Raised in the idyllic setting of Dorlcote Mill the wild and wilful Maggie Tulliver adores her
elder brother Tom and is forever trying to gain the approbation of her parents. Yet as she
grows older and the family struggle under the weight of severe pecuniary difficulties she
becomes increasingly caught between the divergent expectations of the four men in her life: a
doting father an obdurate and vengeful brother a good-looking and frivolous suitor and an
earnest old playmate who happens to be the son of her father and brother's sworn enemy. Tragic
and affecting and drawing heavily on George Eliot's own rural upbringing and relationship with
her brother The Mill on the Floss is one of literature's finest evocations of childhood and
adolescence and introduces in Maggie Tulliver one of the most beloved heroines in the
English canon.
