The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot)

This is the tale of a little girl who is not allowed to be that - a little girl. She is expected to behave in a dainty manner, be lady like, a doll that can be dressed up put on display anywhere. She is expected to be seen and not heard. But Maggie is in part rebellious and spontaneous and in part contrite and ashamed because her behaviour that brings grief to her mother who gets severely judged by her sisters for Maggie’s “wayward” behaviour. Maggie wants to read books, wants to know more about the world and the only thing she wants people to see and acknowledge in her is her smartness, her intelligence. But that, in a girl, is not a trait to be admired or encouraged and so it isn’t. She loves and hero worships her brother Tom and struggles to get the same love and admiration back from him throughout her life, but she always receives only a fraction of what she so freely gives. 

She is also the OG “Papa ki Pari” but some bad choices in business by her father Mr Tulliver, bring financial ruin to the family and he reduced to being a servant of the same Mill that he was the master of. It also sets off a downward health spiral for him, from which he never recovers. Tom makes it his life goal to make enough money to buy back the family estate. While Maggie spends her days nursing her father and doing household chores, with nothing in her future except more of the same. On a visit to her cousin Lucy (who as a child was everything Maggie never was), she meets Stephen Guest and sparks fly. Stephen is Lucy’s fiance and much as Maggie tries to nip things in the bud, things spiral against her will. This brings much shame to the already embittered and beleaguered family and Maggie once again finds that her intent and will is irrelevant in the face of an obstinate man.

This book was written by Mary Ann Evans under the pseudonym of George Eliot because she could not publish a book under her own name and expect any success. But the way the character of the young Maggie, the teenage Maggie and the young adult Maggie are written, it is a surprise that people believed a man had written this. In fact, it is partly autobiographical and Evans put a lot of her own struggles as a little girl and as a young woman in the book. My heart goes out to Maggie and all the little girls (including me) who have struggled and continue struggling in this world till date to just be.