The Mill on the Floss
Ratings27
Average rating3.9
The Penguin English Library Edition of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie's fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.
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I hated everything about this book. If this wasn't part of my library's book club I would have quit it long ago. I didn't like any of the characters. I wanted Old Man Wakem to take everything from everyone.
The plot became more and more interesting...but the end of the story is so unexpected. That should make you like a novel more but in this case it just ruined everything. I didn't really know what to think or feel....
When you read a chapter-a-day on a book for three months, you tend to get fiercely attached to the characters, either positively or negatively. That's what happened to me with The Mill on the Floss.
I liked Maggie from page one. She is everything I love in a character.
Her brother? Her mother? Even her father? Not so much.
All of these people as well as her extended family members and her fellow townsfolk forced Maggie into a box that limited her in many ways. Maggie was judged from the very start by her coloring and her dislike of doing the things her mother and others expected from girls and women. Her many strong assets were ignored and she wasn't allowed to develop them in ways that would benefit her or the world.
What a tragedy.
And I quickly grew to wish that Maggie would find a way to find happiness in life without relying on the opinion of her brother. Of course, that wasn't going to happen. Again, a tragedy.
And, worse, her brother blocked all of her ways of finding happiness.
How small others made Maggie.
Reading this book has made me sad for the women who have come before me and who were unable to be allowed to pursue their dreams.
