mill on the floss

Question 1

what are some notable features of the opening passage? (grammar, tense. type of narration)

Answer 1

• first sentence is incomplete grammatically, like the memory itself and the description it floats off into nothingness
• use of present ‘now’: implies that action is unfolding whilst this is being said- this is unusual for narration
• oscillation between 1st person narration and omniscient

Question 2

what are the ellipises used for in the opening paragraph?

Answer 2

-they provide Elito with a means of transitioning between a dream world and a real world.

Question 3

what does Anne Toner suggest the function of ellipses are

Answer 3

• present the difficulties of speech and the obscurities in characters thoughts
• they reach a close realisation of human interiority as they can verbalise an internal state

Question 4

what can the opening scene be seen as being?

Answer 4

• an analogy for reading a novel
• the narrator is in two places at once: at the mill, but sitting down in a room
• this is very much like the reader

Question 5

characteristics of the narrator in the mill on the floss?

Answer 5

• narrated in partial, omniscient narration
• the narrator is very much a character: throughout the book they gives us information about themselves, they muse on different aspects of intellectual thought

Question 6

what is the effect of this kind of narration in the mill on the floss?

Answer 6

• all perspectives are filtered and limited through this narrator
• addresses the reader often: this often controls reader response
• Eliot attempts to ventriloquise her reader’s response

Question 7

what is the role of the reader in the mill on the floss

Answer 7

• very involved in th creative process, asked to co-create the novel by applying their experiences to understand that of the dodsons and the tullivers.
• the fancy fo the narrator is being forced upon the reader
• it foregrounds that sensation proceeds understanding

Question 8

what is striking about the passage beginning ‘journeying down he Rhone on a summer’s day, you have perhaps felt the sunshine made dreary’

Question 9

what does Ruskin say about the characters in the book

Answer 9

there is not single person in the book of the smallest importance to anybody in the world but themselves, or whose qualities deserved so much as a line of printer’s type in their description

Question 10

in which ways is the river/ water tethered to the characters/ the stroyline in the novel?

Answer 10

• children play in the water
• used to demonstrate industrialisation: sneak engine in mill, ships go along the river
• essential for certain aspects of the plot itself: maggies elopement, maggies death
• used to present folklore/ myth: the legend of st. ogg, the idea that chaning millers bring bad luck

Question 11

in which ways is maggie similar to water?

Answer 11

• her fluidity in a society which is rigid.
• Philip imagines maggie in similar terms to that of
• ebb and flow of water is similar to maggie. She often leaves (gypsies, to become a governess, to elope with Stephen) BUT always returns- is pulled back by the force of the patriachy/ family values/ self sacrifice

Question 12

sally shuttleworth on the flood/ water in the novel

Answer 12

the flood which ends the novel, disrupting all orevious continuity like a diluvial wave, may be seen, on the one level, as a final vindication of catastrophe theory

Question 13

types of keys in The mill on the floss

Answer 13

the characters are constantly looking for keys (literal and metaphoric)

• Mrs Tulliver is often touching keys
• Maggie is alwayslooking for keys, the the answer to life/ her happiness (books, privation, latin grammar)

Question 14

characters having obessesions in the novel

Answer 14

• Aunt Pullet obesessed with illnesses
• Tom obsessed with working
• Maggie obsessed with multiple things, including religion, reading, sacrifice, music
• Mrs. Tulliver is obessed with her linen

Question 15

how does the relationship between the Tulliers and the Dodsons link to wider trends within the Victorian novel?

Answer 15

-they are nearly always placed in binary opposition
-binaries were very common in victorian literature: e.g.
mechnical and organic (Carlyle), gothic an classical (ruskin), christian and pagan

Question 16

why did free indirect voice appear in victorian fiction

Answer 16

• they felt the inadequacy of a strictly omniscient representation of “reality”-
• they were aware of the danger of a voice too authoritative in determining the reader’s judgement and understanding

Question 17

what is interesting of Eliot’s frame narrative?

Answer 17

-Eliot never closes the frame narrative: the story never returns fully to the first person who dozes off thinking of Dorlcote mill

Question 18

what does the narrator say about how metaphors affect behaviour?

Answer 18

• language impacts behaviour, thinking of difficult learning in agricultural metaphors makes the difficulty worth it, but thinking of it as digestion diffficulties makes it seem very unpleasant

Question 19

how does maggies way of reading suit the story of the mill on the floss?

Answer 19

• Maggies waivers from endings, she never completes a book
• this in some ways is similar to the novel itself, despite the death of the protagonists, the story continues, the narrators dream never fully ends

Question 20

how does the narrative reflect maggies thought process (3)

Answer 20

• after cutting her hair, the narrator draws attention to the impulsive nature of Maggie and then how she imagines (often exagerated version) of reality where she had not done something
• this is replicated in terms of narrative (through the gossips of st.oggs)
• also reflected meta-textually: the reader, long after the book ends reflect on possible futures for maggoe had she not drowned/ eloped with stephen/ chosen philip

Question 21

what kind of dillemas are there in the mill on the floss

Answer 21

• ethical: there were many moral objects to the ending amongst victorian readers
• personal: maggie constantly needs to choose between her desires, her families, her intellectual/ sexual appetite
• social: femisinst critics found it troubling that eliot portays a pessismistic view of feminine submission and constraint. The contrast between eliot and her literary alter ego maggie, who hada much worse fate that eliot

Question 22

why is realism important for Eliot

Answer 22

-had string ethical implications, to ensure humany communiality/ a sense of social equality

Question 23

what does Eliot say on the ethical role of realism in The Natural History of German Life? (what narrative text can this be linked to?)

