Maggie Tulliver: The Mirror, The Martyr, The Misunderstood
By Alexis Kayser
Cloaked beneath the masculine pen name “George Eliot”, acclaimed 19th century author Mary Ann Evans was able to draw upon the oppressive experience of her own femininity. This in and of itself is a testament to the political climate of the time; one had to pretend to be a man in order to saturate societal perceptions with the perspective of a woman. Using her own voice, Evans’s testimonies, disguised under the mask of her characters, would have never seen the light of day. Yet, as Eliot, she was able to harness the benefits of both worlds, making a name for herself amongst the literary community under the guise of manhood while using her veiled womanhood to speak earnestly about the disadvantages of being female at the time.
In her book The Mill on the Floss, first published in 1860, Eliot addresses gender roles intelligently and intentionally through her protagonists, Maggie and Tom Tulliver. The siblings seem to be bonded through something deeper than blood, yet, their distinct differences are temporarily divisive for their relationship at many points throughout the novel. Tom’s opportunities, granted to him not by his capability, but by his gender, directly foil Maggie’s and provide important distinctions between 19th century manhood and womanhood. Yet, it is Maggie herself who is the true exemplar of injustice. As readers follow Maggie from a fiery young child into an unconventional young woman, it becomes evident that Maggie is a mirror that reflects Eliot’s own painful experiences of femininity, and is a vessel through which the author can communicate about the injustice of the current moment. Maggie Tulliver’s struggle does not belong to her alone; it is the cumulative manifestation of the female experience of the time, which was characterized by an adamant, widespread sexism that repressed women into silent submission. The projection of a disorderly and clever female into the universe, even if only a fictional one, was in and of itself an act of rebellion which threatened to disrupt the social order of the time.
Eliot made her intentions to discuss gender roles clear from the very beginning of The Mill on the Floss. Book First is titled “Boy and Girl”, which hints at the distinctions that are about to be brought to light. The choice to include a brother and a sister as the main characters, instead of two siblings of the same sex, was a deliberate one. This would allow Eliot to develop a male life and a female life alongside each other, and would make clear the differences between them by way of comparison. This juxtaposition repeatedly clarified itself throughout the first book. When the reader meets Maggie Tulliver, it is instantly clear that she is not like other girls (much to the dismay of her parents). After complaining that Maggie’s hair won’t hold a curl “like other folks’s children” (Eliot 57), Mrs. Tulliver directs her daughter to “let [her] hair be brushed, an’ put [her] other pinafore on, an’ change [her] shoes...an’ come an’ go on with [her] patch-work, like a little lady” (Eliot 58). Maggie responds, “O mother...I don’t want to do my patchwork” (Eliot 58). The very structure of these lines displays the frustration and exhaustion which Maggie associates with maintaining a female image. The repetition of the word “an’” in Mrs. Tulliver’s instructions makes her list of tasks appear to drag on; by the time the reader finishes the sentence, they are picking up on the overwhelming nature of the work to be done (work that is, notably, done to outwardly project femininity). In Maggie’s unwillingness to do the patchwork, a rather mundane task for many, she is expressing a disdain for much more than sewing. This vocality about not wanting to partake in a typical female activity is representative of her lack of enthusiasm for, as Mrs. Tulliver puts it, “a little lady” in general. On page 58, Maggie even refers to it outright as “foolish work”, revealing her lack of enthusiasm for what her culture has deemed acceptable for her to do. Maggie longs for more out of life, and as the novel wears on, it becomes apparent that her gender is prohibiting her from achieving it.
When Mr. Tulliver speaks of Maggie’s intelligence, he does so with blatant sexism. On page 61, Eliot writes as Mr. Tulliver, “A woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble.” It is here that the parallels to George Eliot’s own life begin to take a more apparent shape. After reading many books on the lack of cohesivity between science and religion, Eliot told her father that she could no longer go to church; Gordon S. Haight for Encyclopædia Britannica reports that the “ensuing storm raged for several months” before he decided that she could be “free to think what she pleased as long as she appeared respectably at church.” It was Eliot’s intelligence and ability to decipher presented information which ultimately led her to “trouble” in her highly religious community; similarly, Mr. Tulliver seems to believe that Maggie’s well-read mind might cause her problems in the future. Perhaps Mr. Tulliver is a direct reflection of Eliot’s own father, and Maggie, therefore, is a manifestation of Eliot’s experiences.
