That Besetting Sin: How George Eliot Punishes Her Ambitious Female Characters 
 
 
By 
Mary E. Wyko 
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements 
for the Degree of 
Master of Arts 
in the 
              English  
Program 
 
 
 
 
 
YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY 
December 2009 
 
 
 
That Besetting Sin: How George Eliot Punishes Her Ambitious Female Characters 
Mary E. Wyko 
 
 
I hereby release this thesis to the public. I understand that this thesis will be made 
available from the OhioLINK ETD Center and the Maag Library Circulation Desk for 
public access. I also authorize the University or other individuals to make copies of this 
thesis as needed for scholarly research. 
  
 
Signature: 
  
 
 
____________________________________________________________ 
Mary E. Wyko, Student             Date 
 
 
Approvals: 
 
 
 
     _____________________________________________________________ 
Julia M. Gergits, Thesis Advisor            Date 
 
 
 
____________________________________________________________ 
James J. Schramer, Committee Member          Date 
 
 
 
____________________________________________________________ 
Stephanie A. Tingley, Committee Member          Date 
 
 
 
____________________________________________________________ 
Peter J. Kasvinsky, Dean of School of Graduate Studies & Research    Date
iii 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
 
George Eliot was not a typical woman of the Victorian era. She lived openly with a 
man who was not her husband despite familial and societal disapproval. Eliot was also an 
ambitious woman, one who would become one of the greatest authors of her time. Yet in 
spite of—or because of—her unique lifestyle, Eliot punishes her female characters that 
pursue their own ambitions. Those who meet or attempt to meet her rigorous standards of 
female behavior—service to others and resignation to fate—are permitted some measure 
of happiness in the end. 
Hetty Sorrel of Adam Bede and Gwendolen Harleth of Daniel Deronda are Eliot‟s 
spoiled girls. Their greatest ambition is to marry into wealth and live a life of luxury and 
freedom. This ambition is furthest from Eliot‟s ideal, and Hetty and Gwendolen are 
harshly punished. Dinah Morris of Adam Bede and Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch are 
George Eliot‟s martyrs. They begin closest to Eliot‟s standard, and therefore, though they 
are punished for pursuing their ambitions, they are rewarded with happiness at the end of 
their respective novels. Maggie Tulliver of The Mill on the Floss is, much like Eliot 
herself, too clever for her simple country existence and unable to find her place in 
society. While Eliot was able to find love and success in her own life, Maggie Tulliver is 
never able to find a vent for her passionate nature, and after repeated discouragements 
and punishments, she is killed in a flood. 
Eliot was the exception to the rule with regard to female ambition in Victorian 
society, and her own successes were not without their sacrifices. She illustrates this in her 
work by exacting punishment on her ambitious female characters.
Wyko 1 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
In a letter to her aunt, Mrs. Samuel Evans, written on March 5, 1839, Mary Ann 
Evans—later to become George Eliot—writes, “I feel that my besetting sin is the one of 
all other most destroying, as it is the fruitful parent of them all,—ambition, a desire 
insatiable for the esteem of my fellow-creatures. This seems the centre whence all my 
actions proceed” (Eliot 24). Though Evans was speaking of her religious beliefs at the 
time, she would eventually achieve what few women of her time could claim—a career 
as a novelist and a place in the canon of Victorian literature. Evans‟ “besetting sin” would 
lead her to the love of her life, George Henry Lewes, the successful publication of seven 
novels and many other literary works and the esteem of many of her “fellow-creatures,” 
including Queen Victoria herself. 
During the Victorian era, much debate was given to “The Woman Question”—that is, 
the role of women in the modern world. It was feared that allowing women to work 
outside the home would destroy the moral fiber of Victorian society. According to Tim 
Dolin, “At stake, it was widely believed, was nothing less than the social stability and 
moral well-being of the entire nation” (71). He continues, “To advocate higher education 
for women, allow them entry into full-time paid work in the professions or in business, 
permit them financial freedom and property of their own or the power to take legal action 
or enter Parliament, represented a threat to the entire social system” (73). This is not to 
say that there were not women—perfectly moral, „womenly‟ women—who worked 
outside the home. „“New Women‟ did find employment as schoolteachers, nurses, shop 
assistants, clerics, civil servants and even doctors by the end of the century,” Nan H. 
Dreher notes (3). Dolin remarks, “The vast majority of women actually did work outside 
Wyko 2 
 
