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Phil's Reviews > The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss
by
by
Phil's review
bookshelves: guardian-1000-books-list, guardian-and-boxall, 1001-boxall-list
Mar 17, 2015
bookshelves: guardian-1000-books-list, guardian-and-boxall, 1001-boxall-list
Okay - I've calmed down now. But I really did have to take a few days to gather my thoughts about this book simply because THAT ENDING shocked me so much. And not a good shock, not a how wonderful/romantic/shocking/unexpected/beautiful ending, but a how the hell did you think that that was ever a good way to end this book after everything you've put this character through.
Fifty pages from the end, this was heading towards being a 5 star book, but straight after finishing I was on the verge of giving it two - yes, I was that annoyed with George Eliot. Now, I have settled down I can more rationally assess this book.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it. the introduction of the 1950s Everyman Paperback edition I read set me up to expect something different - they suggested the book was flawed because (view spoiler). However, they were completely wrong - in fact what I thought was NOT convincing about Maggie Tulliver was her sudden, thorough and completely out of character jump into a mystical hair-shirt religion of self abnegation. I loved Maggie when growing up - she was willful, she loved life, she loved fun and she had little regard for the stifling social manacles that her family and neighbours tried to lock her into. So it saddened me when she killed her spirit in this way.
The introduction led me to expect Stephen Guest to be a Jane Austen villain, a seducing rogue, like George Wickham from P&P, but he's not at all. He and Maggie genuinely fall in love, and once they'd admitted that marrying Lucy / Philip would have simply condemned everyone to a life of misery and disguise - I was wishing Maggie to say yes to Stephen when the crunch came. Instead the town of St Oggs dismisses her sacrifice and condemns her as a slut - even her brother.
Which brings me to the ending .... actually, best not as I'll just get frustrated again. Suffice to say that it seemed like little more than a more literary version of "it was all a dream", as way of ending the book as quickly as possible in a pseudo-religious, melodramatic, chocolate-box sentimental way, full of unbelievable coincidence and false-feeling changes in character. I literally threw the book away in disgust with a "what? is THAT a way to treat Maggie Tulliver? Is that all I get after 600 pages of reading? Is THAT all you could think of?"
Overall, I've given it 4 stars, but with a better ending it would definitely have been 5.
(#20 in my year of reading women)
Fifty pages from the end, this was heading towards being a 5 star book, but straight after finishing I was on the verge of giving it two - yes, I was that annoyed with George Eliot. Now, I have settled down I can more rationally assess this book.
On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed it. the introduction of the 1950s Everyman Paperback edition I read set me up to expect something different - they suggested the book was flawed because (view spoiler). However, they were completely wrong - in fact what I thought was NOT convincing about Maggie Tulliver was her sudden, thorough and completely out of character jump into a mystical hair-shirt religion of self abnegation. I loved Maggie when growing up - she was willful, she loved life, she loved fun and she had little regard for the stifling social manacles that her family and neighbours tried to lock her into. So it saddened me when she killed her spirit in this way.
The introduction led me to expect Stephen Guest to be a Jane Austen villain, a seducing rogue, like George Wickham from P&P, but he's not at all. He and Maggie genuinely fall in love, and once they'd admitted that marrying Lucy / Philip would have simply condemned everyone to a life of misery and disguise - I was wishing Maggie to say yes to Stephen when the crunch came. Instead the town of St Oggs dismisses her sacrifice and condemns her as a slut - even her brother.
Which brings me to the ending .... actually, best not as I'll just get frustrated again. Suffice to say that it seemed like little more than a more literary version of "it was all a dream", as way of ending the book as quickly as possible in a pseudo-religious, melodramatic, chocolate-box sentimental way, full of unbelievable coincidence and false-feeling changes in character. I literally threw the book away in disgust with a "what? is THAT a way to treat Maggie Tulliver? Is that all I get after 600 pages of reading? Is THAT all you could think of?"
Overall, I've given it 4 stars, but with a better ending it would definitely have been 5.
(#20 in my year of reading women)
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Reading Progress
March 17, 2015
– Shelved as:
to-read
March 17, 2015
– Shelved
March 31, 2015
–
Started Reading
April 20, 2015
–
38.0%
May 8, 2015
–
Finished Reading
May 12, 2015
– Shelved as:
guardian-1000-books-list
February 3, 2023
– Shelved as:
guardian-and-boxall
February 3, 2023
– Shelved as:
1001-boxall-list
Comments Showing 1-2 of 2 (2 new)
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I wouldn't have minded the boats and the flood - that was pretty exciting (if a touch rushed), but I hated killing Maggie off, the sudden idea that her brother, after almost a decade of dislike, falls deeply in love with her again in a wink of an eye, and the drowning while clinging together while God looks down collecting his two little happy loving sunbeams was not only soppily sentimental, but also felt like Eliot was punishing Maggie, because it was impossible to let her live. See, it's annoying me again :)
I did see something surprising coming though, as I didn't know what she was going to do to end this with only a handful of pages left.