Victorian Patriarchy in The Mill on the Floss

Reading Experience:\nMaggie Tullivers Confrontation with priggish 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 non only as a passionate and loving girl, nevertheless also as a non-conforming individual. She struggles to rebel against stifling neighborly conventions, but falls dupe to her tragic experiences of a sunk family, the maligned reputation and the eventual drowning. From maidhood to fair sexhood, she is faced with different kinds of time-honored oppression: as a girl, she has to put up with ladies behavioral codes imposed upon her mainly by her mother and maternal aunts, go as a woman she is more troubled by her fathers senseless hatred for lawyer Wakem. divergent from a significant form of modern critics who tend to examine Maggie as a victim to her excessive passion or to the stifling social surroundings around her, this thesis considers Maggie as a rebel rather of a passive victim, who struggles against strait-laced patriarchy. Instead of submitting to the requirements for a Victorian lady, she strives to break through her particular(a) social role and actively participate in the masculine-dominated universe of discourse in various ways, one of which is book reading. This activity lasts from her childishness 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 quickness that is no inferior to her male counterparts; later, as she enters her trouble-inflicted womanhood, she seeks spiritual charge by reading Christian doctrines or the books lent by Philip, so as to supernumerary herself from the constraints of patriarchy and family narrow-mindedness.\nThis thesis analyzes Maggies reading experience, to examine how it changes oer her spiritual Bildung and how it reflects her confrontation with imme morial values. This thesis ob...