the home, in factories and sweatshops, or as servants, governesses, teachers, or nurses” 
(71). 
Marriage and family, however, was to be first and foremost in a woman‟s life. As 
Philippa Levine writes: 
 Marriage, for the nineteenth-century woman, was perhaps the single most 
profound and far-reaching institution that would affect the course of her 
life. For the woman who did not marry, whether by choice or by chance, 
spinsterhood marked her as one of society‟s unfortunates, cast aside from 
the common lot of the sex (150).  
Dreher comments, “Those women who did not marry „failed in business,‟ and paid 
work was „in default of a legitimate business for life.‟ The respectable alternative for 
single women, the governessing profession, was oversupplied and underpaid” (3). 
To become George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans would go against everything Victorian 
society expected of her, and she would have to pay a price. Her relationship with George 
Henry Lewes led to her estrangement with her two sisters, Fanny and Chrissey, and her 
brother Isaac, with whom she was very close as a child. Because Lewes was not able to 
divorce, Eliot could not legally marry him, though they lived as husband and wife. Upon 
learning of this, Isaac Evans ended his relationship with his sister, and according to 
Gordon Haight, “Under his pressure Fanny and Chrissey on the same day sent letters 
breaking off all communication with their lost sister. From her family Dear Polly (as 
Eliot was known), in whom the domestic affections were so deeply ingrained, was now a 
complete outcast” (233). The relationship between Eliot and Lewes also caused scandal 
Wyko 3 
 
among their friends and acquaintances, a circumstance Eliot had anticipated. In a letter to 
her publisher, John Chapman, Eliot writes: 
 I have counted the cost of the step that I have taken and am prepared to 
bear, without irritation or bitterness, renunciation by all my friends. I am 
not mistaken in the person to whom I have attached myself. He is worthy 
of the sacrifice I have incurred, and my only anxiety is that he should be 
rightly judged (Haight 162).  
Having been thus punished for pursuing a path that was unconventional for Victorian 
woman, is it any wonder that Eliot takes out her frustrations on the women who 
populated her novels? Toward her female characters who wished to be more than 
ornamental or who hoped to elevate their circumstances, Eliot seems particularly 
punishing. Those who showed evidence of that “besetting sin” were made to suffer for 
their ambitions. 
Dinah Morris and Hetty Sorrel of Adam Bede, Maggie Tulliver of Mill on the Floss, 
Dorothea Brooke of Middlemarch  and Gwendolen Harleth of Daniel Deronda are the 
most ambitious of Eliot‟s female characters, and they are all punished in some way for 
their ambitions. Hetty Sorrel and Gwendolen Harleth are the spoiled girls of Eliot‟s 
novels. Their ambitions include wealth and status to be gained through advantageous 
marriages. Dinah Morris and Dorothea Brooke are Eliot‟s martyrs. Both women wish to 
live for others—Dinah through her work as a Methodist preacher and Dorothea as the 
helpmate of a scholarly husband. Maggie Tulliver is perhaps the most like Eliot herself. 
She is a country girl with a longing for something more—a longing Eliot fulfilled through 
Wyko 4 
 
her career and her relationship with Lewes. For Maggie, however, this sort of happy 
ending is not possible, and she is killed in a flood. 
Despite her own lifestyle, which went against the norms of Victorian society, Eliot 
prefers that women conform to conventional behaviors, an attitude that draws fire from 
contemporary feminists. As Paula Cohen writes:  
Critics have long been baffled by the way in which her life appears to 
deviate from the lives she permitted her heroines. Her heroines never 
aspire to do the kind of work or achieve the kind of success of their 
creator; not one ever considers living with a man to whom she is not 
legally married, as Eliot did (115).  
Zelda Austen remarks:  
The feminist‟s insistence that literature show women as more than bride, 
wife, and mother is admirable, but it can‟t be applied to novels that were 
written when most women were either brides, wives, mothers, or 
dependent spinsters—unless George Eliot had written exclusively about 
herself (552). 
However, not only must an Eliot heroine conform to the Victorian ideals of marriage 
and family, they must strive to be something more. As Linda C. Hunt notes: 
George Eliot‟s admirable women characters are not only intelligent; they 
yearn for „masculine‟ knowledge, and, perhaps more important, Eliot feels 
very strongly that women must transcend their narrowness—that they 
need a „wider vision‟ (the phrase recurs in her novels). She wants women 
Wyko 5 
 
