The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Pub. 1860. Ed. Gordon Haight and Juliette Atkinson. Oxford: World Classics, 2015.

General Notes

• Set 1820s -- post napoleonic but pre 1832 reform act
• 10: figurative language is puzzling
• 12, 19, 30, 42, 80 descent/inheritance of traits

   * 37, 44, 82 speciation
   * 53 Gradations in civilization
   * 54 kin vs others
   * 57 Breeding/mixing blood
   * 68 deformity in the person of Philip Wakem
   * Persistent comparison of the children to animals of course because Darwin had broken down that barrier
   * Eliot read Origin while writing this

• 13 foreshadowing
• 15, 328 hotspur Shakespeare

   * 357 Sir Andrew
   * 464 pocket Shakespeare 

• 17-18 reading Defoe
• 24 metafictional/generic
• 27: Maggie's fetish
• 32 unmodifiable characters
• 37 dignified alienation, species
• 51-2 the Dodsons' retrograde gentility in the person of mrs Glegg
• 53 how heavily they expect Tulliver to fail by discussing what would happen to Glwgg's money
• 66 historical difference in religiosity
• 106 the gypsy adventure is through Maggie's psychological geography as well
• 160 metafictive
• 252 again metafictive, obscure vitality, sordid, prosaic --> realism
• Worldliness without side-dishes reminds me of bronte's lentils in Shirley
• 253 there is nothing petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations
• 267 thomas a kempis
• 280 quite wise
• 371 character is destiny - novalis (but later hardy in Mayor too)
• 382 renunciation again
• 442 Maggie reckoning with Stephen

Theme tracking

Pick up at 111 2.5.17

Important plot events

• Maggie's fetish?
• 60-63 Maggie's haircut

Tulliver and "puzzling" language (& other interesting uses of figurative/imaginative language)

• 10
• 15
• 19
• 22
• 29
• 33
• 40
• 66
• 72
• 80
• 88

Environment

• 11 river
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 27
• 31
• 38 round pool
• 39 rivers
• 47
• 73 capital and enviro literally and metaphorically tied
• 74
• 83
• 99 dunlow common -> gypsies
• 109

It is one of  those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants: a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hill-side, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town 'familiar with forgotten years.'

Reading/writing

• 11
• 15-17 Maggie showing off to Mr Riley
• 19
• 21
• 22
• 27
• 28
• 29
• 33
• 38
• 68
• 76
• 88
• 102-3 teaching the gypsies
• 105

Femininity

• 12
• 13
• 17
• 19
• 23
• 26
• 32
• 34
• 36
• 38
• 41
• 42
• 50
• 52
• 55
• 70
• 81
• 89

Materiality

• 13
• 18
• 21
• 27
• 41 Dodsons
• 53
• 56 "primeval strata of her wardrobe"
• 80
• 88

Narratorial intervention

• 14
• 19
• 24 metafictive
• 25
• 31
• 35
• 37

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behaviour to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society. Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals[.]

• 39
• 43
• 44
• 46
• 50
• 53
• 56
• 59
• 61
• 62
• 66
• 71
• 72
• 74
• 80
• 95
• 96
• 101
• 106
• 109

In order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we must enter the town of St Ogg's - that venerable town with the red-fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces, which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with through the medium of the best classic pastorals.

Labor/industrial spaces/economics

• 28
• 59
• 68
• 71
• 72
• 73 capital and enviro literally and metaphorically tied
• 78
• 91
• 92 economic change

Evolution/inheritance/Darwinian

• 12, 19, 30, 42, 80 descent/inheritance of traits
• 37, 44, 82 speciation
• 53 Gradations in civilization
• 54 kin vs others
• 57 Breeding/mixing blood
• 68 deformity in the person of Philip Wakem
• Persistent comparison of the children to animals of course because Darwin had broken down that barrier
• Eliot read Origin while writing this