Response #2
03/01/13
“The Mill on the Floss”
By George Eliot
The Losing of One’s Innocents
The
concept of loosing one’s innocents is a dominant theme through out the book as
siblings Tom and Maggie Tulliver are faced with a major cross roads. In the
novel, their father goes through the unfortunate burden of loosing all his
assets and, in doing so, loosing his senses and becoming emotionally ill in the
process. It is at this moment that the childhood Tom and Maggie once enjoyed
will now take a dramatic shift as the two are forced to make sacrifices for the
bettering of the family.
Upon
the announcement of Mr. Tulliver’s unfortunate financial loss, Tom chooses to
leave school and head back home to see if his father is well. It is at this
moment Tom agrees to take on the family burdens by leaving academia to enter a
life of business in hopes to repay his father’s debts. His father forces Tom to
promise that he will dedicate his life to seeking revenge against Mr. Wakem and
earn the family savings back. Mr. Tulliver tells Tom to never forgive Mr. Wakem
for if he does, he will be disowned. In order to honor his father’s name, Tom
is forced to not only abandon his education at an early age, but he is also forced
to abandon his friendship with Phillip Wakem, Mr. Wakem’s son.
Like
her older brother Tom, Maggie frequently submits to her
family’s wishes, despite how much pain it may cause her. Maggie too is forced to abandon all ties
with Philip Wakem, a friendship not only her and her brother shared, but also a
boy to whom she shared a deep and emotional connection with. As the novel reads
on, Maggie finds herself longing for a better life and a better future as she
is in a desperate search for love.
Maggie
begins to gradually rebel against her family’s wishes by sneaking out to see
Philip Wakem, a boy she loves dearly. She is forced to choose between her
father’s happiness and her own. Maggie believes that her love for Phillip can
never be made known and that it should remain no more then a memory. Maggie is
fearful of the consequences her relationship with Phillip will have on her
father and brother’s opinion of her. Phillip, on the other hand, sees the
importance of staying true to one’s self and following your own desires rather
then the desires of those around you. Because of her father’s feud with Mr.
Wakem, Maggie is forced to give up her own happiness or be exiled into
abandonment.
Learning
about their family’s hardships permanently separates Maggie and Tom from their
childhood. Tom is forced to give up education, while Maggie is forced to give
up love. This crossroads Tom and Maggie experience results in the characters’
downfall. Their father’s resentful personality leads to their unfortunate
deaths fifteen years later when the two siblings drown in the very river the
feud revolved around. Tom and Maggie sacrifice their youth only to never find
their own happiness due to their family’s burdens.
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