to remain at home but nonetheless have a broad view of the social good 
(141) 
Laura Morgan Green comments, “Eliot can valorize the self-taught, intellectually 
ambitious woman, as long as she does not challenge the primacy of family ties” (94). 
And Allison Booth remarks, “Eliot‟s ideal woman‟s role might be called the domestic 
public servant: a woman ministering to human need in the marginal realm of charity or 
social causes, whereby, for example, the hospital can be seen as the household sickroom 
„multiplied‟” (30). 
Thus, Eliot‟s ideal woman is intelligent and aware of the greater good, but pursues 
both knowledge and social causes without upsetting traditional marriage and family life. 
Within her novels, those female characters who come closest to this ideal, such as Dinah 
Morris and Dorothea Brooke, are punished least, while those who cannot conform are 
most severely punished.  
With talent and the support of a loving partner, George Eliot achieved the type of 
success which is rare and admirable more than a century later. Yet Eliot recognized that 
she was a unique case and that not everyone could make the sacrifices she made and 
achieve what she achieved. Austen notes: 
While a George Eliot might defy Middlemarch and pay all her life 
suffering the stony rejection of her family as well as social exile, hundreds 
of other girls could not and did not have the talents of a George Eliot to 
take them out of that medium. They could not even know that any other 
was possible (554).  
Wyko 6 
 
It was not easy to be a woman in Victorian Britain and even more so for ambitious 
women who yearned for education and careers. Eliot punishes her ambitious female 
characters because she is a realist and knows from her own experience the tribulations 
that await those who try to break the mold. As Austen writes:  
George Eliot's art is committed not to herself or women like herself except 
insofar as they must learn, as Dorothea does, how to modify their 
importunate desires according to the limitations of the real world and the 
needs of other “supreme selves” with equivalent appetites (560).  
The answer, then, is resignation, submission and service to others. For those 
characters who try to achieve this—Gwendolen, Dinah and Dorothea—there is some sort 
of reward. For those characters who cannot conform—Hetty and Maggie—there is the 
ultimate punishment, death. 
Wyko 7 
 
 
CHAPTER 1 
THE SPOILED GIRLS 
 
Hetty Sorrel of Adam Bede and Gwendolen Harleth of Daniel Deronda are George 
Eliot‟s spoiled girls. They are beautiful and aware of their own beauty. They are treated 
somewhat indulgently by their family and friends, and they each have a sense of 
entitlement—they deserve rich husbands who will pamper them and shower them with all 
the worldly goods they could desire. They are ambitious—but they do not seek 
fulfillment in a career or service to others. They don‟t wish knowledge or a sense of 
purpose. Their ambition is to marry rich. 
Eliot does not have much sympathy for women who marry for money, and she 
punishes Hetty and Gwendolen for their ambitions. As Allison Booth writes, “Her 
doctrine, if it had to be expressed in a sentence, teaches the sin of egotism and the virtue 
of self-denying fellow-feeling,” (5). Eliot‟s spoiled girls must be taught the error of their 
ways through hardship and suffering. Gwendolen achieves a wealthy husband in 
Henleigh Grandcourt, only to discover that he is emotionally abusive, and she suffers 
from his cruel behavior as well as her guilt at breaking a promise to Grandcourt‟s 
mistress not to marry him. Hetty is more cruelly punished. Not only does she not get her 
man, Arthur Donnithorne, but she is put on trial for infanticide after she abandons her 
newborn child and is sentenced to hang for her crime. Eliot spares Hetty from the 
gallows, but she dies on her return journey after being transported. 
Wyko 8 
 