Mr. Tulliver’s qualms about cleverness certainly don’t carry over to Tom. Tom, being male, is given the opportunity to go get an education, even though he doesn’t seem to desire it nearly as much as Maggie would. While Maggie longs to prove herself through her reading and innate academic prowess (telling Mr. Riley all that she knows about a particular book on page 61, so that he might “have a respect for her”), Tom could not seem to care less about scholarship. Instead, he “knew all about worms, and fish, and those things” (Eliot 83). Despite the fact that Maggie had more of a critical, classically academic mind and Tom’s thought processes were more technical, the family made Tom’s education their priority.
As Tom and Maggie grow older and become more aware of their places in society, Eliot begins to use their dialogues to clarify the differences between men and women at the time. One of the first instances of this is on page 79, where Tom says, “I’ve got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy.” She continues to subtly slip in mentions of inequity throughout her writing, as is demonstrated on page 361 in the quote, “Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in the world,” and on page 432 with the line, “We don’t ask what a woman does--we ask who she belongs to” (Eliot). It’s interesting to note, here, how Eliot handles this subject material. The way that she writes about gender disparities is very subtle and matter-of-fact. She never has Maggie comment on how it is unfair; rather, the reader is left to gain a sense of the unfairness through their growing connection with Maggie. While her anger is never labeled, and may not even be fully manifested, it is bubbling discreetly under the surface of these remarks. This was an act of strategic genius on Eliot’s part; it allowed her to commentate on gender without making controversial statements. Instead, she was simply able to document the way that society operated, and the readers were led to make their own judgements and assumptions through the bonds that they felt with her well-developed characters. This gives the reader the impression that they came to these realizations of sexism on their own when, in reality, it was Eliot’s brilliant writing which led them right to those conclusions.
As they story wears on, Maggie’s circumstances and problems only begin to mirror those of George Eliot more and more. On page 372, Mr. Tulliver passes away, beginning not only a new segment of the book, but a new segment of life for both Tom and Maggie. After growing apart while at school, the two reunited in their grief; on page 372, Eliot writes, “‘Tom, forgive me--let us always love each other;’ and they clung and wept together.” Interestingly enough, Eliot’s father died when she was thirty years old, after she had been caring for him and living with him for most of her life (Haight). His death symbolized a new chapter in her life, as well, for it was only after his passing that she was able to move from, as Haight calls it, the “extreme provincialism” which her father kept her in. In this sense, as in so many others, Maggie’s experiences were drawn upon by Eliot’s.
Perhaps the most apparent parallel between Maggie Tulliver and George Eliot comes in society’s perceptions of their decisions. Maggie develops feelings for her cousin Lucy’s boyfriend, Stephen. The two nearly elope, yet Maggie backs out and returns home, where she is judged and shunned for her relationship (Eliot 488). In an eerily similar turn of events, Eliot fell in love with a married man by the name of George Henry Lewes, and when people found out, this caused her to be a “social outcast” (Hughes 3). Eliot likely used Maggie as an outlet to convey her own anger and pain. These personal statements gave way to broader societal ones, and were ultimately vital to the cultural significance which the novel would come to hold.
Eliot’s death, a peaceful one in her home, was not at all reminiscent of the death which she gave to Maggie. Maggie and Tom drown together in the final chapters of the book, in a tragic boat accident on the river (Eliot 517). Even Maggie’s death, one so untimely and so seemingly cruel, was meaningful. Earlier in the novel, there is a hint of foreshadowing to this which must not go unnoticed; on page 71, Eliot writes, “Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near--in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.” In her childhood, as represented in this passage, Maggie used water as a means of escape from the femininity forced upon her by society. It is no coincidence that later, she would drown in water, ridding herself of the judgement which had followed her all of her life. Furthermore, Maggie and Tom died side by side, despite all of the differences in their upbringings and their personalities. It is as if Eliot was making one final statement, that no matter how divisive our genders can be, they all ultimately lead us to the same demise; our shared humanity is the crux of our similarity, and is more defining of our existence than our sex could ever be.
