Penguin Popular Classics)
George Eliot
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140620273

Mill on the Floss (The Works of George Eliot ) Standard Edition

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Mill on the Floss (The Works of George Eliot ) Standard Edition
George Eliot
Manufacturer: A L Burt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Cliffsnotes Mill on the Floss (Cliffs Notes)

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Very helpful for appreciating the book

Cliffsnotes Mill on the Floss (Cliffs Notes)
William Holland
Manufacturer: Cliffs Notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822008343

Book Description

In this 19th-century novel, Maggie Tulliver breaks off her romance with the man she loves, after she discovers that it was he who ruined her family's small mill business. She runs off with her cousin's fiance, reconsiders, repents, and returns. But it is too late.

Customer Reviews:

Very helpful for appreciating the book.......2006-09-17

I read these before and after reading the novel. It was very helpful in appreciating the way the story is structured. I doubt that it would have occurred to me that the river was a continuing motif and it's description in any one case mirrored the story. Perhaps if I read these often enough I will pick up that method of reading a book.

The one thing that would have been a little more helpful is more of an explanation of the background. I gather that most of the Dodson sisters wore wigs or hairpieces for example, but it seemed weird without some context. Were their heads shaved? If Maggie's hair was such a big problem, why didn't they get her a wig? Just not suitable for young girls, or something. The word "hardly" is apparently used in its older meaning of "with great force", not the modern sarcastic "with little effort".

Still, I think that this, and the few other Cliff Notes that I have read are quite helpful for getting a more "literary" view of a novel. I am thinking of trying to find some other critical views just to see if anyone else reacted to the book like I did.

There is a great controversy about using books like this. I can understand the attitudes of teachers who want people to actually read the book. But there are people like me who are reading the book on their own for whom this is quite helpful, and far more available and readable then the academic works that some might prefer. I don't agree with Holland on every point, but just having the point of view from someone who comes at the book from a different angle broadens the experience.

In addition, even reading just the Cliff Notes enhances one's "cultural literacy" even if one never reads the book. I knew what the basic story and themes of Moby Dick were before I ever read the book, and that helped me understand things that people were saying. If one read a book a day for 100 years, one would still have read less than 1.5% of the Library of Congress's collection. Realistically speaking, no-one will ever read every book ever written, and these short synopses fill in the gaps. And who knows, it might persuade the reader to actually pick up the book. I was reading the Cliff notes to Anna Karenina during an idle moment at the library, and I was so intrigued, I decided to read the whole thing.

The Mill on the Floss (Dover Thrift Editions)

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The Mill on the Floss (Dover Thrift Editions)
George Eliot
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics)

ASIN: 0486426807

Book Description

Based closely on the author's own life, Maggie's story explores the conflicts of love and loyalty and the friction between desire and moral responsibility. An accurate, evocative depiction of English rural life, this compelling narrative features a vivid and realistic cast, headed by one of 19th-century literature's most appealing characters.

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