Submitted by: M.

Mohsin
Submitted to: Sir Aftab Akram
Section: 4B Evening
The Mill on The Floss By: George Elliot
Introduction

 George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, one of the leading English novelists
of the 19th century.
 George Eliot was born on 22 November 1819 in rural Warwickshire.
 In 1850, Eliot began contributing to the 'Westminster Review', a leading journal for
philosophical radicals, and later became its editor.
 In 1856, she began 'Scenes of Clerical Life', stories about the people of her native
Warwickshire, which were published in 'Blackwood's Magazine'.
 Her novels include  'Adam Bede‘ (1859) 'The Mill on the Floss' (1860), 'Silas Marner'
(1861), 'Romola' (1863), 'Middlemarch' (1872) and 'Daniel Deronda' (1876).
Thematic Dimensions Of The Novel

 Loss of Innocence
 Renunciation and Penance
 Communal versus Individual interests
 Nostalgia
 Practical knowledge versus Bookish knowledge
 Gender Disparity
Loss of Innocence

 Loss of innocence is a significant theme in The Mill on the Floss. From the earliest
starting point of the novel, the narrator clarifies that there is a solid boundary between
living in adolescence, as Maggie and Tom are doing, and thinking back on it, as she is
doing
 “Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived
sorrow” or “Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who
have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships”
 “The thorny wilderness,” as “the golden gates of their childhood had forever closed
behind them” and they will “never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered
cares”
Renunciation And Penance

 Renunciation and penance are at the core of the significant activities of Maggie and Tom's
lives. After his dad's misfortunes, Tom devotes his life to reimbursing his dad's
obligations.
 Maggie's renunciation is an otherworldly endeavor to discover harmony in a world ill-
suited to her. Maggie finds the heaviness of the “conflict between inward impulse and
outward fact, which is the lot of every imaginative and passionate nature” too much
to bear, and so “renunciation seemed to her the entrance into that satisfaction which
she had so long been craving in vain”
 Since her penance has no dynamic domain where to act, instead of Tom's, she thinks that
it’s a lot harder to hold fast to, but she accepts renunciation is directly for the good of its
own
Communal versus Individual Interests

 The subject of mutual versus individual interests, which could likewise be called obligation
versus desire, is of focal significance to The Mill on the Floss, and is basically what drives the
plot.
 Maggie, with her surprising looks, her scholarly ability, her driving interest, and her
enthusiastic wants, doesn't normally fit into the network of St. Ogg's by any stretch of the
imagination.
 Her family constantly fears what will happen to her, she is frequently misjudged and never
paid attention to, and she is absolutely never given the applause for her cunning that she so
wants.
 To satisfy her individual wants, at that point, is to break out of any job the community is
eager to offer her, thus to conflict with it.
Nostalgia

 Tom and Maggie are cut off from their childhood by their loss of innocence caused by
their father’s troubles, but that does not mean the ties created in their childhood are
severed.
 The narrator repeatedly makes it clear that “old inferior things” always have a special
meaning when you grow up with them, and almost all of her passages describing the mill
and the surrounding area are riddled with nostalgic musings.
 “Striving after something better and better in our surroundings”. The “deep
immovable roots”
 The nostalgic frame for the past makes the loss of innocence all the more emotional, for
the present can never be as good as the nostalgic past, since even the reality of the past
was not as good as one remembers.
Practical knowledge versus Bookish knowledge

 The Mill on the Floss, particularly in the primary portion of the novel, is very worried
about education and kinds of information. A great part of the early sections are dedicated
to spreading out the contrasts among Tom's and Maggie's methods of knowledge.
 Tom's information is down to earth: "He thoroughly understood worms, and fish, and
those things; and what feathered creatures were insidious, and how latches opened, and
what direction the handles of the entryways were to be lifted." This information is
substantial and characteristic—it acquires Tom closer relationship to his general
surroundings.
 On the other hand, Maggie's information is marginally progressively confounded.
Different characters allude to it as "uncanny," and her creative mind and love of books are
frequently delineated as a route for her to get away from her general surroundings or to
transcend it—"The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt."