What I'm Reading #7: The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot Gets a Review All Her Own

Books shape us. They give us diverse perspectives. They show us other worlds. They challenge us. Theology brings us deeper into understanding God. Philosophy forces us to think clearly and with precision. The great literary works of the world are sublime aesthetic achievements. And the time to read such books is short. I recently calculated how many books I could possibly read in the rest of my life and the answer was just shy of 3,100. In some ways, that’s a lot of books. In others, it’s not so many. I want to make the most of reading them and that’s why I’m writing these posts. So I can reflect on what challenges me and explore how these disparate types of books overlap in surprising ways—and what Christianity has to say in response.

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Spoilers below.

The image of a mill on a picturesque river seems like a setting for a romantic story, but I knew at once that this novel would not be a happy one. The emotional and intellectual composition of the characters drives them inextricably towards heartache. So much of that is wrapped up in Maggie. Maggie is brilliant. Maggie is beautiful. Maggie is frustrating. Her internal life is incongruent with the world around her.

Maggie’s relationship with her rich, extended family is instructive. They have a particular set of expectations for family members and a strong sense of what proper behavior ought to be. Yet, Maggie doesn’t much go for that.

Maggie suddenly started up and stood in front of them, her eyes flashing like the eyes of a young lioness. Why do you come, then,' she burst out, 'talking, and interfering with us and scolding us, if you don't mean to do anything to help my poor mother - your own sister - if you've no feeling for her when she's in trouble…Keep away from us then, and don't come to find fault with my father. He was better than any of you - he was kind - he would have helped you had you been in trouble. Tom and I don't ever want to have any of your money, if you won't help my mother. We'd rather not have it! we'll do without you!

In her mind, the right thing was to help, not to scold. Countless times, she acts in ways that flummox and irritate the Aunts and the Uncles, and to some extent, her own mother. Her moral revolt is made known immediately and she feels it intensely. If social convention is at variance with her internal conscience, she follows her conscience. Yet, this is not how she always proceeds.

If that same conscience constricts her great feelings, she regularly sides with her feelings. She finds herself in a great conundrum near the end of the novel.

He is not coming,' said Stephen, in a low tone, 'I am going in the boat.' 'O, we can't go,' said Maggie, sinking into her chair again. Lucy did not expect - she would be hurt. Why is not Philip come?' 'He is not well - he asked me to come instead.' 'Lucy is gone to Lindum,' said Maggie, taking off her bonnet, with hurried, trembling fingers. 'We must not go.' 'Very well,' said Stephen, dreamily, looking at her, as he rested his arm on the back of his chair. Then we'll stay here.'... ‘Let us go’ Stephen murmured, entreatingly, rising, and taking her hand to raise her too… And they went.

Maggie knows better. She knows she should not do this. It is a betrayal of Lucy, the cousin who has loved her well and Phillip, the man who has loved her, and whom she promised to marry. The incongruence between her own morals and desires divides her from the people closest to her.

This brings us to Tom Tulliver, Maggie’s brother. Tom is a product of the world around him, shaped by it and constrained by it. Whereas Maggie could not bear the criticism and judgment of her extended family, Tom’s response is to do what was expected of him. “I could work and pay that every year,” said Tom, promptly. ‘I’d do anything to save my mother from parting with her things.’ This contrast is telling and it shows the inevitable divide that has begun between them and will only grow. His desire is to meet and exceed the expectations of his family and social community.

And when Maggie follows her own feelings and morals into a place that leaves her bereft of familial love and social approval, Tom sides with society.

What will keep you?' said Tom, with cruel bitterness. Not religion - not your natural feelings of gratitude and honour. And he - he would deserve to be shot, if it were not - But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! I have had feelings to struggle with - but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you have had; but I have found my comfort in doing my duty. But I will sanction no such character as yours: the world shall know that I feel the difference between right and wrong.

He judges her, harshly, as he does in smaller ways throughout the novel. Lamentably, it is not completely without cause. Maggie has betrayed her friend, she has deceived people, she has let her feelings trump her own moral sense, even if she turns back from the worst thing she could have done. Tom’s response, while inexcusable, is completely consistent with the moral world he lived in. They are both trapped by that world, yet Maggie is far more trapped than Tom.

Maggie is trapped by a complete lack of educational opportunities. She is trapped by the prejudices and conflicts of her own father, who is the only person who offers her unconditional love. She’s trapped by the social pressures of her town, by economic changes, to the socioeconomic class she belongs to (and falls out of). She’s trapped by a mother who does not understand her and does not share her intellectual gifts. So much of her world is determined by external factors. Eliot may not be a hard determinist, but she at least claims that our individual ability to pursue our own ends has a hard constraint in the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Maggie is frustrating because of her own poor choices, driven by her own moralism and emotionalism. She knows better, and as readers you want better for her. And then I remember she’s 19. She’s 19 with no true guidance. She’s in need of a mentor, of discipleship, but the only form of that comes too little too late.

The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair: most of us at some moment in our young lives, would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble upwards into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without such aid, as Maggie did.

Maggie meets such a person in Dr. Kenn, the minister of the town. She goes to him for help and he tries to give it, until the rumors about his naivety–or worse–towards Maggie lead him to realize that all he can do is set her up with a job in another place. It’s yet another tragedy that Maggie does not find a real pastor until too late.

All of which leads to what Maggie desires most. Eliot describes it as Maggie’s desperate desire to be loved, most especially by Tom, but what she is most rapacious for is grace. She goes to Tom in repentance and receives harshness. She even judges herself most harshly after her half-hearted failure with Stephen. She searches high and low for forgiveness for the very things she judges herself for, but she keeps looking for absolution from other people. And other people don’t deliver the grace she’s hungry for. She’s weary and weighed down with the crushing expectations of her community, her family, and herself.

There is rest to be found, rest Eliot even knew about. Come to me those of you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Jesus offers us freedom from condemnation. Peace that surpasses all understanding and guards our hearts and minds in Christ can be ours. Maggie’s conscience condemned her, but the blood of Christ purifies our consciences from dead works. Maggie wanted so badly to be righteous, but that righteousness could only be received from the Messiah. No one directed her that way. Instead, Maggie was pushed towards religion without grace, both by her internal conflicts and her external circumstances. The novel fills the reader with a relentless sense of mild dread and hopelessness because of the soft determinism of the world the characters inhabit. There’s no one calling Maggie to her truest need.

The book ends in yet more sadness as she perishes with her brother. She gives her life to try and save him and so he finally sees her as his loving sister. They are reunited in death beneath the waters of the picturesque river that set the course of their lives. But there was another way out, in Christ. I wish Maggie and her author found it.

*I heartily recommend this book, in case the 1500 words above didn’t make that clear.

**Thanks to ChatGPT for ruthlessly telling me where my structure, logic, and arguments were poor. No composition was done by AI.