Patricia Beer writes, “George Eliot surely has a real affection for her heroines, often 
perhaps, as in the case of Gwendolen, more than the readers can summon up. Yet she 
says dreadful things about them” (195). Linda Hunt concurs, remarking that Eliot‟s 
spoiled girls  
are among her most powerful creations. She sees their failure in moral 
terms but renders them as human beings deserving central importance in 
her novels, people who have their own point of view, whose failure to 
achieve loving self-abnegation is the result of the interplay between their 
own moral choices and external circumstances (149).  
Indeed, Hetty and Gwendolen are of such central importance in Adam Bede and 
Daniel Deronda respectively that the novels would not exist without them.  
Adam Bede tells the story of two women with very different ambitions. Dinah Morris 
and Hetty Sorrel are not related by blood but are both found in the home of Mr. and Mrs. 
Poyser at the beginning of the novel. Dinah, who is discussed in the next chapter, wants 
simply to preach and minister to the poor. Spoiled girl Hetty‟s ambitions are much 
worldlier. She wants a rich husband to take her away from the drudgery of working on 
her uncle‟s farm and shower her with luxuries. Though Hetty is a penniless orphan, 
dependant on the charity of her uncle and his wife, she is beautiful, with a beauty “which 
seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of 
women” (Adam Bede 85). It is her beauty which has given Hetty her sense of entitlement. 
In chapter 9, Eliot notes that “Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to 
look at her” (Adam Bede 100) and that she dreamed of “bright, admiring glances from a 
Wyko 9 
 
handsome young gentleman with white hands, a gold chain, occasional regimentals, and 
wealth and grandeur immeasurable” (Adam Bede 99).  
However, Hetty‟s beauty could be dangerous and hides her lack of feeling, as the 
women she interacts with are more inclined to notice. Mrs. Poyser tells her husband “that 
she firmly believed „the naughtier the little huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked‟” 
(Adam Bede 86), and “She‟s no better than a peacock as „ud strut about on the wall and 
spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i‟ the parish was dying: there‟s nothing 
seems to give her a turn i; th‟ inside” (Adam Bede 162). Mrs. Pomfret, with whom Hetty 
studied the duties of being a ladies‟ maid, notes that though Hetty “gets prettier and 
prettier every day,” “she‟ll get neither a place nor a husband any the sooner for it. Sober 
well-to-do men don‟t like such pretty wives” (Adam Bede 140). She does not care for her 
work in her uncle‟s dairy, nor does she seem to have any affection for baby Totty, whom 
she has cared for from infancy or for the uncle and aunt who have taken her in. Dorothea 
Barrett, however, defends Hetty‟s indifference:  
There is actually no reason for the dairy-worker to love the dairy as the 
dairy-owner does, for Totty‟s baby-sitter to love her as her mother does, or 
for a penniless relation tolerated in the home as an act of charity and 
source of cheap labour to love that home in the way a daughter of the 
family would (45).  
Nonetheless, as Susan Rowland Tush notes, Eliot “makes Hetty‟s moral inferiority a 
universally accepted conclusion long before Hetty herself ever commits any overt 
transgressions” (36). Especially when contrasted with the puritanical Dinah, as she is 
Wyko 10 
 
throughout the novel, Hetty comes up short in every category: she is vain, shallow and 
unquestionably spoiled. 
Though she studies to become a ladies‟ maid, Hetty realizes that the only way she can 
achieve the luxuries she desires is through marriage and that her beauty has power over 
men. “Like all really vain women, she uses her beauty to gain power over others even if 
she has little or no feeling for them,” Jean E. Kennard notes (113). Hetty recognizes that 
she draws the attention of men, and young Luke Britton, Mr. Craig and Adam Bede are 
all listed as her admirers before she becomes involved with son of the local squire, 
Captain Arthur Donnithorne. Of the men who admire her, she does not object to Adam‟s 
attentions, as she recognizes that Adam is “„something like‟ a man” (Adam Bede 100), 
but she has her sights set on more than simply being the wife of “a poor man … who 
would not be able … to give her even such luxuries as she shared in her uncle‟s house” 
(Adam Bede 102-103). As the impoverished ward of her uncle, Hetty is not in a position 
to be choosy about her suitors, and her aunt and uncle Poyser consider Adam to be an 
excellent match for her, but this does not stop Hetty from dreaming.   
Hetty‟s dreams soon become centered around Donnithorne, who becomes enamored 
of her on a visit to her uncle‟s farm. In her naïveté, Hetty believes that her beauty can be 
her ticket to the life she longs for—Donnithorne will marry her and give her all the 
luxuries she desires. Because Donnithorne comes to the Hall Farm to speak to her and 
watches her at church, Hetty believes that she can have him as easily as the gardener Mr. 
Craig or Adam Bede. Donnithorne, for his part, is attracted to Hetty‟s beauty, and though 
he is warned by his friend Mr. Irwine that he should not pay special attention to Hetty, he 
does not have the self-control to resist meeting her.  
Wyko 11 
 