Answer 23

‘the greatest benefot we owe to the artist […] is the extension of our sympathies [… in realism] more is done towards linking the higher classes with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exlcusion, than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dssertations’
(link to frederick douglass on the power of slave songs)

Question 24

what were the main ethical models of the victorian period?

Answer 24

• utilitarianism
• positivism
• Christianity

Question 25

what is utilitarianism

Answer 25

ethical principal founded in 1789 by Jeremy Bentha,, which suggests that the most ethical course of action is the one that causes the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people

Question 26

what is postivism?

Answer 26

ethical principle founded by Auguste Compte which suggests that all humans strive for the utmost possible excellence in all their actions.

Question 27

what is the ethical principal in christianity?

Answer 27

one will be rewarded in the next life for what good they have done in this life is also dismissed by Eliot in this passage

Question 28

why is finding a coherent narrative important for eliot?

Answer 28

• eliot draws a parallel between right action and right ethics. The narrative choices are ethical choices
• the act of reaing is intrisic to humans, nt just a question of aesthetics but also of ethics
• the way we make ethical choices are informed by the way we read (the narrator defending wakem/ stelling)

Question 29

which are the two main narrative structures followed in the mill on the floss?

Answer 29

• paradise lost/ a narrative of no return

- evolution

Question 30

in what ways is the mill on the floss like paradise lost?

Answer 30

• expulsion from eden/ leaving stellings house: this is a narratve of no return
• stephen and philip as tempters/ maggie as a fallen woman

Question 31

what does mary wollstonecraft emphasise in a vindication of the rights of women?

Answer 31

• children must be protected from hardships

- if they are subjected to trauma too early, they struggle dealing with it later in life

Question 32

similarity between frankenstein and the mill on the floss?

Answer 32

• both echoe wollstonecraft’s teaching on children
  -frakenstein is a re-writing of the fall, where the monster falls into life, has no chance of happiness
  this is reciprocated in The mill, as tom and maggie are thrust into the adult world of suffering to early

Question 33

what is the role of Maggie and Tom’s childhood memories?

Answer 33

their happy place: protected and sheltered childhood space where they can refuge in during times of difficulty

Question 34

how does the mill on the floss reflect the narrative structure of evolution

Question 35

what is comptes notion of the static element of the human mind?

Answer 35

inherent quality/ characteristic or need of a human being

Question 36

what is comptes notion of the dynamic element of the human mind?

Answer 36

a wuality that is modifiable, or doomed to change after successive changes

Question 37

how is the interplay between dynamic and static human qualities explored in the mill on the floss

Answer 37

• constantly in question:
  1) whether Tom can become a educated gentleman
  2) whether maggie can become a lady
  3) whether Maggie will grow out of her awkard phase
  4) each of maggies phases, are they her finding her truth, or are they just are transient phase?

Question 38

animal world vs. human world

Answer 38

• the social world has a parallel in the animal world: like animals, humans must evolve and adapt to fit into their society
• the moral codes in the animal world are less strong than in the social world: this is explored through the metaphor of the roach and the pike

Question 39

what is the effect of the roach and pike metaphor

Answer 39

-depicts wakem and tulliver in a food chain, it is only natural and predicatable that the pike should cause the roach trouble

Question 40

why maggie dies (evolution)

Answer 40

maggie resists adaptions/ changes, her death is a form of social reform

Question 41

how can darwinism impact the way we read

Answer 41

maggies fate suggests that there is in fact a correct narrative -> reading does have moral implications

Question 42

gossips of st. oggs on maggies elopement (their view, eliot view, victorian view)

Answer 42

• this is read in two ways: either as the hot boiling romance, or as the melodrama of a fallen woman
• maggies story doesnt really fit into either of these narratives
• victorians saw this as being immoral/ bad plotting, as they believed that it was unlike everything we had seen of Maggies character so far
• eliot accuses the victorian critics of falling ino the same traps as the gossips of st. Oggs
• the very unreadability of maggies elopement is what makes the book so powerful and evocative

Question 43

what does eliot believe the mind has the posibility to do (according to which critic)

Answer 43

the mind has the positive ethical force and as a source of radical, perhaps destructively egoistic, isolation - Michael Davis

Question 44

critical quote about Maggies otherness

Answer 44

• her colouring aligns her metaphorically, if not literally, with racial otherness, and this amplifies her gendered otherness as a girl and women who faisl to conform to the conventions of femininity prescribed by her society.
• the power of the cultural norms of st. oggs remind us of the importance of the social, rather than simply physical, environment in shaping the mind