Tulliver, Maggie

A clever, imaginative, undisciplined girl, with an intense craving for love and a longing for happiness. "Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay, to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give er soul a sense of home in it." "When Maggie was not angry, she was as dependent on kind or cold words as a daisy on the sun shine or the cloud; the need of being loved would always subdue her." As a child she is devoted to her brother Tom and passionately fond of her father, who takes her part when she rebels against the traditions of her mother and all the Dodsons. She leads a life of ups and downs, happy with her brother and her books or miserable in her attic to which she flies for refuge. After her father fails she is inspired by her reading of Thomas a Kempis to lead a life of self-renunciation and repression. In the Red Deeps she renews her friendship with Philip Wakem, the cripple, who had been at school with Tom. When he declares his love for her she mistakes affection for him for love. After some time her brother Tom discovers that she and Philip are meeting and brutally forces Maggie to renounce Philip. When, at nineteen, she has developed into a beauty with wonderful dark eyes, she meets her cousin Lucy's lover, Stephen Guest, and he falls in love with her. In spite of the fact that she is still fond of Philip she ends by returning Stephen's love, although struggling against it. While boating on the Floss they are accidentally carried too far by the tide, and Maggie at first thinks that she will yield to Stephen's desire to continue the journey and be married, but her better nature triumphs, and she leaves him to return courageously to her family. Her brother refuses to forgive her and disowns her. They are united only when they lose their lives together in the flood, when Maggie attempts to rescue Tom. "Brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together." The original of Maggie Tulliver, more particularly in childhood, was George Eliot herself, and the first part of the story is largely autobiographic. Mr. Cross says: "No doubt the early part of Maggie's portraiture is the best autobiographical representation we can have of George Eliot's own feelings in her childhood, and many of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences of family life—but . . . mixed with fictitious elements and situations." (See Cross, George Eliot's Life, vol. 1, p. 31; see also Stephen, George Eliot, p. 87.)

<em>The Mill on the Floss</em>

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