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    The Mill on the Floss
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    The Mill on the Floss
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    The Mill on the Floss
    Audiobook (abridged)7 hours

    The Mill on the Floss

    Written by George Eliot

    Narrated by Irene Sutcliffe

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

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    About this audiobook

    Penguin Classics presents George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, adapted for audio and now available as a digital download as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by the actress Irene Sutcliffe.

    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.

    Part of a series of vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives. Affordable, collectable, quality productions - perfect for on-the-go listening.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin UK Audio
    Release dateApr 26, 2012
    ISBN9780718198510
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot’s best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.

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    Reviews for The Mill on the Floss

    4/5

    37 ratings36 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I think it will take me a few days to process this novel. Eliot brilliantly made me feel, care and relate to the characters. The novel follows Maggie and her family the Tullivers through happiness, loss and redemption. I absolutely loved Maggie but her striving to goodness drove me crazy. As I said I need more time to wrap my mind around the ending which was so devestating to me.
    • 5/5
      I suspect between this novel and Middlemarch, George Eliot is becoming my favorite nineteenth-century novelist. I wish she were still alive so that I could write her fan letters.

      The Mill on the Floss is funny and moving and philosophical. Eliot does so many different things well; she's witty and detached, and then she writes a love scene that makes your knees go wobbly. Middlemarch struck me the same way - it's incredibly romantic, and then it does things with that romance, crazy thematic plot things, that sometimes make you feel like the author has punched you in the stomach.

      I think George Eliot and Joss Whedon would probably get along.

      The novel is also cool because it's sort of a novel about adultery without actually being about adultery. It feels very modern and unflinching, the more so because George Eliot actually spent much of her adult life in a happy but socially-isolating relationship out of wedlock, so she had perspective on The System.

      The last couple hundred pages are incredibly intense, perhaps the more so because I read them in one go on a very long train ride, most of which was spent on the edge of my (not very comfortable) seat. It's one of those novels whose ending is absolutely unguessable and yet feels vitally important; "Holy crap," I asked myself, "how is this going to end, and will I be able to live a happy and well-adjusted life after I finish it?"

      I'm still working on that happy and well-adjusted part. The ending... well, is it ever an ending. Words like "mythic" and "apocalyptic" do not give it justice. I'm still not sure how I feel about it - in some ways she gave me just the ending I didn't want, but she did it in such a way that I had to admire. Also, it is very, very intriguing and makes me want to write essays about it, which is usually a good thing.

      Great characters, great plot, great themes. A very well-rounded novel.
    • 4/5
      This is a beautifully written novel. Its got some journeyman flaws, its a little uneven and lumpy in a few spots, but on the whole its exceptionally well drawn, all the characters are wonderful and it has an unshakeable sense of place, of being rooted in all the complex interlinking minutiae that make up the ecology of a real landscape and a real society.

      So why four stars? Because eventually I just got fed up with watching people kick Maggie Tulliver around. If she'd ever once gotten even a little bit angry with any of the many mostly well meaning people who treat her like complete crap, if she'd ever even tried to fight back, even if she failed, well I'd be so on her side. But as it is, its like reading an exceptionally beautifully written Mr Bill show. Watch Sluggo and Mr Hand take away absolutely everything that makes Maggie's life worth having one by one by one, and stomp on her head in passing. Oh NOOOO Mr Bill!

      At some point, for me, it just becomes too melodramatic, too "may I have some more sir," and I end up just irritated with the character and the author. Get up and DO something woman! Stop letting everybody kick you around the landscape, what are you, a punching bag?

