Account for George Eliots Decision to Give Maggie a Tragic Ending

1058 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: 20th century role in changes of women in literature

There are several ways in which George Eliot's decision to give Maggie a tragic ending in The Mill on the Floss can be substantiated. The examination of Maggie's character in relation to her family and the society of St Oggs, a bustling commercial town is a major factor to acknowledge. Consideration should also be given to the suggestion that the creation of Maggie's character and the hopeless inevitability of her ultimate demise, was an attempt by Eliot to highlight the social realities that existed for women in the 19th century and possibly a reflection of her own situation. Also aesthetic features such as realism and tragedy lead to the realisation that Eliot could present no other outcome that would provide satisfactory closure at the time.

The confrontation between Maggie's character and her circumstances is paramount when offering a possible explanation for George Eliot's decision for Maggie's tragic conclusion. Maggie is growing up in a rapidly changing world, which detrimentally effects her own family's prosperity. Her unique qualities and lack of conformity make it difficult for her to fit into and move forward in what is essentially a patriarchal society. The reader is introduced to Maggie aged 9 and the description of her physical appearance suggests that she is somewhat of an anomaly as regards the expectations of her mother and Aunts. Her `brown skin', dark eyes and straight back hair that `wont curl' contrast unfavorably with the appearance of her cousin Lucy Deane, the blond, pale skinned stereotypical representation of 19th century femininity. The difference between them is described as,' the contrast between a rough dark overgrown puppy and a white kitten' . However it is not just Maggie's appearance t...

... middle of paper ...

...viour.

All the areas that have been explored in accounting for the decision to give Maggie a tragic conclusion seem to leave no doubt that her fate was sealed from the outset. No matter how much the reader feels the sense waste at the loss of `a character essentially noble but liable to great error', it would seem that death for Maggie was the only vindication.

Works Cited

Eliot, George (1860) The Mill on the Floss Penguin Popular Classics

Ashton, Rosemary (1990) The Mill on the Floss, A Natural History Wayne Publishers

King, Jeanette (1978) Tragedy in the Victorian Novel Cambridge University Press 1978

Marshall, Barbara (2001) Reading Prose Hodder and Stoughton

Reynolds, Kimberley and Humble, Nicola (1993) Victorian Heroines Harvester Wheatsheaf

Pearson, Richard 29th November 2002 Lecture: The 19th Century Novel

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Love and Acceptance in I Stand Here Ironing and Everyday Use

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    Both mothers compare their two daughters to each other.  In Everyday Use the mother tells us that "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure."  She Fahning -2-speaks of the fire that burned and scarred Maggie.  She tells us how Maggie is not bright, how she shuffles when she walks.  Comparing her with Dee whose feet vwere always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them." We also learn of Dee's "style" and the way she awes the other girls at school with it.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast I Stand Here Ironing And Everyday Use

    1087 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this story, Maggie is a lot like her mother. They both are uneducated, loving, caring, and allow Dee to run over them. Maggie has been through more things than her mother has though, because of the incident that happened. Maggie has scars like Emily, except Maggie’s scars are from a house fire (319). The house fire has impacted Maggie’s life tremendously, since she is very self-conscious and shy. Walker stated that Maggie is “ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs (318). The mother is protective of Maggie and will be there for her whenever she needs her too. Even though her mother knows all her struggles, she still supports her and pushes her to be better. I think that is one reason she pushes her to marry John Thomas, because she wants her to become her own person and to be strong (319). The mother of “Everyday Use” is opposite from the mother in “I Stand Here Ironing”, because she is there for her children no matter what their financial status

    Read More

  • Raymond Carver Everyday Use Analysis

    524 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author portrays the girls in completely opposite personalities as lifestyles. These drastic descriptions are the basis of the mother’s perceptions. Dee is described as: “..determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts.” versus Maggie who is described as: “She knows she is not bright.” This gives the perception that Dee is a strong independent women that gets what she desires

    Read More

  • North and South

    2336 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the first few chapters Gaskell offers various examples of what the traditional woman of England is like. Margaret’s early descriptions in Chapter 7, characterize the beautiful, gentle femininity so idolized. Margaret is beautiful in her own way, she is very conscious of her surroundings. She is privileged in her own way by being in a respectable position in the tranquil village of Helstone. Throughout the beginning of the novel it is eluded that Margaret has the onset of a mature middle class mentality. During the planning of her beloved cousin Edith Shaw’s wedding, Margaret comments on Edith seemingly oblivious demeanor, as the house is chaos in preparations. Edith tries hard to please expectation of her social class. She is privileged and beautiful; angelic and innocent, she is the perfect idyllic, ignorant child bride, designed to please. For Margaret, “...the prospect of soon losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet quality and charm which Edith possessed”(Gaskell, 7). It is in this passage that the readers familiarize themselves with Margaret’s keen ability to see and perceive the differences between her and her cousin’s manor. Edith poses the calm demure and angelic tranquility a woman is decreed to posses. Unsurprisingly at the brink of commotion Margaret observes that, “the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of

    Read More

  • Everyday Use By Alice Walker

    666 Words  | 2 Pages

    With this in mind, the mother, or the narrator of the story describes herself as a big-boned, manly woman with hands so rough from years of physical labor. She is a tough parent, taking the role of both mother and father for her daughters and providing for them. Taking into account that they are a poor family and most of them are uneducated. By her mother’s observation and words she describes Maggie as shy. “Maggie walks chin ...