Jose Angel Garcia Landa of the University of Zaragoza appropriately summarized the relationship between Maggie’s character and Eliot herself when he wrote, “Maggie Tulliver is the result of George Eliot’s work on the female stereotypes of her age as she experiences them in both life and literature” (49). Maggie’s life drew upon the experiences of Eliot’s in order to credibly tell a story of girlhood, womanhood, and their sacred blurring at that time period. Had Eliot not written with such personal anecdotes woven discreetly into Maggie’s character, she might not have laid the foundation upon which she could construct conversation about deeper issues. At its core, The Mill on the Floss is not about family, or loss, or love; all of these topics are simply stepping stones to sexism. The distinction between Maggie and Tom, made clear from the very start of the novel, was exemplary of injustices based on gender discrimination.
From her unruly hair to her outspoken spirit, Maggie Tulliver’s very existence was radical in the 19th century. She acted as a symbol of beautiful disgrace, paving the way for young girls to break the mold of traditional femininity and pursue paths of greater risk. Maggie was a mirror that reflected Eliot, and therefore, the real-life struggles faced by the females of the time. In her life, and in her death, there is inherent value; it is the sort of power that, like the flow of a river, snakes through time and place relentlessly, granting all who drink from it with vitality.
Works Cited
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Edited by Oliver Lovesey, Broadview Editions, 2007.
Haight, Gordon S. “George Eliot.” Encycolpedia Brittanica, 18 Nov. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Eliot/Major-works.
Hughes, Annika M. “Mary Ann Evans and George Eliot: One Woman.” Women in World History, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/imow-Eliot.pdf.
Langda, Jose Angel Garcia. “The Chain of Semiosis: Semiotics, Marxism, and the Female Stereotypes in The Mill on the Floss.” Papers on Language and Literature, vol. 27, no. 1, 13 Sept. 2011.
Cloaked beneath the masculine pen name “George Eliot”, acclaimed 19th century author Mary Ann Evans was able to draw upon the oppressive experience of her own femininity. This in and of itself is a testament to the political climate of the time; one had to pretend to be a man in order to saturate societal perceptions with the perspective of a woman. Using her own voice, Evans’s testimonies, disguised under the mask of her characters, would have never seen the light of day. Yet, as Eliot, she was able to harness the benefits of both worlds, making a name for herself amongst the literary community under the guise of manhood while using her veiled womanhood to speak earnestly about the disadvantages of being female at the time.
In her book The Mill on the Floss, first published in 1860, Eliot addresses gender roles intelligently and intentionally through her protagonists, Maggie and Tom Tulliver. The siblings seem to be bonded through something deeper than blood, yet, their distinct differences are temporarily divisive for their relationship at many points throughout the novel. Tom’s opportunities, granted to him not by his capability, but by his gender, directly foil Maggie’s and provide important distinctions between 19th century manhood and womanhood. Yet, it is Maggie herself who is the true exemplar of injustice. As readers follow Maggie from a fiery young child into an unconventional young woman, it becomes evident that Maggie is a mirror that reflects Eliot’s own painful experiences of femininity, and is a vessel through which the author can communicate about the injustice of the current moment. Maggie Tulliver’s struggle does not belong to her alone; it is the cumulative manifestation of the female experience of the time, which was characterized by an adamant, widespread sexism that repressed women into silent submission. The projection of a disorderly and clever female into the universe, even if only a fictional one, was in and of itself an act of rebellion which threatened to disrupt the social order of the time.