      YMMV*

      *Your mileage may vary.
    • 5/5
      I got this book out as i thought, oh, i better read a classic as i hadn't read one for a while. I loved it! It is about Maggie, a frustrated girl who feels there should be more to life than the path she feels is mapped out for her. Her mother is rather vacuous, concerned with reputation and her father is feckless. She has a strong relationship with her brother Tom. It is difficult to sum up the storyline succinctly but Maggie's father loses a legal battle over the ownership of the river which leads him to financial ruin, in the meantime Maggie develops a friendship with Philip. Her brother discovers their friendship and makes Maggie swear she will not see Philip any more as he is the son of the lawyer who won who sent their father into financial ruin. Their father dies and Maggie goes away to teach. Some time later she returns to visit her cousin Lucy and she meets her fiance Stephen, a friend of Philip and they become helplessly attracted to one another. Maggie takes a boat ride with him and is on the verge of running away with him when she resolves to return. After this, Maggie is considered a fallen woman, disowned by Tom. Stephen takes all the responsibility and she is forgiven by Lucy and Philip, however Tom continues to shun her until the fateful night that the river floods, Maggie rows to rescue Tom however the water is too powerful and they drown in each others arms. I became so immersed in this book and moved at the level of understanding and eventual forgiveness in the characters, also Maggies stoic acceptance that she must live her life with the burden of her actions weighing upon her is so sad. Reunited at last Tom and Maggie return to the river that dictated the course of their lives. Well written, deeply moving,a skilled and beautiful book. I had tears in my eyes at the end...
    • 5/5
      This book continues, sort of, the story started in Three Day Road. Xavier, the WWI soldier who came home missing a leg and with a dependence on morphine in Three Day Road, lived a long life and fathered at least 3 children, Antoine, Will and . One of the narrators of the book is his son Will and the other narrator is his granddaughter, Annie. Will's narration is from a hospital bed where he is in a coma although we don't know, until the very end, what caused it. Annie's story is told to Will in the hopes that the words will get through his coma.Will used to be a bush pilot until something happened to his wife and children when he gave up flying. The story about his family is a tragedy that Will never really got over. He drinks a lot and hunts and traps for a living. One day he runs afoul of Marius Netmaker, a drug pusher and all round bad guy. Marius' younger brother, Gus, and Will's niece, Suzanne, had run off south together. Suzanne is gorgeous and becomes a highly sought after model in Toronto and Montreal and New York City. Gus, it appears, is the southern connection for the Netmaker drug enterprise but suddenly he and Suzanne disappear. Annie goes to Toronto for a holiday with her friend Eva but ends up staying to look for Suzanne. She meets a mute Anishinabe, Gordon (also known as Painted Tongue), when she is beaten up by some white punks and Gordon saves her. He becomes her protector but not her lover as Annie travels in the path of Suzanne.Will and Annie share a lot of characteristics and when I think about it, Xavier had many of those characteristics as well. They are all impulsive and jump into situations without a lot of forethought. Xavier and Will and to a certain extent Annie developed dependencies on drugs and alcohol. However, on a positive note, they all care deeply about their friends and when they fall in love it is long-lasting. Of course, they all have a deep tie to the natural world. Will spends months living by himself and supplies his needs with fish and game. Annie teaches Gordon how to trap when they come back to Moose River. They acknowledge the gifts of the Creator and don't take more than the land can spare.I've grown quite attached to the Bird family. This past week the Globe and Mail had a question and answer session with Joseph Boyden and my question to him was whether he was going to fill in the events of the intervening years between Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce. This was his answer:Indeed, in the third instalment of the trilogy, I've figured out a way where I can both look back through history to the time when Xavier returns home from the war and even move forward a few years into the future in a way that I hope works well. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...Well, I'm waiting Joseph and I hope it won't be too long.
    • 5/5
      If you love period literature, moral struggle, and enchanting heroines, you will love this novel by George Eliot. The main characters in this book are loveable, human, heartrending, and ridiculously funny. Eliot wrote this story of what she considered common folks and the struggles they live with day in and out. She describes the small town social hierarchy, the pride, and the honor of the people in this community, through the experiences of Maggie, a dark haired beauty who is both intelligent and moral. Her life is filled with strife, oppression, and also with two men who love her beyond all else. She loves her older brother, Tom, since childhood and lives her life trying to obtain his approval despite multiple roadblocks. You have to read the book to see how it all turns out! Themes in this book: Love, honor, pride, moral struggle, loyalty, family ties. Wonderful novel....I laughed, I held my breath, and I got teary.....great blend to find in one novel!
