The Mill on the Floss Flashcards
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What is Maggie’s surname?
Tulliver
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What is Phillip’s surname?
Wakem
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What does Mr Tulliver say in regard to his daughter’s intelligence?
‘Too ‘cute for a woman, I’m afraid’.
Also, ‘It’s a pity but what she’d been a lad’.
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What’s Mrs Tulliver’s maiden name?
Dodson
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Mr Tulliver thinking Maggie ought to have been a boy.
‘It’s a pity but what she’d been a lad’.
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Maggie is too what for a girl?
‘cute
Too ‘cute for a woman, I’m afraid.
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What is Maggie’s doll referred to as?
a Fetish
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Describe Maggie’s doll.
‘a Fetish’
‘entirely defaced’
‘Three nails driven into the head’
‘on that occasion represented aunt Glegg.’
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Who does Maggie look like after cutting her hair?
‘looking like a little Medusa with her snakes cropped’.
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Which aunt did the doll ‘on that occasion’ represent?
Aunt Glegg
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Maggie’s haircut:
‘looking like…’
a little Medusa with her snakes cropped.
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Mr Tulliver about Maggie: ‘It’s a pity…’
‘but what she’d been a lad’
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What does aunt Pullet say about Maggie’s hair?
‘I think the gell has too much hair […] it isn’t good for her health’
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Aunt Pullet: I think ______________ […] it isn’t good for ________.
I think the gell has too much hair […] it isn’t good for her health.
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What makes Maggie change her mind about her hair?
‘When Tom began to laugh at her […] the affair had quite a new aspect.’
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Which aunt said ‘the gell has too much hair’?
aunt Pullet
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‘When Tom began to laugh at her […]
the affair had quite a new aspect.
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What’s one reading of the quote, ‘looking like a little Medusa with her snakes cropped’?
Medusa is a symbol of a powerful woman, but this is a symbol of a woman’s power being reduced and eradicated.
Also, a sense of Maggie’s other-worldly nature. She belongs more in legend and fiction than reality. Yet her story was a real one for many young girls denied education, agency etc.
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When Tom _________ laugh at her […] the affair ______ a new aspect.
When Tom began to laugh at her […] the affair had quite a new aspect.
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What is the title of chapter 10?
Maggie Behaves Worse than She Expected
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How does Phillip refer to Maggie’s repression of her desire to learn?
committing this long suicide
It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.
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What quote shows the moral position of Maggie’s choice to pursue knowledge or to pursue acceptance in society?
It is less wrong for you to see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.
It questions the morality of limiting women’s education.
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What does the following quote show?
It is less wrong for you to see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.
Maggie is pulled by so many expectations. Here, Phillips vs society’s. She cannot win both fights.
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Which chapter number is the following title?
Maggie Behaves Worse than She Expected
10
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A fat, _____ spider accustomed to ___________ with meal, must suffer ______________ where the fly was au naturel
a fat, floury spider
accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal
must suffer a little at a cousin’s table where the fly was au naturel.
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What the significance in the way Maggie allegorises her family as spiders?
A fat, floury spider accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin’s table where the fly was au naturel.
Juxtaposition of higher society. (Use of French) with spiders and flies.
Child’s limited understanding of class; she can’t fully differentiate between them (all are spiders).
But this shows that children understand that people are all people. It is merely habits that separate them.
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A _____, floury spider ________ well dusted with meal, __________ at a cousin’s table where _________ au naturel.
A fat, floury spider
accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal
must suffer a little at a cousin’s table
where the fly was au naturel.
Mill – but also others.
What did Wollstonecraft say about female education in A Vindication of the Rights of Women?
Women were rendered ‘pretty nothings’ by a ‘false system of education’.
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What does the narrator say about education?
‘Education was almost entirely a matter of luck’.
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What are the two kinds of law that Maggie is attempting to balance?
Natural law (also sacred) and societal law.
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In reference to natural law, Maggie’s family have what?