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper

    1475 Words  | 3 Pages

    The use of color in Stephan Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is crucial when looking at the setting of the story; the repeated use of red is significant when describing Maggie’s mother Mary and the importance of color in describing the social system through the story. It is seen prominently when Maggie and Pete go to the theater, parts of the play paralleled the lives of the common people: "The latter spent most of his time out at soak in pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated revolver, re...

    Read More

  • Major Character Analysis in Maggie a Girl of the Streets and The Awakening

    1989 Words  | 4 Pages

    Maggie lives with a poor and dysfunctional family and a hopeless future with only the small possibility of change. The environment and setting she grows up in do not support anything more than a dull, dreary and pathetic future for her. An old woman asks Maggie's brother Jimmy: "Eh, Gawd, child, what is it this time? Is yer fader beatin yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin yer fader? (Maggie, 10)" while he runs to Maggie's apartment one night. The lack of love and support of her family hinders Maggie's ability to live a happy and fulfilling life. Without knowing that someone loves her no matter what she does or how she acts Maggie may feel desperate enough to change her situation by any means she can, and without any useful guidance. Even without any positive influences Maggie grows up different from the low-life's living with and around her. Crane explains Maggie's uniqueness in the passage "None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it" (Maggie 16). Maggie's uniqueness gives her the chance to improve her life, but only a slim chance. Even though Maggie differs from the people around her they remain sleazy, making it harder for her to change her life because she must go outside of her community for help.

    Read More

  • Maggie Greene In The Walking Dead: Maggie Greene

    766 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maggie’s traits that she gained from her father helped make her the woman she is today. Her

    Read More

  • Identity of Women in Shelley's Frankenstein, Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

    1480 Words  | 3 Pages

    Identity of Women in Shelley's Frankenstein, Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

    Read More

  • The Gothic Heroine In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

    1646 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey as a satire and when the reader turns every page, it is clear that Jane Austen was making fun of the society she was living in. It’s the satire of the Gothic novel that was surrounding her at the time. What Northanger Abbey does so well in terms of satire is subvert the system of Western patriarchy by the gothic genre and questions the structure of women and nature. Like many of the tales in England of the heroine, Northanger Abbey tells the story of the daughter, who heroic acts are modesty and submission. This essay will focus on what gothic heroine meant at the time, while analyzing why Jane Austen was making fun of the meaning.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Margaret In Much Ado About Nothing

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...

    Read More

  • Jane Austen: An Analysis of Sense and Sensibility

    1284 Words  | 3 Pages

    Austen was raised in an unusually liberal family where her father was a part of the middle-landowning class. They had a moderate amount of luxuries, but were not considered well off. Unlike many girls of her time Austen received a fairly comprehensive education. She received this mainly through the undivided support of her family. Austen and her sisters, like most girls of their time, were homeschooled. Austen’s zealous parents encouraged the girls to play piano, read and write. Her parent’s encouragement led to her interest in writing. Austen’s father housed an extensive library filled with books which kept Austen occupied for years (“Sense and Sensibility” 119). Through her observant nature and passion to read and write, Austen was able to eloquently write of the many “hidden truths” of social and class distinction during her time. They included daily societal changes some of which foreshadowed future societal leniency. Familial support also extended societal norm of marriage. Her parents attempt...

    Read More

  • Waste Land Essay: Isolation from a Noble Past

    1989 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ing lost the sense of Good and Evil, has ceased to be alive” (46).  This “living death” is seen very clearly during and immediately after the sexual encounter of the clerk and typist.  Eliot uses desolation of environment as well to juxtapose past and present, especially when describing the “unreal city.”  The destruction brought about by post-war modernity is rampant also in the description of the Thames River.  Finally, Eliot shows the lack of vitality of modern people through their voluntary self-mechanization.  The characters of the present in The Waste Land have no motivation to make, or live by, their own choices, and let the machine of life carry them where it may.  The result is a stark depiction of the automation, isolation, and despair that define the contemporary world.

    Read More

  • The Genius Of T.S. Eliot

    2370 Words  | 5 Pages

    Trivedi, R. (2010, April 20). Eliot- The Portrait of a Lady (Part-2) . . Retrieved May 6, 2014, from http://englishliteratureviewsreviews.blogspot.com/

    Read More

  • The Social Upheaval in Persuasion by Jane Austin

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before the major upheaval occurs Jane Austin gives us a glimpse of what social life, the class distinction, was like through the perspective of Ann Elliot. Ann is the second out of three daughters to Sir Walter Elliot, the proud head of the family (Austen, 2). The Elliots are an old landowning family that seems well known in the upper echelons of British society. The most important piece of background we are presented with as central to the plot of the story is that eight years prior to the setting Ann was engaged to a man she loved, Frederick Wentworth. They were soon engaged, but her family along with mother-like figure, Lady Russell, soon persuaded Ann that the match was unsuitable because Frederick Wentworth was essentially unworthy without any money or prestige (Austen, 30). This piece of background echoes exclusivity among the upper classes of Britain. In that time it would seem unacceptable for a girl like Ann with a family like hers to marry or even associate with someone not of ...

    Read More

More about Account for George Eliots Decision to Give Maggie a Tragic Ending

Open Document