DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Title

The Thirty-nine George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2010- The Mill on the Floss and the Difficulties of Relationships

Authors

Rosemary Ashton

Date of this Version

2011

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 42 (2011)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

By late 1859, when she had almost finished writing The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot was still unsure of its final title. The working title was 'Sister Maggie', which was particularly appropriate to the first two thirds of the novel, where interest is concentrated on the pleasures and pains of the childhood relationship between Tom and Maggie Tulliver. But in the last third of the book, attention had turned to the romantic relationship between Maggie and Stephen Guest, itself intruding into Maggie's near-engagement to Philip Wakem, with Tom kept in the background until the death of brother and sister in the great flood which forms the novel's climax.

George Eliot's life partner G. H. Lewes suggested 'The House of Tulliver, or, Life on the Floss' as a possible title, drawing attention to the tragic aspect of all the family relationships within the novel, not only that between Tom and Maggie, but also the unfortunate family squabbles between their father the hasty miller - who dies overwhelmed by grief at the loss of his mill - and his wife's relations, the redoubtable Dodson sisters. Lewes's suggestion, with its echo of the Greek story of the never-ending curse on succeeding generations in the House of Atreus, is true to the vein of allusion to Greek tragedy that runs through the narration of the novel. It was decided finally in January 1860, only a couple of months before publication, that the more neutral, descriptive title 'The Mill on the Floss' was the best one; George Eliot's publisher, John Blackwood, suggested it.

By choosing this title, George Eliot avoided spelling out which of the many relationships in the novel should be supposed to be the most significant, though it is clear from reading it that the brother-sister one predominates. However, all the relationships are important, and all are difficult; the novel explores in precise detail the whys and wherefores of human interaction among its characters. All George Eliot's novels do this, of course, but The Mill on the Floss stands out from the others both in terms of the ultimate tragedy of the relationships (it is her only professedly tragic novel) and in its closeness to the facts of her own life. This lecture will concentrate on these two aspects of the novel: the tragedy of its chief relationships, and the events in George Eliot's life which inform it.