In The Mill on the Floss, the narrator’s tone shifts quite a bit, moving from detached and ironic to sympathetic and caring (and back again). At points, the narrator mocks certain characters (such as Mrs. Glegg and Maggie’s other aunts, who are presented in a satirical light), and then the language moves into a more earnest tone. The following passage from Book 1, Chapter 5 exemplifies the narrator’s more sympathetic tone:
No, [Maggie] would never go down if Tom didn’t come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it.
Here the narrator earnestly refers to Maggie as “poor Maggie,” something they do on and off throughout the novel when Maggie (and other characters) are going through a particularly challenging time. Though Maggie is being a dramatic child in this passage (hiding after feeling hurt by her brother), the narrator still feels for her.
The narrator’s tone can also be philosophical, like in the following passage from Book 6, Chapter 6:
But you have known Maggie a long while, and need to be told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. “Character,” says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms — “character is destiny.” But not the whole of our destiny.
Here the narrator zooms out from the plot of the novel to reflect on the nature of character, referencing—and also questioning—German philosopher Novalis in the process. It is notable that the narrator does not believe that “character is destiny,” or that individuals alone are responsible for what happens to them. In an indirect way, the narrator is guiding readers to understand that Maggie’s history and social conditions are as responsible for her struggles as she herself is—had she been born in another time or place where women had more social freedom, she may not have suffered as much as she did.
In The Mill on the Floss, the narrator’s tone shifts quite a bit, moving from detached and ironic to sympathetic and caring (and back again). At points, the narrator mocks certain characters (such as Mrs. Glegg and Maggie’s other aunts, who are presented in a satirical light), and then the language moves into a more earnest tone. The following passage from Book 1, Chapter 5 exemplifies the narrator’s more sympathetic tone:
No, [Maggie] would never go down if Tom didn’t come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie’s nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it.
Here the narrator earnestly refers to Maggie as “poor Maggie,” something they do on and off throughout the novel when Maggie (and other characters) are going through a particularly challenging time. Though Maggie is being a dramatic child in this passage (hiding after feeling hurt by her brother), the narrator still feels for her.
The narrator’s tone can also be philosophical, like in the following passage from Book 6, Chapter 6:
But you have known Maggie a long while, and need to be told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. “Character,” says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms — “character is destiny.” But not the whole of our destiny.
Here the narrator zooms out from the plot of the novel to reflect on the nature of character, referencing—and also questioning—German philosopher Novalis in the process. It is notable that the narrator does not believe that “character is destiny,” or that individuals alone are responsible for what happens to them. In an indirect way, the narrator is guiding readers to understand that Maggie’s history and social conditions are as responsible for her struggles as she herself is—had she been born in another time or place where women had more social freedom, she may not have suffered as much as she did.