Eliot made her intentions to discuss gender roles clear from the very beginning of The Mill on the Floss. Book First is titled “Boy and Girl”, which hints at the distinctions that are about to be brought to light. The choice to include a brother and a sister as the main characters, instead of two siblings of the same sex, was a deliberate one. This would allow Eliot to develop a male life and a female life alongside each other, and would make clear the differences between them by way of comparison. This juxtaposition repeatedly clarified itself throughout the first book. When the reader meets Maggie Tulliver, it is instantly clear that she is not like other girls (much to the dismay of her parents). After complaining that Maggie’s hair won’t hold a curl “like other folks’s children” (Eliot 57), Mrs. Tulliver directs her daughter to “let [her] hair be brushed, an’ put [her] other pinafore on, an’ change [her] shoes...an’ come an’ go on with [her] patch-work, like a little lady” (Eliot 58). Maggie responds, “O mother...I don’t want to do my patchwork” (Eliot 58). The very structure of these lines displays the frustration and exhaustion which Maggie associates with maintaining a female image. The repetition of the word “an’” in Mrs. Tulliver’s instructions makes her list of tasks appear to drag on; by the time the reader finishes the sentence, they are picking up on the overwhelming nature of the work to be done (work that is, notably, done to outwardly project femininity). In Maggie’s unwillingness to do the patchwork, a rather mundane task for many, she is expressing a disdain for much more than sewing. This vocality about not wanting to partake in a typical female activity is representative of her lack of enthusiasm for, as Mrs. Tulliver puts it, “a little lady” in general. On page 58, Maggie even refers to it outright as “foolish work”, revealing her lack of enthusiasm for what her culture has deemed acceptable for her to do. Maggie longs for more out of life, and as the novel wears on, it becomes apparent that her gender is prohibiting her from achieving it.
When Mr. Tulliver speaks of Maggie’s intelligence, he does so with blatant sexism. On page 61, Eliot writes as Mr. Tulliver, “A woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble.” It is here that the parallels to George Eliot’s own life begin to take a more apparent shape. After reading many books on the lack of cohesivity between science and religion, Eliot told her father that she could no longer go to church; Gordon S. Haight for Encyclopædia Britannica reports that the “ensuing storm raged for several months” before he decided that she could be “free to think what she pleased as long as she appeared respectably at church.” It was Eliot’s intelligence and ability to decipher presented information which ultimately led her to “trouble” in her highly religious community; similarly, Mr. Tulliver seems to believe that Maggie’s well-read mind might cause her problems in the future. Perhaps Mr. Tulliver is a direct reflection of Eliot’s own father, and Maggie, therefore, is a manifestation of Eliot’s experiences.
Mr. Tulliver’s qualms about cleverness certainly don’t carry over to Tom. Tom, being male, is given the opportunity to go get an education, even though he doesn’t seem to desire it nearly as much as Maggie would. While Maggie longs to prove herself through her reading and innate academic prowess (telling Mr. Riley all that she knows about a particular book on page 61, so that he might “have a respect for her”), Tom could not seem to care less about scholarship. Instead, he “knew all about worms, and fish, and those things” (Eliot 83). Despite the fact that Maggie had more of a critical, classically academic mind and Tom’s thought processes were more technical, the family made Tom’s education their priority.
As Tom and Maggie grow older and become more aware of their places in society, Eliot begins to use their dialogues to clarify the differences between men and women at the time. One of the first instances of this is on page 79, where Tom says, “I’ve got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy.” She continues to subtly slip in mentions of inequity throughout her writing, as is demonstrated on page 361 in the quote, “Because you are a man, Tom, and have power, and can do something in the world,” and on page 432 with the line, “We don’t ask what a woman does--we ask who she belongs to” (Eliot). It’s interesting to note, here, how Eliot handles this subject material. The way that she writes about gender disparities is very subtle and matter-of-fact. She never has Maggie comment on how it is unfair; rather, the reader is left to gain a sense of the unfairness through their growing connection with Maggie. While her anger is never labeled, and may not even be fully manifested, it is bubbling discreetly under the surface of these remarks. This was an act of strategic genius on Eliot’s part; it allowed her to commentate on gender without making controversial statements. Instead, she was simply able to document the way that society operated, and the readers were led to make their own judgements and assumptions through the bonds that they felt with her well-developed characters. This gives the reader the impression that they came to these realizations of sexism on their own when, in reality, it was Eliot’s brilliant writing which led them right to those conclusions.
