Introduction & Overview of The Mill on the Floss

This Study Guide consists of approximately 108 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Mill on the Floss.
Study Guide

Introduction & Overview of The Mill on the Floss

This Study Guide consists of approximately 108 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Mill on the Floss.
This section contains 231 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Mill on the Floss Study Guide

The Mill on the Floss Summary & Study Guide Description

The Mill on the Floss Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Bibliography and a Free Quiz on The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.

The Mill on the Floss, published in 1860, is based partially on Eliot's own experiences with her family and her brother Isaac, who was three years older than Eliot. Eliot's father, like Mr. Tulliver in the novel, was a businessman who had married a woman from a higher social class, whose sisters were rich, ultra-respectable, and self-satisfied; these maternal aunts provided the character models for the aunts in the novel. Like Maggie, Eliot was disorderly and energetic and did not fit traditional models of feminine beauty or behavior, causing her family a great deal of consternation.

By the time Eliot published The Mill on the Floss, she had gained considerable notoriety as an "immoral woman" because she was living with the writer George Henry Lewes, who was married, though separated from his wife. Social disapproval of her actions spilled over into commentary on the novel, and it was scathingly criticized because it did not present a clear drama of right and wrong. Perhaps the most offended reader was Eliot's brother Isaac, who was very close to her in childhood but who had become estranged from her when he found out about her life with Lewes; he communicated with her only through his lawyer. In the book, Eliot drew on her own experiences with a once-beloved but rigid and controlling brother to depict the relationship between Maggie and her brother Tom.

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This section contains 231 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy The Mill on the Floss Study Guide
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The Mill on the Floss from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.