The Mill on the Floss

From the author of MIDDLEMARCH and SILAS MARNER, a story of frustrated intelligence and longing, featuring the intelligent Maggie, who yearns to be loved, and her brother Tom, who is forced to study. When Maggie is cast out by Tom, she is ostracized by society, and must face the consequences of renunciation.

---

'But it's bad - it's bad,' Mr Tulliver added - 'a woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt.' 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 Tulliver 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-fulfilment. George Eliot's searching exploration of Maggie's complex dilemma has made this one of the most enduringly popular of her works. This edition offers the definitive Clarendon text with a new introduction that gives an account of the book's place in Eliot's life and the intellectual context of the time, as well as providing close textual analysis.