University of Karachi:

 
Name: Shoaib Akram
Department: English M.A previous
Seat No: EP21591034
Assignment: Fiction
Date: August 11, 2021
Assignment No: 01
Submitted to: Sir Babur Khan Suri
Course No: 541

Imagine an alternate ending where Tom has survived while

Maggie is dead…

Introduction:

George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss concludes with an ending that

could largely be labeled unsatisfying to most readers. Very rarely is a
reader content when the novel’s two main characters are suddenly and
abruptly swept away and drowned by a flood that comes out of
nowhere. However, when considering the grand pattern of the novel,
it can be argued that Tom’s and Maggie’s demise actually provides
resolution to their relationship as well as to their character arcs. And
though the reader is given little preparation for the ending, this falls in
line with the realist nature of the novel.

The ending of this book is pretty infamous, which means it’s famous
in a bad way. The two main characters, Tom and Maggie, drown
during a flood, which is about as depressing as you can get. To top off
all this death and woe, the epilogue is really vague and gives us
practically no details at all about how things end up for all the other
characters. This ending is frustrating in a lot of ways. 
The greatest conflict one might have with the ending is the lack of
preparation the reader is given. Perhaps the most preparation we are
given is through Maggie’s internal conflict with life right before the
floodwaters come. “But how long it will be before death comes!…
Am I to struggle and fall and repent again? Has life other trials for me
still?” (511). One might suggest that Eliot ironically grants Maggie’s
wish. But it is hard to argue, other than for Maggie’s consistent
sorrowful tones, that the reader is prepared for the death of such
young characters.

Ending through Tom’s perspective:

Highlighting the very first chapter, where Mrs. Tulliver gripes that
Maggie is probably going to fall in the river and drown one day. We
can reshape the ending before where Tom sees Maggie coming to
rescue him through flood waters;
“I must do something to get through the flood waters, I need to find
Maggie and make her understand that she cannot run away with some
man just like that. I have done so much for this family and the
reputation and respect, I won’t let Maggie ruin it with her childish and
irresponsible attitude. It was first Philip and now she is, wait is that
her?”
Tom sees Maggie sailing through the waters, towards him. “What is
she doing, why does she has to be so naive always” . All lost in his
thoughts when Maggie called him that she is here to save him and get
home and just like that she was hit with a tree flowing through the
waters drowning Maggie away.

In Book Five, Chapter Five, Tom and Maggie have a great dispute
over Maggie’s relationship with Philip that largely highlights their
differing emotions and opinions highly influenced by their placement
in society based on their gender. Yet this book ends with their
reconciliation after their father passes away, “and they clung and wept
together” (372 Broadview Version). In Book Seven, the ending of the
novel perfectly replicates this pattern in their relationship. They are
divided by Tom’s rejection of Maggie after the incident with Stephen,
“I wash my hands of you for ever. You don’t belong to me” (483) in
the first chapter of Book Seven.
Here, it would have been much appreciated if Tom lived because Tom
Tulliver got a pretty raw deal. He had to go work a crummy job at
sixteen, after his dad bankrupted the family. His sister is a bit of an
emotional train-wreck. And he drowns in a freak flash flood. Not to
mention, he pretty much has no friends at all. In fact, most people
don’t like Tom. But Tom isn’t an antagonist. In fact, he is arguably a
protagonist, along with his sister Maggie, to whom he is bound for
better or worse. Tom may not be popular, but that doesn’t mean he
isn’t sympathetic.
Maggie also accuses Tom of lacking in pity on more than one
occasion. In fact, Tom seems to be lacking in a lot of basic human
emotions. And, as a result, he confuses people. On paper, he’s
everything he ought to be: hard-working, ambitious, responsible,
dutiful to his family. But he’s missing something vital that Maggie
seems to have in spades: namely, passion and imagination.
If Maggie would have died alone, there could be a whole new and a
more justified ending to the novel. Tom, repenting on Maggie’s death
after he sees her coming just to save him could have been a better
ending. While most people, and probably a lot of readers, want to
smack Tom at some point, the narrative goes out of its way to help us
better understand Tom. He really is just as tragic and as sympathetic
as the more obvious candidate for protagonist, Maggie. Both Tullivers
tend to give themselves self-inflicted wounds, and both have
personalities that cause a great deal of trouble. If Maggie has the
overwrought, passionate suffering pegged down, then Tom has the
market cornered on a much more quiet kind of suffering. Tom himself
rather inadvertently sums this up:

"I want to have plenty of work. There’s nothing else I care about
much."
Circumstances are never in Tom’s favour and the real tragedy is that
his personality just makes matters worse: One day was like another,
and Tom’s interest in life, driven back and crushed on every other
side, was concentrating itself into the one channel of ambitious
resistance to misfortune. The peculiarities of his father and mother
were very irksome to him now they were laid bare... for Tom had very
clear prosaic eyes not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or
imagination. 

The key here is that there is something sad about Tom. He could have
been given a better ending. Tom’s death alongside Maggie is a bit of a
puzzle. Maggie seemed destined to die, her long-term suffering
appears to be pushing her towards a tragic end. The fact that Tom’s
fate is ultimately linked to Maggie’s much more passionate suffering
is something Tom, who is always decisive, would probably hate.

 It can still be sensed that the ending has a secret to tell between the
siblings and their real feelings for each other. The ending seems the
only truth about the story that needs to be a lie. To make the twist of
the pairing of a brother and sister to be interesting. Maggie chose to
go after Tom and rescue him. This might rankle some people right off
the bat, because there is a tendency to want people to "deserve" the
love and devotion that they get, and Tom doesn't fit that bill. There is
also a tendency to discount devotion to one's childhood family
because now it is considered to simply be a stage that one passes
through in life to be outgrown when one is an adult. These reasons
might be why such an ending is difficult for modern readers.

As for why Eliot may have been amenable to such an ending, it might
be due to the fact that The Mill on the Floss is considered to be her
most autobiographical book. We know that she had a falling out with
her own brother, whom she considered herself close to, and I think it
might be a common fantasy, if there is a rift, to believe that you could
do something heroic in order to show your loved one how much you
care for them and to heal the rift.