The Mill on the Floss (Criticism)

Criticism

Kelly Winters

Winters is a freelance writer. In this essay, Winters considers the conflict between self-realization and acceptance in Eliot's novel.

In Studies in the Novel, June Skye Szirotny commented that, of all Eliot's works, only in The Mill on the Floss does she "explore the conflict between self-realization and acceptance that makes for the ambivalence at the heart of all her fiction — ambivalence that she will set herself to resolve in the rest of her fiction."

This ambivalence runs, like the River Floss, throughout the novel and is the heart of Maggie's conflict with her family and society. It is made worse by the fact that "acceptance" or "love" is rarely given freely by the other characters in the book; it is always conditional. In effect, her family lets Maggie know that "[o]nly if you behave as you're supposed to will we love and accept you."

When Maggie can't or won't behave as her family wants her to, they label her as "unnatural" and threaten to stop loving her. When Mrs. Tulliver insists that Maggie curl her hair, Maggie douses her head in a basin of water, putting an end to the question of curls. Her mother threatens that if her aunts hear about this, "they'll never love you any more." When Tom finds out that she has forgotten to feed his rabbits, he says, "I don't love you, Maggie" and becomes cold to her. In fact, whenever she does anything that displeases him, either he tells her he doesn't like her any more and that he likes someone else (usually their cousin Lucy) instead or he simply walks away from her. Later in the book he goes farther, saying he will hate her if she doesn't do as he says. Arrogantly, he tells her, "You might have sense enough to see that a brother, who goes out into the world and mixes with men, necessarily knows better what is right and respectable for his sister than she can know herself. You think I am not kind; but my kindness can only be directed by what I believe to be good for you." In other words, his love is conditional; he will only love her if she obeys him. In addition, it is purely self-serving; in the first section of the book, Eliot makes this very clear when she comments:

Tom, indeed, was of [the] opinion that Maggie was a silly little thing — all girls were silly. Still he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong.

In fact, there is almost no one in the world who loves Maggie as she is, rambunctious behavior, intelligence, and all; everyone around her is constantly trying to mold her and withdrawing from her when they are unable to do so. Only Bob Jakin, who chivalrously brings Maggie gifts and takes her in after her disastrous boat ride, and Lucy, who kindly schemes to bring her and Philip together, have no self-serving motives when it comes to Maggie. They are truly her friends and are only interested in helping her find happiness.

However, her family has a big impact on her, and these two friends can't make up for her family's lack of understanding. Because of her family's attitude toward her, Maggie lives under a constant threat of disapproval and abandonment. This is especially hard for her because she has a loving nature; she is described as being "as dependent on kind or cold words as a daisy on the sunshine or the cloud." Because of her strong need to be loved and her sadness when any love is withdrawn, she is often willing to do anything to gain approval from Tom and others. Eliot comments at the beginning of the novel:

It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love — this hunger of the heart — as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.

Maggie loves Tom far more than he loves her, and she falls into despair when he does not approve of her. He, on the contrary, does not care what she thinks of him; it would never even occur to him to wonder what's on her mind.

Eliot writes that Tom was the one person of whom Maggie was most afraid:

afraid with that fear which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending, unmodifiable — with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.

She is thus placed in a no-win situation: if she does as he wants, she will be miserable; if she goes against him, she will suffer through losing him.

In addition to her fear of losing Tom's love, Maggie also has a hearty dose of self-blame; she blames herself for the estrangement and strife between her and Tom, even though, to the reader, he appears to be largely responsible for it because of his narrow-minded and controlling nature. Maggie has been taught to see herself as selfish when she seeks love and companionship with Philip, simply because her family would be upset to know she was associating with a Wakem. They demand that she sacrifice this chance for love, or even friendship, so that they can remain strong in their feud with the Wakem family. Like Tom, they never consider how this will affect her. Interestingly, Maggie never becomes angry at Tom or her family for trying to run her life or preventing her from seeing Philip; she simply assumes that they are right and she is wrong.

