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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
You need a little patience to worm yourself into this one (I say to my fellow bookclub members who I hope all read this book!), but the payoff is worth it. Maggie is a wonderful and complicated and frustrating and endearing character and the last third of the book just boils with feelings and emotions and philosophies of being human and love and nasty looks from the neighbors. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending -- really excited to talk this one out.
I really expected to love George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss -- I adored Middlemarch and Victorian novels are really my genre. But boy, I really struggled with this book.
The story follows Maggie Tulliver, who wants to be loved and seeks approval from her family who is reluctant to give it. She grows up in and finds love in too many places but still can't find approval. There was a bizarre twist of a ending that really didn't make a whole lot of sense in terms of the rest of story.
Overall, I just found this book incredibly dull. Eliot's long expositions did nothing for me and I honestly had trouble staying awake for more an a few pages. It got a bit interesting in the middle, then fell apart again. Just a dud of a book for me.
The story follows Maggie Tulliver, who wants to be loved and seeks approval from her family who is reluctant to give it. She grows up in and finds love in too many places but still can't find approval. There was a bizarre twist of a ending that really didn't make a whole lot of sense in terms of the rest of story.
Overall, I just found this book incredibly dull. Eliot's long expositions did nothing for me and I honestly had trouble staying awake for more an a few pages. It got a bit interesting in the middle, then fell apart again. Just a dud of a book for me.
One of my very favorite books of all time .. but if you're looking for a happy ending, this book is not for you.
Ok il libro è bello, la Eliot è una garanzia non c'è dubbio ma quanto può essere triste! Maggie poteva avere, non dico tutto, ma parecchio e invece il destino si accanisce su di lei, sulla sua famiglia, sui suoi rapporti di qualsiasi genere, fino a quando muore, che a questo punto è quasi una liberazione, peccato che annega quando poteva dare una svolta positiva alla sua vita, anche se credo non l'avrebbe comunque fatto.
Mi resterà in mente parecchio questa storia, intanto perchè la volevo leggere da tanto e poi perchè quando è finita così, in quattro e quattr'otto, nemmeno ci volevo credere! Sarebbe stato chiedere troppo un finale meno rapido? non dico più felice per carità, ma neanche così improvviso rispetto a tutte le pagine utilizzate a descrivere paesaggi e relazioni tra le persone!
Mi resterà in mente parecchio questa storia, intanto perchè la volevo leggere da tanto e poi perchè quando è finita così, in quattro e quattr'otto, nemmeno ci volevo credere! Sarebbe stato chiedere troppo un finale meno rapido? non dico più felice per carità, ma neanche così improvviso rispetto a tutte le pagine utilizzate a descrivere paesaggi e relazioni tra le persone!
This'll be my last Eliot, I think. I did enjoy Middlemarch a great deal, but much of this was a chore to get through, especially because (like in Middlemarch) so many of the characters are so utterly unredeemable. Eliot just packs her novels full of awful, cruel, selfish, dim-witted blow-hards. The real award in this one going to the excruciating man-baby Mr. Stephen Guest, entitled monologuist of the "but baby, men have these needs" variety, whose manipulative bleating fills so many pages that you find yourself skipping ahead to get a sense of when this nonsense will end.
I don't know why other people read and enjoy Eliot. For me, it's the narrative voice, which often drops in to make brilliant and revelatory statements applicable to most human lives. However, in this book you have to suffer through the endless stories of largely unpleasant characters. (Maggie's fine, of course, and Bob Jakin and his dog Mumps, as far as I was concerned, were the only characters I cared deeply about--and also the characters of whom we saw the least.) The whole experience is like taking a taxi to and from a house where awful people live because you enjoy the wit and wisdom of the taxi driver. It just doesn't seem worth it in the end. Particularly the end of this novel, which grows increasingly convoluted and farcical before resorting to a combined tidal wave of deux-ex-machina and melodrama.
That said, when Eliot's funny, she's really funny, and when she's profound she leaves you with words you hope to remember forever. I just wish she'd done more of that and not bothered with the nonsense that passes for plot in so much of this book--particularly the last quarter.