    • 3/5
      Maggie Tulliver, who is age seven when the story opens, lives at Dorlcote Mill on the River Ripple at its junction with the River Floss near the village of St. Ogg’s in England, with her father, who owns the mill, mother, and older brother Tom. The novel spans a period of ten to fifteen years, beginning with Tom’s and Maggie’s childhood and including her father’s ongoing battles with a lawyer named Wakem, the Tullivers’ consequent bankruptcy resulting in the loss of the mill, and Mr. Tulliver’s untimely death. Tom has been in school with Philip Wakem, the lawyer’s hunchbacked, sensitive, and intellectual son, and Maggie has grown fond of Philip, seeing him secretly. To help repay his father’s debts, Tom leaves his schooling to enter a life of business, but in his hatred of the Wakems, he forbids Maggie’s seeing Philip, and she languishes in the impoverished Tulliver home, renouncing the world after reading Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. Some years later, Tom has been successful and able to restore the family’s former estate. Lucy has been away teaching school but returns to visit with her cousin, Lucy Deane. Her acquaintance with Philip is renewed and he still loves her, but Stephen Guest, a young socialite in St. Ogg's who is Lucy’s fiancé, is also attracted to her. Maggie enjoys the clandestine attentions of Stephen, but when he substitutes for the sick Philip in taking her on a boat ride and proposes that they stop in Mudport, and get married, she rejects him and makes her way back to St. Ogg's, where, rejected by her brother Tom and almost everyone else except her mother, Tom’s friend Bob Jakin and his family, in whose home she takes lodgings, and the minister, Dr. Kenn, who engages her as governess for his children, she lives for a brief period as an outcast, though she does reconcile with both Philip and Lucy. When the flood comes, Maggie sets out in one of Bob’s boats to rescue Tom, and together they head to rescue Lucy, but their boat capsizes and the two drown in an embrace, thus giving the book its Biblical subtitle, “In their death they were not divided.” I have always liked Eliot’s Silas Marner because it is, in the final analysis, a tale of redemption. However, The Mill on the Floss is not primarily a tale of redemption. In fact, the book is somewhat autobiographical in that it reflects the disgrace that the author herself felt while involved in a lengthy relationship with a married man, George Henry Lewes, although there are differences. No actual immorality is portrayed in the book, and towards the end, Maggie does make the right choice. There are a little bad language and some references to drinking alcohol, using tobacco, and dancing. Biblical quotations and allusions abound throughout, but I am not sure that the book represents a truly Biblical worldview. A certain degree of fatalistic determinism is at play throughout the novel—in fact, on one occasion Maggie says, “Our life is determined for us”—although Maggie’s ultimate choice not to marry Stephen demonstrates a final triumph of free will. Some latent feminism also occurs in that the cultural norms of her community seem to deny Maggie her intellectual and spiritual growth. Many of Eliot’s observations about the nature of people and society are interesting, with some of which you may agree and others you may not, but occasionally her social commentary goes on and on to the point of becoming boring. Like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in the right hands The Mill on the Floss could be used to teach a good lesson on not being judgmental, but due to the “titillating” nature of the story I would recommend that it not be inflicted on anyone under age eighteen.
    • 4/5
      This book is talk about Maggie who has an older brother Tom; the whole family was lived in a mill. Unfortunately, one day, the father lost the count case, so he need pay a lot of money, and sold out the mill to his enemy Mr. Wakem. But, Maggie fall in love with Philip who was Mr. Wakem’s son. When Maggie’s brother found they were dating, he wanted Maggie to make a choice to choose family or lover. Sadly, she had to choose the family. When her father was died, she was turned to St.Ogg’s and stay with her cousin Lucy. Then Lucy’s lover Stephen who fall in love with Maggie, and he managed to moved another place with Maggie, although Maggie did not want to. When Maggie’s brother known about this, he felt the whole family was shamed, and nobody believe Maggie. Actually, Maggie was still love Philip, so when she received the letter from Philip, she was cried. At this time. It was flood, she rowed the boat to save her brother, but when they want to save the other people, the boat was crashed by a large piece of wood. Both of they were died. The end of story is very impressed, although freedom is the stuff that Maggie always wanted, and she wanted to marry with Philip too. But she still chooses the family and her brother.
