Victorian Patriarchy in The Mill on the Floss

Reading Experience:\nMaggie Tullivers Confrontation with prudish patriarchate in The torpedo on the Floss\n\n\nI. Introduction\nMaggie Tulliver, heroine of George Eliots celebrated novel The Mill on the Floss, is portrayed non only as a passionate and loving girl, save also as a non-conforming individual. She struggles to rebel against stifling loving conventions, but falls victim to her tragic experiences of a destroy family, the maligned reputation and the eventual drowning. From girlhood to adult fe masculinehood, she is faced with different kinds of elderly oppression: as a girl, she has to put up with ladies behavioral codes imposed upon her mainly by her mother and maternal aunts, piece of music as a woman she is more troubled by her fathers foolish hatred for lawyer Wakem. contrasting from a significant fare of modern critics who tend to judgment Maggie as a victim to her excessive passion or to the stifling social milieu around her, this thesis considers Mag gie as a rebel quite of a passive victim, who struggles against squared-toe patriarchate. Instead of submitting to the requirements for a Victorian lady, she strives to break through her trammel social role and actively participate in the male-dominated serviceman in various ways, i 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 wonder by asserting her rapidity that is no inferior to her male counterparts; later, as she enters her trouble-inflicted womanhood, she seeks spiritual commission by reading Christian doctrines or the books lent by Philip, so as to remedy herself from the constraints of patriarchy and family narrow-mindedness.\nThis thesis analyzes Maggies reading experience, to examine how it changes over her spiritual Bildung and how it reflects her confrontation with time-honored values. This thesi s ob...