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 205 2.12.17

- = Tulliver
+ = enviro 
* = reading/writing
o = femininity
= = materiality
-> = narrat 
[square] = labor/industry
[dot] = evolution

Theme tracking

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
• 122
• 149

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.'

• 114
• 145
• 146
• 148
• 175
• 181

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
• 119 Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest
• 122
• 125
• 130 Eton Grammar, Euclid
• 131
• 132 Delectus
• 136
• 137
• 139

Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her mathematical mortification; for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that there was an English Key at the end, which would make her very wise about Latin, at slight expense. She presently made up her mind to skip the rules in the Syntax - the examples became so absorbing. The mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown context, - like strange horns of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some far-off region - gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really interesting - the Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn: and she was proud because she found it interesting. The most fragmentary examples were her favourites. Mors omnibus est communis would have been jejune, only she liked to know the Latin; but the fortunate gentleman whom every one congratulated because he had a son 'endowed with such a position' afforded her a great deal of pleasure in conjecture, and she was quite lost in the 'thick grove impenetrable by no star,' when Tom called out, 'Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!' 'O, Tom, it's such a pretty book!' she said[.] 

• 154
• 160 Homer
• 172
• 184 Tulliver reads letter and collapses
• 203

femininity

• 12
• 13
• 17
• 19
• 23
• 26
• 32
• 34
• 36
• 38
• 41
• 42
• 50
• 52
• 55
• 70
• 81
• 89
• 132
• 141
• 174

materiality

• 13
• 18
• 21
• 27
• 41 Dodsons
• 53
• 56 "primeval strata of her wardrobe"
• 80
• 88
• 188 mrs t's "laid-up treasures"
• 198 disgrace and teapots

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.

• 112
• 113
• 121
• 123 tulliver/oedipus
• 130
• 131 Aristotle
• 143
• 151
• 154
• 157
• 160 metafictive
• 165

It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a 'public.'

• 183

The pride and obstinacy of millers and other insignificant people, whom you pass unnoticingly on the road every day, have their tragedy too; but it is of that unwept, hidden sort, that goes on from generation to generation and leaves no record -- such tragedy, perhaps, as lies in the conflicts of young souls, hungry for joy, under a lot made suddenly hard to them, under the dreariness of a home where the morning brings no promise with it, and where the unexpectant discontent of warn and disappointed parents weights on the children like a damp, thick air, in which all the functions of life are depressed; or such tragedy as lies in the slow or sudden death that finds only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to which tenacity of position is a law of life - they can never flourish again, after a single wrench: and there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a law of life - they can only sustain humiliation so long as htey can refuse to believe in it, and, in their own conception, predominate still.

• 185

labor/industrial spaces/economics

• 28
• 59
• 68
• 71
• 72
• 73 capital and enviro literally and metaphorically tied
• 78
• 91
• 92 economic change
• 145
• 147
• 158
• 177 Maggie telling Tom about the lawsuit failing
• 181
• 191
• 199
• 201
• 204

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
• 122
• 191
• 204