    • 2/5
      I liked the book okay until the end. I won't spoil it for anyone; however, once I finished the book I felt so let down! I hope other people had a better reaction to Eliot's version of realism.
    • 5/5
      Some people really dislike the prose of George Eliot, but I disagree. This was the first novel of hers which I read and I thoroughly enjoyed. The plot is entertaining and she has great character development. I also remember going to my professor and saying that I wanted to write about nature, religion and something else (probably romance) in this novel, and then realizing that there was no way that a roughly six page essay could encompass all of those topics. I really enjoyed watching how these characters relationships with others affected their emotional journeys throughout the book. A great read.
    • 3/5
      Some parts of it were pretty good actually, but the brother was a douche & the ending was a cop-out. Progressively got more boring.
    • 4/5
      I quite enjoyed this... until the ending. The terrible, terrible ending. Seriously, "And then Maggie woke up, and it was all a dream" would have been ten times better.I'm also left wondering whether Eliot, like Dickens, got paid by the word.
    • 1/5
      I am a little surprised by this book's high rating, as I consider myself well-read and well-educated, and therefore (supposedly) capable of discerning and appreciating fine literature. However, The Mill on the Floss was one of the most painful reading experiences of my life (the other being a textbook I had to read for one of my classes). It was tedious, overblown, vacuous...in my opinion, of course.
    • 4/5
      Spirited Maggie Tulliver grows up on a struggling mill by the riverside town of St. Ogg’s and struggles with her relationships with her family, her older brother Tom, a beloved friend who happens to be the son of her father’s enemy, and a charismatic but unattainable suitor. This is the first George Eliot book I’ve read and it won’t be my last, for I am blown away by Eliot’s remarkably, almost painfully, accurate insights into human nature and the social condition. Maggie is like a modern heroine caught between tensions of the old and new, a girl who doesn’t fit the mold of the ideal young woman and yet craves acceptance and praise from the men in her life. The writing is bold and flowing, the characters flawed yet endearing.There are many other more scholarly things I could say about this book (for we had an excellent discussion about it in class), but I would’ve loved it had I picked it up on my own. It’s got all the cleverness and emotional resonance of an Austen novel, and the intricacies of the Victorian realist genre. I have to admit I was thrown and angry at the way Eliot ended this novel, but until that point I was fully invested in the characters’ outcomes, and I can now simply chuckle at all the different ways I can academically interpret that infuriating ending. A must-read for Victorian lit!
    • 2/5
      Story of a family/girl's life. It drug on for far too long. Father loses mill after a lawsuit. Son and daughter have to leave school. Son has to support family. Father dies in disgrace. Daughter falls in love with cousins love. Girl disgraces family. No happy ending for any of the characters.
    • 5/5
      Maggie's story is tragic, and the ending left me in tears. She was a character that acted impulsively, and drew my sympathies. Her brother Tom may have been annoying and sometimes cruel, but he was her connection to her past ... who she was, and with her in the end. The end...no longer divided, Maggie and Tom will be forever immortalized by unconditional love, despite their dysfunction.
    • 4/5
      Ooh, what an abrupt ending! I hadn't read any George Eliot, to my shame, and found this on my bookshelf. I'm so glad I picked it up, I thoroughly enjoyed all her observations and explanations of character and actions - a really mature, inspiring piece of writing. And I laughed so often. I think my favourite passage is her take on destiny: "'Character' - says Novalis, in on eof his questionable aphorisms - 'character is destiny.' But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia and got through life with a reputation of sanity notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fair dughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in law."Eliot is a really generous writer. Tom is pretty reviled by some of the readers who have written reviews here, but I think that's unfair. Maggie's love can be pretty incomprehensible, towards Tom and more so towards Stephen Guest, who isn't drawn particularly clearly but doesn't seem to merit the devotion of either Maggie or Lucy. But Tom is drawn in great detail, and Bob's affection for him, Uncle Deane's respect for him and the aunts' frustration with hm together with his own pride and moodiness all make sense. How delightful that awful Aunt Glegg comes good at the end as well with regards to Maggie. And Philip's last letter to Maggie is a beautiful piece of sincerety, deep love and a tremendously powerful understanding of a strength of reasoning, introspection and thoughfulness that saves him (and everyone else) from his suicide.
    • 4/5
