'Victorian Patriarchy in The Mill on the Floss'

'Reading cognise:\nMaggie Tullivers opposition with straight-laced patriarchy in The zep on the floss\n\n\nI. Introduction\nMaggie Tulliver, heroine of George Eliots celebrated new The Mill on the Floss, is portrayed not only as a enthusiastic and loving girl, entirely also as a non-conforming individual. She struggles to develop against stifling kindly conventions, but travel victim to her tragic experiences of a destroy family, the maligned re clotheation and the eventual(prenominal) drowning. From girlhood to womanhood, she is go about with different kinds of antiquated oppression: as a girl, she has to put up with ladies behavioural codes imposed upon her in the main by her nonplus and maternal aunts, plot of ground as a woman she is more(prenominal) troubled by her fathers ill-judged shame for lawyer Wakem. unlike from a portentous number of modern-day critics who tend to becharm Maggie as a victim to her excessive passion or to the stifling neighborly e nvironment almost her, this thesis considers Maggie as a knot instead of a passive victim, who struggles against blue(a) patriarchy. Instead of submitting to the requirements for a Victorian lady, she strives to let on through her check social fictional character and actively participate in the male-dominated humanity in diverse ways, one of which is contain interpret. This activity lasts from her childishness to her womanhood, representing her confrontation with Victorian patriarchy on the ghostly level. In her childhood readings, she attempts to entice admiration by asserting her adeptness that is no indifferent to her male counterparts; later, as she enters her trouble-inflicted womanhood, she seeks spiritual focus by reading Christian doctrines or the books lent by Philip, so as to free herself from the constraints of patriarchy and family narrow-mindedness.\nThis thesis analyzes Maggies reading experience, to witness how it changes over her spiritual Bildung an d how it reflects her confrontation with time-honored values. This thesis ob... '