As they story wears on, Maggie’s circumstances and problems only begin to mirror those of George Eliot more and more. On page 372, Mr. Tulliver passes away, beginning not only a new segment of the book, but a new segment of life for both Tom and Maggie. After growing apart while at school, the two reunited in their grief; on page 372, Eliot writes, “‘Tom, forgive me--let us always love each other;’ and they clung and wept together.” Interestingly enough, Eliot’s father died when she was thirty years old, after she had been caring for him and living with him for most of her life (Haight). His death symbolized a new chapter in her life, as well, for it was only after his passing that she was able to move from, as Haight calls it, the “extreme provincialism” which her father kept her in. In this sense, as in so many others, Maggie’s experiences were drawn upon by Eliot’s.
Perhaps the most apparent parallel between Maggie Tulliver and George Eliot comes in society’s perceptions of their decisions. Maggie develops feelings for her cousin Lucy’s boyfriend, Stephen. The two nearly elope, yet Maggie backs out and returns home, where she is judged and shunned for her relationship (Eliot 488). In an eerily similar turn of events, Eliot fell in love with a married man by the name of George Henry Lewes, and when people found out, this caused her to be a “social outcast” (Hughes 3). Eliot likely used Maggie as an outlet to convey her own anger and pain. These personal statements gave way to broader societal ones, and were ultimately vital to the cultural significance which the novel would come to hold.
Eliot’s death, a peaceful one in her home, was not at all reminiscent of the death which she gave to Maggie. Maggie and Tom drown together in the final chapters of the book, in a tragic boat accident on the river (Eliot 517). Even Maggie’s death, one so untimely and so seemingly cruel, was meaningful. Earlier in the novel, there is a hint of foreshadowing to this which must not go unnoticed; on page 71, Eliot writes, “Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near--in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.” In her childhood, as represented in this passage, Maggie used water as a means of escape from the femininity forced upon her by society. It is no coincidence that later, she would drown in water, ridding herself of the judgement which had followed her all of her life. Furthermore, Maggie and Tom died side by side, despite all of the differences in their upbringings and their personalities. It is as if Eliot was making one final statement, that no matter how divisive our genders can be, they all ultimately lead us to the same demise; our shared humanity is the crux of our similarity, and is more defining of our existence than our sex could ever be.
Jose Angel Garcia Landa of the University of Zaragoza appropriately summarized the relationship between Maggie’s character and Eliot herself when he wrote, “Maggie Tulliver is the result of George Eliot’s work on the female stereotypes of her age as she experiences them in both life and literature” (49). Maggie’s life drew upon the experiences of Eliot’s in order to credibly tell a story of girlhood, womanhood, and their sacred blurring at that time period. Had Eliot not written with such personal anecdotes woven discreetly into Maggie’s character, she might not have laid the foundation upon which she could construct conversation about deeper issues. At its core, The Mill on the Floss is not about family, or loss, or love; all of these topics are simply stepping stones to sexism. The distinction between Maggie and Tom, made clear from the very start of the novel, was exemplary of injustices based on gender discrimination.
From her unruly hair to her outspoken spirit, Maggie Tulliver’s very existence was radical in the 19th century. She acted as a symbol of beautiful disgrace, paving the way for young girls to break the mold of traditional femininity and pursue paths of greater risk. Maggie was a mirror that reflected Eliot, and therefore, the real-life struggles faced by the females of the time. In her life, and in her death, there is inherent value; it is the sort of power that, like the flow of a river, snakes through time and place relentlessly, granting all who drink from it with vitality.
Works Cited
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Edited by Oliver Lovesey, Broadview Editions, 2007.
Haight, Gordon S. “George Eliot.” Encycolpedia Brittanica, 18 Nov. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Eliot/Major-works.
Hughes, Annika M. “Mary Ann Evans and George Eliot: One Woman.” Women in World History, http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/imow-Eliot.pdf.
Langda, Jose Angel Garcia. “The Chain of Semiosis: Semiotics, Marxism, and the Female Stereotypes in The Mill on the Floss.” Papers on Language and Literature, vol. 27, no. 1, 13 Sept. 2011.