The Mill on the Floss (Routledge English Texts) - Softcover

Eliot, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041501316X ISBN 13: 9780415013161

Publisher: Routledge, 1991

Synopsis

In "The Mill on the Floss" George Eliot created her most passionate heroine - Maggie Tulliver. From childhood to "fallen" woman, the novel traces the history of its intelligent, vibrant and sensual heroine, showing ways in which she is both formed and yet thwarted and constrained by the small-minded provincial society in which she is reared. Through the detailed depiction of Maggie's childhood life and subsequent agonized relations with her beloved brother Tom, George Eliot offers an analysis of the conflicting demands and internalised contradictions experienced by middle-class women in Victorian culture. The main focus of Sally Shuttleworth's critical commentary rests on George Eliot's analysis of the social construction of gender in the novel, viewed in the light of her own ambivalent responses to the Victorian woman question. Shuttleworth unveils the imaginative wish-fulfilment which has fuelled much of the previous criticism of the novel, and points to the ways in which, both thematically and structurally, "The Mill on the Floss" challenges the implicit assumptions of realism upon which these criticisms have been based. This book should be of interest to students of English literature at all levels.

About this title

Review

with each volume having an introduction by an acknowledged expert, and exhaustive notes, the World's Classics are surely the most desirable series and, all-round, the best value for money (Oxford Times)

From the Back Cover

Rebellious and affectionate, Maggie Tulliver is always in trouble. Recalling her own experiences as a girl, George Eliot describes Maggie's turbulent childhood with a sympathetic engagement that makes the early chapters of The Mill on the Floss among the most immediately attractive she ever wrote. As Maggie approaches adulthood, her spirited temperament brings her into conflict with her family, her community, and her much-loved brother Tom. Still more painfully, she finds her own nature divided between the claims of moral responsibility and her passionate hunger for self-fulfillment. George Eliot's searching exploration of Maggie's complex dilemma has made this one of the most enduringly popular of her works.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041501316X
• ISBN 13: 9780415013161
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Shuttleworth Sally