‘a primary natural claim on her’.
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Maggie’s family have ‘a __________ claim on her’
a primary natural claim on her.
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What does Phillip write in his letter to Maggie that shows the different moral fights within her?
There is something stronger in you than your love for him.
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‘The need of being loved…
the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride and soon overthrew it.’
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_________________, the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, _______________
The need of being loved
began to wrestle with her pride and soon overthrew it.
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_________ in you that your love for him.
There is something stronger in you
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In what way do the family ties clash with society?
Family belongs to the ideologies of pre-industrial England, contemporary society was becoming more individualistic.
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What shows Eliot questioning whether women still have to sacrifice themselves for the family/community?
Maggie’s internal struggles.
Love for Stephen vs moral duty: ‘something stronger in you than your love for him.
Love of learning vs female position in the family: ‘Too ‘cute for a women, I’m afraid’.
Ultimately, she sacrifices the ‘no sense of present danger’ to rescue her brother, submitting to the patriarchal power, in order to preserve family ties.
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Quote to show family tradition?
‘Dodson tradition’
‘Tulliver blood’
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Quote that shows Tom’s natural dominance.
‘desire for mastery over the inferior animals’
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Quote about Tom’s dominance over Maggie.
He always meant to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong.
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How much did Tom pay for his rabbits?
Two half-crowns and a sixpence.
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What’s the significance of Tom’s quick and specific knowledge that he paid ‘Two half-crowns and a sixpence’ for his rabbits?
He is a product of the industrialising, money-focused new England. He is a product of his society. Which continues as he goes out and earns money later.
The economy enforces Darwinian hierarchies because men can earn money in this society, making them superior to women.
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How does the Mill on the Floss impact Marx’s Communist Manifesto?
Not simply Bourgeois and Proletariat divisions. These are more complex.
Class is not merely economic, but spiritual, social, moral.
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Two personification of water quotes.
‘broadening Floss hurries on’
‘the loving tide’
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What description of the Floss shows trade and commerce?
‘black ships … with the dark glitter of coal.’
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Tom paid ‘____ ____-crowns and a _____’ for his rabbits.
Two half-crowns and a sixpence.
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On the Floss there are ‘black ships […]
with the dark glitter of coal.
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How is the Floss’s ‘dark ships […] with the dark glitter of coal’ juxtaposed as we move down the river?
with St Ogg’s ‘aged’ rooves.
‘rich pastures … made ready for the seed of broad-leaved crops.’
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‘rich pastures […] ______ crops.
made ready for the seed of broad-leaved crops.
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What is Maggie’s town called?
St. Ogg’s.
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What loaded question does Maggie ask as she is floating along the flooded fields?
‘Which is the way home?’
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What is it that causes Maggie to row back to the mill during the flood?
‘resurgent love towards her brother that swept away all the later impressions of hard, cruel offence
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Why is the question ‘Which is the way home?’ so significant?
Maggie has to chose between safety of individualism (‘no sense of present danger’) or the old ways of family ties.
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‘_____ love towards her brother that _______ all the later impressions of ____________.
resurgent love towards her brother
that swept away
all the later impressions of hard, cruel offence.
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‘__________________ of reconciliation with her brother’.
Undefined sense of reconciliation with her brother
Which critic highlighted that a lot of feminist critics don’t think it possible for there to be a ‘representative Bildungsroman in the 19th century novel’?
Sarah Maier
Critical Material
What did Sally Shuttleworth say about childhood and the child’s mind?
‘Psychiatric writings on childhood were emerging in tandem with the great Victorian novels on childhood’.
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What does Maggie and Tom’s tombstone say?
In death they were not divided.
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Deane says what about Tom that shows him to be part of the new industrial society?
He’s ‘made of such good commercial stuff’
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Who says Tom is made of ‘such good commercial stuff’?
Mr Deane
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What does Mr Tulliver call education?
Eddication
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Tom is ‘made of…
such good commercial stuff’
