The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss

by

George Eliot

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Maggie Tulliver Character Analysis

Maggie is Mr. Tulliver and Mrs. Tulliver’s passionate and high-spirited daughter and Tom’s younger sister. From a young age, she shows a marked aptitude for reading and learning—what her father calls “acuteness.” However, her intellectual abilities are largely underappreciated. Her brother thinks that all girls are “silly,” while her mother laments Maggie’s rebelliousness, messiness, and lack of concern for her clothes, hair, and household domestic tasks like sewing. Maggie’s aunts, Mrs. Deane, Mrs. Pullet, and Mrs. Glegg, think that she is a “contrary” child with peculiar habits. In this sense, most of the adults in Maggie’s life do not understand or encourage her intellectual interests, focusing instead on her lack of traditional feminine graces. When she is a child, she feels so rejected by her family and community that she tries to run away to the gypsies (who she thinks will have long black hair, like her, thus ensuring her acceptance among them). As an adult, Maggie finds herself similarly out of step with social convention. In an era when marriage was the ultimate goal of a woman’s life, Maggie goes against the societal grain by working independently as a governess and rejecting Philip’s marriage proposal. Most notoriously, she elopes with her cousin’s lover, Stephen Guest, but refuses to go through with the marriage due to her own moral scruples—a decision that makes her an outcast in town. This decision is typical of Maggie’s determination to abide by her own internal moral code rather than that of society. Tom is the emotional center of Maggie’s life, and her love for him is the motivation and principle that guides many of her decisions.

Maggie Tulliver Quotes in The Mill on the Floss

The The Mill on the Floss quotes below are all either spoken by Maggie Tulliver or refer to Maggie Tulliver. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Memory and Childhood Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 2  Quotes

“It’s no mischief much while she’s a little un, but an over-‘cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep—she’ll fetch none the bigger price for that.”

Related Characters: Mr. Tulliver (speaker), Maggie Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 5 Quotes

“I don’t want your money, you silly thing. I’ve got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces, because you’re only a girl.”

Related Characters: Tom Tulliver (speaker), Maggie Tulliver
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it—if it were not the same earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers […].

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 8 Quotes

“Poor little wench! She’ll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I’m gone.”

Related Characters: Mr. Tulliver (speaker), Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver, Mrs. Moss, Mr. Moss
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

“No; you couldn’t,” said Tom, indignantly. “Girls can’t do Euclid: can they, sir?”

“They can pick up a little of everything, I daresay,” said Mr. Stelling. “They’ve a great deal of superficial cleverness; but they couldn’t go far into anything. They’re quick and shallow.”

Related Characters: Tom Tulliver (speaker), Mr. Stelling (speaker), Maggie Tulliver
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

When they did meet, she remembered her promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and that Philip would not expect it. This promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden […] impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Philip Wakem
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 174-175
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 1 Quotes

I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but it is necessary that we should feel it, if we are to understand how it acted on the lives of Tom and Maggie—how it has acted on young natures in many generations, that in the outward tendency of human things have risen above the mental level of the generation before them, to which they have been nevertheless tied by the strongest fibers of their hearts.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 2 Quotes

While Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows for ever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 4 Quotes

“But it isn’t for that, that I’m jealous for the dark women—not because I’m dark myself. It’s because I always care the most about the unhappy people: if the blond girl were forsaken, I should like her best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories.”

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver (speaker), Philip Wakem
Related Symbols: Maggie’s Hair
Page Number: 306
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 5 Quotes

“But you have always enjoyed punishing me—you have always been hard and cruel to me: even when I was a little girl, and always loved you better than any one else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without forgiving me. You have no pity: you have no sense of your own imperfection and your own sins.”

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver (speaker), Tom Tulliver, Philip Wakem
Page Number: 319
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 6, Chapter 7 Quotes

But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the seat you like best—a little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there will be no lady-callers.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Lucy Deane
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 378
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 6, Chapter 8 Quotes

“We don't ask what a woman does—we ask whom she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you to think of marrying old Tulliver’s daughter.”

Related Characters: Mr. Wakem (speaker), Maggie Tulliver, Mr. Tulliver, Philip Wakem
Page Number: 394
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 7, Chapter 2 Quotes

If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a post-marital trousseau, and all the advantages possessed even by the most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St. Ogg's, as elsewhere, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict consistency with those results.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Lucy Deane, Stephen Guest
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 453
Explanation and Analysis:
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Maggie Tulliver Quotes in The Mill on the Floss

The The Mill on the Floss quotes below are all either spoken by Maggie Tulliver or refer to Maggie Tulliver. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Memory and Childhood Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 2  Quotes

“It’s no mischief much while she’s a little un, but an over-‘cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep—she’ll fetch none the bigger price for that.”

Related Characters: Mr. Tulliver (speaker), Maggie Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 5 Quotes

“I don’t want your money, you silly thing. I’ve got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces, because you’re only a girl.”

Related Characters: Tom Tulliver (speaker), Maggie Tulliver
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

Life did change for Tom and Maggie; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it—if it were not the same earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers […].

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 8 Quotes

“Poor little wench! She’ll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I’m gone.”

Related Characters: Mr. Tulliver (speaker), Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver, Mrs. Moss, Mr. Moss
Page Number: 79
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 1 Quotes

“No; you couldn’t,” said Tom, indignantly. “Girls can’t do Euclid: can they, sir?”

“They can pick up a little of everything, I daresay,” said Mr. Stelling. “They’ve a great deal of superficial cleverness; but they couldn’t go far into anything. They’re quick and shallow.”

Related Characters: Tom Tulliver (speaker), Mr. Stelling (speaker), Maggie Tulliver
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

When they did meet, she remembered her promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and that Philip would not expect it. This promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden […] impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Philip Wakem
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 174-175
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 1 Quotes

I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but it is necessary that we should feel it, if we are to understand how it acted on the lives of Tom and Maggie—how it has acted on young natures in many generations, that in the outward tendency of human things have risen above the mental level of the generation before them, to which they have been nevertheless tied by the strongest fibers of their hearts.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 2 Quotes

While Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows for ever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Tom Tulliver
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 4 Quotes

“But it isn’t for that, that I’m jealous for the dark women—not because I’m dark myself. It’s because I always care the most about the unhappy people: if the blond girl were forsaken, I should like her best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories.”

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver (speaker), Philip Wakem
Related Symbols: Maggie’s Hair
Page Number: 306
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 5 Quotes

“But you have always enjoyed punishing me—you have always been hard and cruel to me: even when I was a little girl, and always loved you better than any one else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without forgiving me. You have no pity: you have no sense of your own imperfection and your own sins.”

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver (speaker), Tom Tulliver, Philip Wakem
Page Number: 319
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 6, Chapter 7 Quotes

But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the seat you like best—a little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there will be no lady-callers.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Lucy Deane
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 378
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 6, Chapter 8 Quotes

“We don't ask what a woman does—we ask whom she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you to think of marrying old Tulliver’s daughter.”

Related Characters: Mr. Wakem (speaker), Maggie Tulliver, Mr. Tulliver, Philip Wakem
Page Number: 394
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 7, Chapter 2 Quotes

If Miss Tulliver, after a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Stephen Guest, with a post-marital trousseau, and all the advantages possessed even by the most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St. Ogg's, as elsewhere, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict consistency with those results.

Related Characters: Maggie Tulliver, Lucy Deane, Stephen Guest
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 453
Explanation and Analysis: