I have attempted this novel a few times over the years, and never got beyond the first few chapters. However, this time I was determined to finish it and I did.

And then I wondered why I'd bothered.

So - Maggie Tulliver craves the acceptance of her brother, Tom, but never receives it. Her quarrelsome father loses all their money, and Tom works hard to regain it. Maggie forms a semi-understanding with Philip - son of the family enemy - but is forced by Tom to renounce it. Spending time with her cousin, she falls in love with her cousin's semi-fiance Stephen and they almost elope. However, Maggie cannot go through with it, returns home in disgrace and then, along with Tom, drowns in a flood.

I found the first half of the book (and that was alot of pages) remarkably boring - for me it only got going when the Tullivers lost their money, and even then we were only into first gear.

Finally in the final section, we step up to fourth gear when Maggie falls in love with Stephen. I thought this was a fabulous evocation of falling in love, and suppressed love.

I thought Maggie was a great character, as was Tom - but they were both pretty exaggerated.

So the gist of it is, Maggie is miserable and ignored, bad things happen to her, she renounces happiness and then she dies.

What on earth was all that about?

This is in fact a fantastic book. George Eliots writing can be very deep, he obviously drew from real life, a number a people mixed up I should imagine. I say this because real life is sometimes more strange than fiction. I read this book to my mother after she had a stroke along with a number of other classics, she loved it, and made a point of saying that she found it very true to life back then. Linda

Sorry this response comes so late, but I was trawling through the reviews looking for something else entirely when this caught my eye.

George Eliot was in fact a female, real name Mary Anne Evans but writing at a time when it was considered improper for women to write novels.

It's a long time since I read 'Mill on the Floss', in an era where there weren't really any books for young adults as such and the sentiments of the book, as I recall, do reflect beliefs and morals of the mid ninteenth century.

George Eliot best known novel is 'Middlemarch'. Set mainly in the English Midlands town, it is a long book, with a cast of contrasting characters, mainly couples, partly set in Italy. The heroine is Dorothea, a beautiful, idealistic young woman of restricted education who seeks a purpose in life through becoming wife and assistant to an elderly writer. Her character is contrasted with other women in quite different relationships, such as a doctor's pretty but shallow wife and a young woman in love with a gambler who refuses to marry him until he reforms. Although the main characters are middle class the wider social setting is important and the people tend to be judged in terms of their attitudes to the poor and their sense of social justice as well as a willingness to offer practical help.

The author's voice comments on the characters in a way that's unacceptable in modern literature, and self-restraint and idealism are not popular themes these days, although Booker contender 'On Chesil Beach' explores the results of sexual repression. George Eliot was interested in moral choices and in how to live a 'good' life. She often shows how one mistake can influence the whole course of a life. Today Dorothea would probably be involved in an environmental project in India or South America or some similar work.

George Eliot was something of an independent thinker for her time, and caused a scandal by eloping with a married man, something she spent a long time considering

I can understand how her work would appeal to someone who'd survived a life-threatening event.

Sheila