      The Mill on the Floss details the isolation and evntaul death of Maggie Tulliver - a courageous, intelligent and likeable heroine too good for the narrow society she's condemned by, and certainly too good for her censorious, half-witted brother.
    • 4/5
      Great book, one everyone should read.
    • 4/5
      When I first attempted to read this novel many, many years ago for an undergraduate class on British women writers of the nineteenth century, I got 126 pages into it (the bookmark was still there) and then abandoned it, fudging my way through the seminar. I maligned this book somewhat, declaring it to be dull, nowhere near as interesting as Middlemarch (assisted as I had been in reading that text by pleasant images of Rufus Sewell). In retrospect, I actually think I was too young for this book. This is not to say that the book is terribly adult but that I was not mature enough to appreciate the nuances.Perhaps what struck me most in this second, successful read is that Eliot appears to be using irony - bordering on sarcasm - quite heavily at times. Needless to say, I found this wonderful. Tom's obvious character flaws, for example, are portrayed as virtues, and Maggie's virtues as vices. I must admit, however, that Maggie Tulliver disappoints me somewhat. I do not necessarily feel it was entirely her lack of opportunity that leads to her misfortune but her adolescent ascetic phase. Furthermore, the unattractiveness of Stephen Guest as a character and her (to me) inexplicable attraction to him cemented this disappointment. All I could think was, "He better be gorgeous, sweetheart."The novel also captures something of the changing times. I recognised the fears and ambitions of the community of St Ogg's something very much like what we think and feel now in the face of globalisation, and that I had seen also in the finale to A.S. Byatt's Potter quartet. It confirms for me that globalisation is not modern, although its technology may be.
    • 2/5
      aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh! great struggle and a lot of naught. i found it wearing e'en though i did finish it. i'm not sure i'm cut out for some of the classics. like this and ethan frome.
    • 5/5
      What a pleasure this book was. Oh Maggie you're such an annoying but endearing thing why didn't you just marry the gorgeous Stephen, you had to let your silly morals get in the way and don't we love you for it in the end. I was captivated to see how it could ever end and would my longing for Maggie and Stephen to be together be satiated or not, you'll have to read it to find out.
    • 5/5
      My personal favourite of all Eliot's works. It seems to me to be one of the very few books of it's time which showed that there is true passion in sibling love. It has the sweetest taste of tragedy I have ever had.
    • 4/5
      What a pleasure it is to read the novels of George Eliot. The sheer intelligence of the author shines on every page. In this, her second novel following closely after Adam Bede, she draws on her own experience to create a world of characters surrounding her hero & heroine, Tom and Maggie Tulliver.The story develops at a leisurely pace with the first two books devoted to the childhood of Maggie and Tom. As Tom goes off to be tutored, Maggie must stay at home and their lives slowly diverge until in subsequent books, as their father's world disintegrates in debt, they are found on opposite sides with their filial love tested again and again. One of the most impressive aspects of the novel is the complexity of these characters as created by Eliot. Tom distinguishes himself at the trading firm of his Uncle Deane and matures into a confident and courageous young man, repaying the debts of his father. Yet, his character is flawed in both his inflexibility and his inability to appreciate the needs of his sister Maggie. Maggie, who is significantly more intelligent than Tom, and self-taught, has developed from a somewhat over-emotional young girl into a sort of Christian ascetic based on her reading of Thomas a Kempis. She is forbidden friendship with Philip Waken, the son of the lawyer who bought her father's mill, and is prevented from developing the potential that is central to her character. The denouement of the novel leads it down the path of the tragic side of life if not true tragedy, but the complexity of the characters and realism of the world in which they live continues to impress.
    • 5/5
      If you can find an introduction or timeline with "George Eliot"s life prior to reading this story, it will be all the more poignat. I am pretty sure she is writing her own story- the social context is totally amazing, and makes it all the more meaningful. Major themes surrounding the plight of women in the late 1800s, but also incredibly humourous. "This is a puzzling world, if you drive your wagons in a hurry you may light on an awkward corner!"
    • 4/5
      Very descriptive and verbose, but overall a good story. Similar to Hardy or Fielding in writing style. Distinct sense of time and unusual in its setting for the time period. Pastoral, but upper middle class- almost reminds me of the British TV show "Keeping up Appearances"- oddly enough.
    • 5/5
