Tulliver, Tom

Maggie's brother; a self-reliant, obstinate, clear-sighted young fellow, stupid with books, but possessing great common sense. "He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as much alike as goslings: a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eye brows—a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character of boyhood; as different as possible from poor Maggie's phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and coloured with the most decided intention." "Tom never did the same sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a wonderful, instinctive discernment of what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened, that though he was much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of that sort, he espoused it, and stood by it; he 'didn't mind' . . . If Tom Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Tom Tulliver was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn't going to be sorry." As a child he rules his young, loving sister with a firm and often hard hand. When Mr. Tulliver fails, Tom manfully goes to work with his Uncle Deane's firm and after a few years of hard work and self denial he is able to help his father pay his debts. He shares his father's hatred of Lawyer Wakem, and ruthlessly puts an end to the love affair between Maggie and Philip Wakem, his former schoolmate. He disowns Maggie after her flight with Stephen Guest, and is reconciled to her only when she rows to the Mill to rescue him and the two are drowned together in the flooded Floss. The original of Tom Tulliver, in part at least, was George Eliot's elder brother, Isaac Evans, to whom she was much attached. The affectionate childhood relation between her and her brother iscommemorated also in the poem Brother and Sister.

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

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