When Maggie goes down the river with Stephen, few people are sympathetic to her. Although she is actually blameless, she is vilified for shaming her family and Tom. Few people are particularly interested in finding out whether or not she is actually guilty of any illicit behavior. For example, Eliot writes that as Tom awaits news from her, he assumes she is guilty without knowing any facts:

His mouth wore its bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold. Would the next news be that she was married — or what? Probably that she was not married; Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could happen — not death, but disgrace.

It is fascinating to note that Tom believes that "disgrace" would be worse than death; in effect, he would rather have Maggie die than have her be disgraced. Disgrace would reflect badly on him and his family, whereas death would not. This is yet another example of his extreme selfishness and rigidity.

When Maggie does return, Tom will have nothing to do with her, telling her she has disgraced the entire family and that she has been "a curse" to her best friends. He then disowns her, saying, "You don't belong to me," and he won't listen to her explanations and apologies. Although he says he will provide for her, he will not allow her to associate with him or to come under his roof.

This rejection is what Maggie has been dreading for her entire life. Typically, she does not defend herself; Eliot explains her behavior by saying she is "half-stunned — too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's accusations, still less to vindicate herself." Instead, she says weakly, "Whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly," and she apologizes. However, Tom will have none of it. "The sight of you is hateful to me," he tells her.

When a massive flood carries part of the mill away and leaves Tom stranded in their old house, Maggie is the only person who shows up to save Tom. For the first time in his life, he realizes that he has underestimated her and their relationship. Eliot writes that he was "pale with a certain awe and humiliation." It is the first time in the story that he has been deeply beaten or humiliated by anything. He calls her by his childhood nickname for her, "Magsie," and they come to an unspoken forgiveness and understanding, similar to the one they shared as children. They are close again, allies in the fight against the flood, instead of the adversaries they had become.

When a giant mass of debris rushes toward them on the fast-flowing river, their boat is smashed and driven under, and they both drown as they are holding each other "in an embrace not to be parted: living through again in one supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands together and roamed the daisied fields together."

This "solution," with which Eliot wraps up Maggie's problems with her brother, her family, and society, is false, because it depends on Maggie's death. If Maggie and Tom had lived through the flood, he might have retained his new respect for her, but it's likely that he would not have. By nature, Maggie simply could never get along with Tom, no matter how self-sacrificing she tried to be; Eliot makes this very clear throughout the novel. Suppose Maggie had lived: what then? Would she have become Tom's housekeeper, as he had planned when they were children? If so, she would never marry, never have children, and would remain a servant to him for the rest of her life. This was Tom's dream, but was never hers. She could not marry Philip, or Stephen, and society's gossip and slander about her character would still remain, even though Stephen has written a letter explaining that she was not guilty of any misdemeanor. Victorian society was strict and unforgiving of girls and women who became involved in any scandal; as Eliot notes, even when she became a governess to Dr. Kenn's children, everyone in town slanders her, despite the knowledge of Stephen's exonerating letter. As Dr. Kenn tells her, "There is hardly any evidence which will save you from the painful effect of false imputations." He also advises her that human nature being what it is, people will never believe she is innocent.

Maggie's story is destined to be tragic: because of her perhaps mistaken love for her brother and her deep regard for her family, she stunts herself. When Maggie dies in the flood, she and her brother are united in a way they haven't been since childhood. However, it is not an adult connection of equals but a return and regression to a time when they were so young and their experiences so limited that they had no reason to quarrel. What Eliot does not do, and perhaps cannot do, given the society she lived in and her own struggles against slander and gossip, is provide an ending to the story in which Maggie lives through the flood and has a happy and productive life. Throughout the book, Maggie struggles with balancing self-realization and acceptance, but the ending of her story, instead of leading her to a solution of that problem, is a simple regression to a time when these problems did not exist.

Source: Kelly Winters, Critical Essay on The Mill on the Floss, in Novels for Students, The Gale Group, 2003.