I don't know why other people read and enjoy Eliot. For me, it's the narrative voice, which often drops in to make brilliant and revelatory statements applicable to most human lives. However, in this book you have to suffer through the endless stories of largely unpleasant characters. (Maggie's fine, of course, and Bob Jakin and his dog Mumps, as far as I was concerned, were the only characters I cared deeply about--and also the characters of whom we saw the least.) The whole experience is like taking a taxi to and from a house where awful people live because you enjoy the wit and wisdom of the taxi driver. It just doesn't seem worth it in the end. Particularly the end of this novel, which grows increasingly convoluted and farcical before resorting to a combined tidal wave of deux-ex-machina and melodrama.
That said, when Eliot's funny, she's really funny, and when she's profound she leaves you with words you hope to remember forever. I just wish she'd done more of that and not bothered with the nonsense that passes for plot in so much of this book--particularly the last quarter.
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love George Eliot. She was a genius in regard to her understanding of the human heart, right up there with Tolstoy, Hugo, and Shakespeare. If I could only embrace humanity this fully...
Lordy this was an intensively addictive although intensely depressing read. A depressing end (I had seen the BBC adaptation a lot of years ago, so I knew what was coming) but also kind of bittersweet happy and completness. Because in that last page finally, facing death and realising what is important, brother and sister Maggie and Tom are reconciled and never parted again.
There is so much to think about in this story, not just the plot and characters, but the depiction of Victorian values, treatment of women, what pride will do to y ou - and I think ALL of the Tullivers suffer for their pride in different ways. The book starts out in chilhood with Maggie and elder brother Tom who grow up at... ta dah.. "The Mill on the Floss"; their father being a well off miller/gentleman farmer. The childhood sections are the most fun (although there are portents of doom even then, with the mother saying of their games that they will end up in the river and drown) and you can see their characters flourishing. As it goes into adulthood and Maggie goes from this impulsive girl to Maggie the martyr (I have to admit, it did drag at times like a stuck record going over and over her righteous thoughts and denying everything for herself, including countless incidents with Stephen Guest when she kept turning him down) it does get more and more depressing, and Maggie's adherence to her self-denial, which I think she takes some stubborn pride in, and desperation to please her brother, bring about her downfall. She's inflexible and tied to the past, as they all are with their father's own problems (again brought about by his pride). Tom is the less intelligent of the two, a decent sort but lacking in imagination and empathetic intelligence that would allow him to analyse situations and put himself in other people's shoes. To him the world is very black and white in right and wrong, sticking to family honour, which he sees as the upmost. When rumours abound that Maggie might have disgraced herself, he disowns her before even hearing her side of the story, and "Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could happen - not death, but disgrace" (p 433) about says it all.
The mother is an interesting case although maybe she is overlooked as a minor and stupid character. No one rates her intelligence much, in fact at the start her husband brags about how he made sure he had a wife of lesser intelligence and that's the way it should be. And he puts education focus onto Tom, even though Maggie is clearly the brighter of the two. So, Bessy, the wife, is considered a bit dumb, and was essentially brought up for socialising towards the ultimate game of marriage. When Tulliver loses the mill (stubborn law suits are the end of him) it's such a shock to his pride that he has some kind of stroke and is bed stricken for weeks. His wife keeps going, but her worry is that all her things will be sold to pay the debtors. You might say this shows her materialism and lack of intelligence - again, adapt and move on or ultimately die - but in the face of sudden shocks and major life-altering events, your brain can try to save you by making you worry about very random and insignificant things. Rather than where will we live and what will we eat?? Go to the simplier question - what will happen to the sugar tongs?!?! But that only works for the short term, and she's still grieving over these things years later. Materialistic and dumb? Maybe, but did society let her develope to be anything but? Then there's her family, the Dodsons, and the Dodson pride and family name, with two childless sisters who have pots of money, and spend their time buying even more stuff, keeping it under lock and key and never using it - hardly the sign of a life well spent either.
