Step inside The Mill on the Floss

The film without the cuts. And the book itself.

Home is the place that binds, wounds, and calls you back.

9:41

The Cast

Maggie Tulliver

Main · Tulliver family

A brilliant, hungry-hearted girl keeps reaching for love in a world that calls her intensity a fault.

Locations

Dorlcote Mill

mill and family home

The mill wheel throws bright water beside a house older than the children who love it.

Passage

A remembered childhood calm carries the ache of knowing it cannot last.

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The Author’s Pen

Leaving the Bridge

Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too; she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge....

Reading

The narrator has been standing here as if physically present, arms resting on the bridge, watching a scene that turns out to be memory. This is the opening of the book, and the little girl in the beaver bonnet is Maggie Tulliver, whose story we are about to enter. The narrator speaks of her as someone still out there in the cold, needing to be called inside to the fire, as though the past were a place you could walk back into and worry over. That warmth pulling the child indoors is also what pulls the storyteller out of reverie and back to the present.

World Index

The Plot

Childhood at Dorlcote MillThe Tulliver DownfallMaggie and PhilipStephen and the DriftSt Ogg's Condemns MaggieThe Flood

The Cast

Maggie TulliverTom TulliverMr TulliverPhilip WakemStephen GuestLucy DeaneMrs TulliverMr WakemMrs GleggBob JakinMrs PulletMrs DeaneMr DeaneReverend StellingMrs StellingMr RileyKeziaMr GleggMr PulletMrs MossMr Moss

Locations

Bob Jakin’s Riverside HouseDorlcote MillGarum FirsKing’s Lorton / Reverend Stelling’sPark HouseSt Ogg’sThe Floss RiverThe Red DeepsThe RippleThe Round Pool

Objects of Note

Boats and OarsBob Jakin’s Packman GoodsBooksBusiness Papers and LedgersHousehold Goods, Linen, and FurnitureLegal PapersMaggie’s HairPhilip’s Drawings and Artistic MaterialsThe Mill PropertyTom’s Fishing Gear

Core Concepts

A gifted girl vs. a constricting worldDesire vs. dutyHome and memory vs. irreparable lossMercy beyond respectabilityPride, debt, and restorationSibling love vs. moral judgmentSocial judgment and female reputationThe Floss as memory and fate

The Author's Pen

Renunciation as SatisfactionMaggie Returns to the Red DeepsNo Time for ReveriesNo Home With MeToo Cute For A WomanThe Dodson SpiritMaggie's New ExperiencePublic Opinion and ResultsThe Devil in Wicked MenMaggie’s Unanswered QuestionTom Judges PhilipWe’d Rather Do Without YouTom Obeys His FatherThe Cross EverywhereStupefaction Is Not ResignationMaggie at Bob Jakin’s DoorPhilip’s Mute ConfessionLucy Comforts MaggieA Line All to HerselfTom Called Her MagsiePhilip Sees MaggieThe Tin Box SavingsTom Awaits the WorstThe Flood Under the DoorGone Down In An EmbraceThe Tomb of Tom and MaggieNobody Kisses MeThe Pocket Knife ProofA Mutual GlanceMaggie Cropped Her HairWakem and Dorlcote MillThe Bible OathTheir Father’s Empty PlacePhilip's Painful SuspicionSunshine on Empty PlacesThe Morrows Old StruggleThe Irrevocable Wrong

Plot point 01

Childhood at Dorlcote Mill

Clever, passionate Maggie Tulliver adores her brother Tom, whose love she can never quite hold on the banks of the Floss.

Objects of Note

Books

Maggie wants a life of the mind that her family and her town refuse to allow her.

The Cast

Tom Tulliver

Main · Tulliver family

Tom loves with the force of duty and wounds with the force of judgment.

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The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot

The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.

One of 127 classics in the Literah library

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