Though Adam Bede accuses Donnithorne of taking advantage of an innocent young 
girl when he catches him with Hetty, Tush notes, “Hetty is not an innocent victim; her 
vanity and worldliness are obvious from the very first description of her” (44-45). She 
continues, “There is never a suggestion that Hetty has any desire for Arthur exclusive of 
what he can do for her. Moreover, her inability to see Arthur as a separate being with 
separate desires helps make it possible for her to believe that he will share her fantasy 
about their future” (Tush 45). Kennard agrees, remarking, “Hetty‟s ambition, her 
yearning for a better life, has none of the nobility we associate with George Eliot‟s later 
heroines. Her desire is to be a lady, to have wealth and status, and she sees Arthur 
Donnithorne as the means to that life” (113). Hetty knows what she wants, and she sees 
no obstacle to obtaining it.  
Yet her ambitions are dashed with Adam‟s discovery of her kissing Donnithorne, and 
Donnithorne complies with Adam‟s request to end the relationship. With this letter, Hetty 
gets her first taste of disappointed ambition—despite her beauty, which Donnithorne had 
previously found impossible to resist, he will not marry her. As Donnithorne writes, “if I 
were to do what you one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you 
yourself would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know you can 
never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station” (Adam Bede 348). This 
goes against everything Hetty has thought or imagined. As she thinks to herself when she 
is admiring herself in her bedroom mirror, “He would want to marry her and make a lady 
of her; she could hardly dare to shape the thought—yet how else could it be?” (Adam 
Bede 157). Donnithorne‟s rejection of her is not just a blow to Hetty‟s ambitions, but to 
her self-confidence as well. Patricia Beer notes: 
Wyko 12 
 
 If Arthur Donnithorne had contented himself with merely undermining 
Hetty‟s morale, with flirtatious treatment of her as an enchanting little 
kitten (which incidentally is exactly honest Adam Bede‟s view of her as 
well), he would have destroyed her peace of mind but not all her worldly 
prospects and eventually her life, as he does by seducing her. Hetty is not 
the spotless victim of Adam‟s imagination but she is unusually vulnerable, 
being protected by neither common sense nor the ability to love, and has 
no real chance of escape from a man like Donnithorne (206-207). 
Despite the emotional pain she has endured from the breakup of her romance with 
Donnithorne, Hetty‟s punishment for her ambitions of marrying about her station is only 
just beginning. As she makes plans to marry Adam, she discovers that she is pregnant 
with Donnithorne‟s child. Her first instinct is to commit suicide, though Eliot remarks in 
chapter 31 that this is not what would be expected of Hetty:  
But Hetty‟s was not a nature to face difficulties—to dare to loose her hold 
on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown condition. Hers was a 
luxurious and vain nature—not a passionate one—and if she were ever to 
take any violent measure, she must be urged to it by the desperation of 
terror (Adam Bede 351).  
Though Hetty is desperate and terrified by her situation, she lacks the nerve to drown 
herself in the secluded pond. She does not fear death, but rather public opinion: “they 
might find her—they might find out why she had drowned herself” (Adam Bede 382). 
Since death is not an option, Hetty decides to run away in search of Donnithorne. In the 
midst of her wanderings, she gives birth and abandons her baby. Kennard notes, “Hetty 
Wyko 13 
 
