Brinda's Reviews > The Mill on the Floss

While Middlemarch may be grander in scope, a tad more sophisticated in its style and perhaps more global in its outlook (despite the title), Mill on the Floss is a raw, action-packed intellectual and emotional thriller. And I mean thriller not in the creepy sense but in the truly exhilarating one. I refuse to choose between the two because I love them both.

Maggie Tulliver is just about the most exciting fictional character I have ever encountered. Perhaps she taps into a subconscious sexism, which is easily wowed by a feisty woman who doesn't quite belong in society, is in fact rejected by it, and yet manages to be so vibrant and optimistic in her thoughts and imaginations, saying these brilliant things all the time and being viewed attractive, despite her miserable lot in life. Would I feel the same way if it were a man? That's probably not even the right question - a false debate to discuss the merits of this novel.

One of the most enjoyable reads of my life. It captures that complex tug of emotions between a brother and sister who are both each other's primitive best friends - relating to each other almost as chimps would, being affectionate, physical, playful - but also incredibly hostile (Tom to Maggie) and extremely oversensitive (Maggie to Tom) . And when social customs force them to make certain life choices, Tom and Maggie appear to be at total odds with one another. So there's that.

Then there's Philip Wakem. I mean, if screenwriters of shitty rom-coms could just take a course in George Eliot they would learn how to write a true romantic. This hunchbacked grumpy brooding young man sweeps Maggie off her feet through his own honesty and loyalty, and, like Mr Darcy in P&P as well as Bridget, loves Maggie just the way she is, in fact, BECAUSE of the way she is.

The drama between the Dodsons and Tullivers - quintessential family tangled webs being woven, with the haughty Mrs Glegg putting family above all, while clearly not putting any loving weight behind that loyalty.

And then there's Stephen Guest and the heart-stopping moments between him and Maggie. The section where they basically have what amounts to a trial lawyer style battle of words and cross-examinations discussing what it means to love one another if it means sacrificing others - pure genius. Maggie's explanation of the different kinds of love - the one that is there purely for one's own pleasure; the one that is there for security and familiarity; and the one that is earned through loyalty and making other people happy: I mean, come on! How ingenious are those concepts, once they are brought to light! That's what Eliot does - brings voice to thoughts we all have but can't find words to express.

The ending of the novel at first felt abrupt and melodramatic. But in hindsight, it was probably the only natural way to end. I don't want to be heartbroken about it - but oh boy, it killed me.

But going back to Maggie: it's she herself whom you always want to read, it's through her eyes we see this life, it beauties and its pain, at once cruel, harsh but also warm, loving, REAL, and ever-surprising. She seems so true and human and in the flesh you feel like you know her in real life - or in my case, you want to know her, you want her to be your best friend! - you feel robbed once the book is over that Maggie is not in your life anymore. I wonder if Eliot saw herself in Maggie - this precocious, naughty, energetic, thoughtful, hopelessly romantic yet also pragmatic young woman - but also imposed Eliot's desires for what she wanted to be onto her ie, beauty and an object of desire. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Mill was Eliot's favorite novel she wrote.

Like Proust, Eliot seeks Truth in explaining the truly inexplicable - those little glances we exchange with people we are attracted to; the remarkable way light can render an ordinary object into a work of art; the warmth felt during holidays around the dinner table; the familiar taste of pudding or biscuits or goat curry your mother makes, which you remember through life; those feelings of loyalty to family and home and place; the deep sorrow in seeing one's family or loved ones in any sort of harm; the intellectual dilemmas that are brought on through romance; the ineffable feelings a great piece of art or music or literature brings about; the muddled nature of most of our problems and views on life.

As a writer, Eliot's style is simply flawless. Hers is that impossible blend of expository with poetry with dialectics with straight prose. A true thinker and artist and romantic who was clearly very present and wide-eyed in the world she lived in.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selection of quotations from book I liked:

"What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?"

"There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we born , where objects became dear to us before we had known the labor of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our personalities..."

"There was a terrible cutting truth in Tom's words - that hard rind of truth which is discerned by unimaginative, unsympathetic minds."

"...her sensibility to the supreme excitement of music was only one form of that passionate sensibility which belonged to her whole nature, and made her faults and virtues all merge in each other - made her affections sometimes an impatient demand, but also prevented her vanity from taking the form of mere feminine coquetry and device, and gave it the poetry of ambition."

"Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us - whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us."

"Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with her will bent unwaveringly on a path of penitent sacrifice? The great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great problems are not so clear."

"...what quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?"