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A review by stephxsu
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
4.0
Spirited Maggie Tulliver grows up on a struggling mill by the riverside town of St. Ogg’s and struggles with her relationships with her family, her older brother Tom, a beloved friend who happens to be the son of her father’s enemy, and a charismatic but unattainable suitor. This is the first George Eliot book I’ve read and it won’t be my last, for I am blown away by Eliot’s remarkably, almost painfully, accurate insights into human nature and the social condition. Maggie is like a modern heroine caught between tensions of the old and new, a girl who doesn’t fit the mold of the ideal young woman and yet craves acceptance and praise from the men in her life. The writing is bold and flowing, the characters flawed yet endearing.
There are many other more scholarly things I could say about this book (for we had an excellent discussion about it in class), but I would’ve loved it had I picked it up on my own. It’s got all the cleverness and emotional resonance of an Austen novel, and the intricacies of the Victorian realist genre. I have to admit I was thrown and angry at the way Eliot ended this novel, but until that point I was fully invested in the characters’ outcomes, and I can now simply chuckle at all the different ways I can academically interpret that infuriating ending. A must-read for Victorian lit!
There are many other more scholarly things I could say about this book (for we had an excellent discussion about it in class), but I would’ve loved it had I picked it up on my own. It’s got all the cleverness and emotional resonance of an Austen novel, and the intricacies of the Victorian realist genre. I have to admit I was thrown and angry at the way Eliot ended this novel, but until that point I was fully invested in the characters’ outcomes, and I can now simply chuckle at all the different ways I can academically interpret that infuriating ending. A must-read for Victorian lit!