      This novel has the best characterisation of any novel I've ever read, every motivation rings true, and every act falls from motivation. Eliot seems to have a perfect understanding of why men and women act the way they do: of how they are trapped by the past into certain patterns of behaviour; patterns that seem wilful from the outside, yet seem fated and unavoidable from within. I enjoyed the book, unreservedly, for the first two-thirds, then, after the death of Mr Tulliver, the book became irritating. Maggie Tulliver became spiritual, then lovelorn, then melodramatic. Tom Tulliver became withdrawn and mean-spirited. This may have been exactly how they would have acted, but they began to depress and annoy me, and I was glad when they drowned.
    • 4/5
      Another GE novel that made me cry... although I found the ending a bit weak, it is grand literature as only Eliot can write.
    • 2/5
      While a "Classic," The Mill on the Floss is not up par. Dry and entirely too many pages for the story told.
    • 3/5
      From a technical point of view, I think that the writing is superb: the description are vivid (I particularly loved the description of Maggie as a little Medusa with her snakes shorn.) The book is a mixture of the earnest and the farcical, and at points is extremely funny. The structure is carefully built, with the different metaphors of the river reflecting the state of mind of the characters. I found the end very unsatisfying, I was close to the end of the book before I found Maggie sympathetic, and I thought it failed the chief standard of a novel: to be an involving narrative. I don't mind that the author speaks to the reader per se, but every time I got caught up in the narrative, it wasn't long before the story ground to a halt while Eliot delivered herself of a short essay. The nearly three pages asking the reader to think of villages on the Rhone and castles on the Rhine (neither of which I have ever seen), wore out my patience--it almost seemed like a joke. Both the critics that I read thought that modern readers were put off by the length of the book, but I can think of a lot of long modern novels. It's not so much the number of pages as the way they are filled. Maggie Tulliver is apparently a seriously disturbed child, surrounded by insensitive adults who certainly can't help her. I feel sorry for her, but I don't like her. Wanting to be loved isn't the same as being lovable. For most of the book, Maggie is pretty self-absorbed. I pity her for her unpleasant relatives, but that doesn't mean that I find her sympathetic by contrast. Maggie is destructively impulsive, probably hurting herself more than anyone else, but Eliot lost a great deal of my sympathy early on when Maggie allows her brother's rabbits to die of neglect. It is hard to understand how someone who is supposed to be devoted to him could have so completely forgotten his request to take care of them. The critics that I read pointed out that Maggie is always very sorry for what she does, but she is only sorry for how other people's annoyance will affect her. She never, until the end of the book, is remorseful at causing someone else pain. If she were, she would understand that her brother is reasonably angry, and not complain that he is cruel for not instantly forgiving her. Not to mention what the rabbits went through! Eliot's view of Maggie and her father is that they are as they are, they cannot help themselves, but everyone else is responsible for their own conduct and for accomodating the Tullivers. I find it hard to be sympathetic to them when Eliot was so scathing about everyone else. I am probably projecting 21st century standards back on a 19th century book, but Tulliver acts against the advice of his wife and goes bankrupt in a law suit, which is rather self-centered and bullying. Maggie (and I suppose Eliot) feel that he should not be blamed for this. Certainly there is no point at railing at a person who is nearly comatose with distress, but he is in fact seriously at fault. [added later: I am reminded a bit of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Both wives are presented in a very unflattering light as weak and trivial, but in fact they may be said to have a better grasp of reality than their more sympathetically portrayed but somewhat irresponsible spouses. One has to wonder what the authors were thinking in describing these women.] I found Maggie much more sympathetic in Book 6 and after, but it and her romantic problems seemed a little contrived. The change in her from Book 5 is only partially accounted for; a lot of it is obviously just a set up for the Dramatic Ending. I would like the book better if Eliot featured some intelligent resolution to Maggie's problems: she could have learned not to be so emotionally dependent upon her brother, she could have made another life for herself. The problems of her love life are indeed a dilemma and not easily solved, but the ending really seems like a cheat. I hope Eliot didn't mean this as encouragement for woman who found themselves at odds with social expectations. Even the reconciliation between Maggie and her brother makes me scoff. They had a big reconciliation scene earlier in the book and it didn't last, so this one doesn't seem meaningful. It is like the end of a television drama where decades of misunderstanding are permanently resolved in the last 60 seconds. This is certainly a piece of literary history, and there are some great examples of writing in it, but I don't think it has held up as a novel.