Money certainly doesn't buy you happiness. When the Tullivers hit rock bottom, they rally round to discuss and show they're not snubbing their relatives, but none of them offer any real financial support to help. These are the days before the welfare state, so poverty was something to fear, and sometimes it happened due to circumstance. Not the old Victorian nonsense that only drunk/stupid/lazy/deserving people suffered poverty. But perhaps unless you have experience, you can't have comprehension. The people who really help are the poor, and it's actually Tom's childhood friend Bob, who is now a travelling salesman type, who turns up to really help. He offers them all his money in the world, which isn't much and they turn down, but later he gets Tom set up on some business which really gets him going to pay off his late father's debts. And he brings books to Maggie, knowing how fond she was of books and how they had all been sold off. And when Maggie has rumouredly shamed herself (although she hasn't) and the towns tuts at her, it is Bob and his wife who give her lodgings, when her brother has disowned her. So there are your really decent people - dear old Bob and his grumpy dog Mumps (I love that name).
I did actually like Maggie a lot, although I could have shaken her at the end. Stop being so bloody pious and self-denying! She's very bright, has the capacity to think through things - there's a comment early on when her father is talking to a friend and she is observing that the devil wouldn't look scary as then he wouldn't have chance to meddle with peoples' lives for they'd be scared and run away - but she's also a scatterbrain and impulsive, so quite simply she's not fit for the role women were expected to fill at the time. Men want dumb wifes who remember their chores and mind their betters and their manners. Maggie is wild and impulsive, says what's in her head, and is always getting into trouble with Tom and his ideas of right and wrong. She even gets fed up and runs off to join the gypseys, except that she finds she doesn't fit in their either. She is kind and loving to anyone who will treat her so, such as the hunchback Philip Waken, son of the lawyer who causes the family so much grief, perhaps without thinking that such attention can be taken too seriously by such an isolated person who then gets professions of love from her, when I think she was only ever loving him as a brother for he was kinder to her than Tom was at times. She should have left St Oggs and tried to set up a life of her own. But she's so tied to that family honour, desperately trying to please Tom and being righteous.... "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past." But you can't live in the past. And I suppose in that respect she's not as clever as she can't think beyond all that, and Tom saying to her that she owes him and their father's memory this and that. Waken tries the same thing on his son Philip, when Philip talks of his love for Maggie - Waken wouldn't want a Tulliver for a daughter in law. But Philip has the intelligence to talk him out of it, and that actually all that Wakem did for his son was out of love and not so that his son would owe him this and that (I'm doing some massive paraphrasing on some very good speeches here) and his father goes off in a huff, thinks about it and relents.
There is so much to think about in this story, not just the plot and characters, but the depiction of Victorian values, treatment of women, what pride will do to y ou - and I think ALL of the Tullivers suffer for their pride in different ways. The book starts out in chilhood with Maggie and elder brother Tom who grow up at... ta dah.. "The Mill on the Floss"; their father being a well off miller/gentleman farmer. The childhood sections are the most fun (although there are portents of doom even then, with the mother saying of their games that they will end up in the river and drown) and you can see their characters flourishing. As it goes into adulthood and Maggie goes from this impulsive girl to Maggie the martyr (I have to admit, it did drag at times like a stuck record going over and over her righteous thoughts and denying everything for herself, including countless incidents with Stephen Guest when she kept turning him down) it does get more and more depressing, and Maggie's adherence to her self-denial, which I think she takes some stubborn pride in, and desperation to please her brother, bring about her downfall. She's inflexible and tied to the past, as they all are with their father's own problems (again brought about by his pride). Tom is the less intelligent of the two, a decent sort but lacking in imagination and empathetic intelligence that would allow him to analyse situations and put himself in other people's shoes. To him the world is very black and white in right and wrong, sticking to family honour, which he sees as the upmost. When rumours abound that Maggie might have disgraced herself, he disowns her before even hearing her side of the story, and "Tom's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could happen - not death, but disgrace" (p 433) about says it all.
