“The Mill on the Floss” is a novel that was written by George Eliot (the pen name of author
Mary Ann Evans) and published in 1860. The novel was originally published in three parts. It was very successful and was adapted into a film as early as 1937. It was Eliot’s second novel and one of her most successful of all time.
The novel tells the story of the Tulliver family and their wild, unruly daughter Maggie who live at Dorlcote Mill on the Floss river. Maggie considers her older brother, Tom her best friend and the two get along well. However, Tom’s school mate Philip meets Maggie one day and begins to fall in love with her. The Tulliver’s father, Mr. Tulliver soon makes a bad investment with Philip’s father, and the family goes bankrupt. Mr. Tulliver makes the children promise never to see Philip again…
‘The Mill on the Floss’ is widely regarded as George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. Maggie Tulliver is often seen as an avatar for Eliot, who also grew up as a bookish and intelligent girl in a rural community, a farm in Warwickshire, that didn’t support her literary ambitions.
‘The Mill on the Floss’ is set in the 1820s, in the period following the Napoleonic wars. In the wake of Britain’s triumph, many of the inhabitants of St. Ogg’s—a fictional town in Lincolnshire, a region in the northeast of England—feel confident about the British empire and its predominance in the world. At the same time, however, there are some suggestions of social and political unrest.