Victorian Patriarchy in The Mill on the Floss

Reading Experience:\nMaggie Tullivers Confrontation with puritanic patriarchate in The donkeywork on the Floss\n\n\nI. Introduction\nMaggie Tulliver, heroine of George Eliots celebrated novel The Mill on the Floss, is portrayed not only as a passionate and loving girl, except also as a non-conforming individual. She struggles to rebel against stifling societal conventions, but falls victim to her tragic experiences of a sunk family, the maligned reputation and the eventual drowning. From girlhood to adult fe phallichood, she is faced with different kinds of gray oppression: as a girl, she has to put up with ladies behavioral codes imposed upon her mainly by her mother and maternal aunts, succession as a woman she is more troubled by her fathers monstrous hatred for lawyer Wakem. varied from a significant moment of modern critics who tend to horizon Maggie as a victim to her excessive passion or to the stifling social milieu around her, this thesis considers Maggie as a rebel alternatively of a passive victim, who struggles against squeamish patriarchy. Instead of submitting to the requirements for a Victorian lady, she strives to break through her hold social role and actively participate in the male-dominated valet in various ways, unmatched of which is book reading. This activity lasts from her childhood to her womanhood, representing her confrontation with Victorian patriarchy on the spiritual level. In her childhood readings, she attempts to win astonishment by asserting her mental quickness that is no inferior to her male counterparts; later, as she enters her trouble-inflicted womanhood, she seeks spiritual counselor-at-law by reading Christian doctrines or the books lent by Philip, so as to broad herself from the constraints of patriarchy and family narrow-mindedness.\nThis thesis analyzes Maggies reading experience, to examine how it changes everyplace her spiritual Bildung and how it reflects her confrontation with paternal values. This thesis ob...