The mother is an interesting case although maybe she is overlooked as a minor and stupid character. No one rates her intelligence much, in fact at the start her husband brags about how he made sure he had a wife of lesser intelligence and that's the way it should be. And he puts education focus onto Tom, even though Maggie is clearly the brighter of the two. So, Bessy, the wife, is considered a bit dumb, and was essentially brought up for socialising towards the ultimate game of marriage. When Tulliver loses the mill (stubborn law suits are the end of him) it's such a shock to his pride that he has some kind of stroke and is bed stricken for weeks. His wife keeps going, but her worry is that all her things will be sold to pay the debtors. You might say this shows her materialism and lack of intelligence - again, adapt and move on or ultimately die - but in the face of sudden shocks and major life-altering events, your brain can try to save you by making you worry about very random and insignificant things. Rather than where will we live and what will we eat?? Go to the simplier question - what will happen to the sugar tongs?!?! But that only works for the short term, and she's still grieving over these things years later. Materialistic and dumb? Maybe, but did society let her develope to be anything but? Then there's her family, the Dodsons, and the Dodson pride and family name, with two childless sisters who have pots of money, and spend their time buying even more stuff, keeping it under lock and key and never using it - hardly the sign of a life well spent either.
Money certainly doesn't buy you happiness. When the Tullivers hit rock bottom, they rally round to discuss and show they're not snubbing their relatives, but none of them offer any real financial support to help. These are the days before the welfare state, so poverty was something to fear, and sometimes it happened due to circumstance. Not the old Victorian nonsense that only drunk/stupid/lazy/deserving people suffered poverty. But perhaps unless you have experience, you can't have comprehension. The people who really help are the poor, and it's actually Tom's childhood friend Bob, who is now a travelling salesman type, who turns up to really help. He offers them all his money in the world, which isn't much and they turn down, but later he gets Tom set up on some business which really gets him going to pay off his late father's debts. And he brings books to Maggie, knowing how fond she was of books and how they had all been sold off. And when Maggie has rumouredly shamed herself (although she hasn't) and the towns tuts at her, it is Bob and his wife who give her lodgings, when her brother has disowned her. So there are your really decent people - dear old Bob and his grumpy dog Mumps (I love that name).
I did actually like Maggie a lot, although I could have shaken her at the end. Stop being so bloody pious and self-denying! She's very bright, has the capacity to think through things - there's a comment early on when her father is talking to a friend and she is observing that the devil wouldn't look scary as then he wouldn't have chance to meddle with peoples' lives for they'd be scared and run away - but she's also a scatterbrain and impulsive, so quite simply she's not fit for the role women were expected to fill at the time. Men want dumb wifes who remember their chores and mind their betters and their manners. Maggie is wild and impulsive, says what's in her head, and is always getting into trouble with Tom and his ideas of right and wrong. She even gets fed up and runs off to join the gypseys, except that she finds she doesn't fit in their either. She is kind and loving to anyone who will treat her so, such as the hunchback Philip Waken, son of the lawyer who causes the family so much grief, perhaps without thinking that such attention can be taken too seriously by such an isolated person who then gets professions of love from her, when I think she was only ever loving him as a brother for he was kinder to her than Tom was at times. She should have left St Oggs and tried to set up a life of her own. But she's so tied to that family honour, desperately trying to please Tom and being righteous.... "I desire no future that will break the ties of the past." But you can't live in the past. And I suppose in that respect she's not as clever as she can't think beyond all that, and Tom saying to her that she owes him and their father's memory this and that. Waken tries the same thing on his son Philip, when Philip talks of his love for Maggie - Waken wouldn't want a Tulliver for a daughter in law. But Philip has the intelligence to talk him out of it, and that actually all that Wakem did for his son was out of love and not so that his son would owe him this and that (I'm doing some massive paraphrasing on some very good speeches here) and his father goes off in a huff, thinks about it and relents.
Yet another classic literature piece involving the same plot line again. a woman trapped between two men. One symbolizes society. One symbolizes individuality. Which one shall she choose?