has very little understanding of what is happening to her” (113), and she is bewildered 
and terrified when she is arrested and charged with infanticide.  
As Patricia Beer notes of Hetty, “Her character, as established by George Eliot in the 
first three-quarters of the book, is not that of a potential killer. She is cold-hearted and has 
fixed views of what she wants of life, which is to be a lady and wear fine clothes” (204). 
When Hetty does not get what she wants, she finds herself desperate, despairing and in 
damning circumstances. An unsympathetic court horrified by “the unnaturalness of her 
crime” (Adam Bede 456) finds Hetty guilty, and she is sentenced to be hanged. This is 
cruel punishment indeed. Hetty‟s ambition was to gain the love of a rich man, and she 
succeeds in attracting Arthur Donnithorne. But instead of marriage and a life of leisure 
and luxury that she desires, she gets an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy. Hetty is not 
even emotionally equipped to handle her situation. She repeatedly denies that she was 
even pregnant and shows little emotion at her trial, sitting and staring at her hands and 
occasionally trembling in fear. Her mental block would likely earn her an insanity plea in 
modern times, but in the country court of the late 18th century, when Adam Bede is set, 
her lack of emotion is seen as coarse indifference and another sign of her guilt. Beer 
writes, “After her flight from Hayslope, which her advancing pregnancy seems to her to 
make essential, she is in a state of diminished responsibility, which in a more medically 
informed age would have acquitted her completely” (204).  
Kennard comments:  
George Eliot attributes Hetty‟s disasters in part to her lack of education 
and experience. She tells her reader to remember that Hetty is quite 
uneducated, a simple farmer‟s girl. But Hetty is not excused on these 
Wyko 14 
 
grounds; others almost as uneducated, among them Adam himself, are 
seen to be of stronger moral character. Hetty‟s lack is spiritual (113).  
Despite her jail cell confession to Dinah Morris and the spiritual guidance Dinah 
offers, Hetty still does not achieve any sort of growth or maturity though she faces certain 
death. Even Dinah admits, “her poor soul is very dark and discerns little beyond the 
things of the flesh” (Adam Bede 477). As she rides with Dinah to the gallows, Hetty is 
still the childish, shallow girl she was when she first caught Arthur Donnithorne‟s eye. 
“In the course of the book,” Beer writes, “Hetty passes from dream world to nightmare 
with no intervening period of wakefulness, and though perhaps we cannot join Adam in 
putting the blame entirely on Arthur Donnithorne, to hang Hetty as a murderess seems as 
inappropriate as executing a cat for killing its kitten” (205). 
Though she is spared death by hanging through Donnithorne‟s timely arrival with a 
partial pardon, Hetty does not get chance to mend her selfish ways. Hetty is transported 
and dies on her return home after the completion of her sentence. As Beer comments, 
“She is disposed of before she can return to embarrass everybody, with no more than a 
stilted comment from Dinah … and regret from Arthur Donnithorne that he cannot salve 
his conscience with some sort of handout” (206). Kennard adds, “We are never asked to 
accept Hetty as mature, merely as punished for her past” (114). This, perhaps, is why 
Eliot chooses to sentence Hetty to death—she learns no lessons and does not undergo any 
fundamental change in character. Her soul is beyond even the capabilities of Dinah to 
save. 
Like her first novel Adam Bede, Eliot‟s last novel, Daniel Deronda, written 17 years 
later, explores the choices made by a spoiled girl and the consequences that result. Daniel 
Wyko 15 
 
Deronda is a novel with two main story lines. The title character, Deronda, learns about 
his Jewish roots and eventually devotes himself to the study of Judaica. However, a good 
portion of the novel is dedicated to Gwendolen Harleth, her pursuit of a wealthy husband, 
and her unfortunate marriage.  
Gwendolen is born to the life that Hetty Sorrel dreams of—she is a gentlewoman of a 
good family, albeit one that has fallen on hard times financially. Gwendolen is the center 
of her family, and all her life, people have dedicated themselves to making her happy. 
Her mother “clung chiefly to her eldest girl, who had been born in her happier time” 
(Daniel Deronda 17), and she was “the pet and pride of the household, waited on by 
mother, sisters, governess and maids, as if she had been a princess in exile” (Daniel 
Deronda 17). As a result, she has a sense of entitlement—she has always been given her 
own way; thus she always expects to get her own way. As Jean E. Kennard describes her: 
 She is presented as a conceited girl who has „a sense of superior claims‟ 
and is continually bored with what life offers her. She has a command, a 
presence, a combination of beauty and physical grace, which draws 
attention to her and makes even her mother treat her as „a queen in exile.‟ 
She has a strong will, insisting on her own comfort even to the extent of 
refusing to fetch her mother‟s painkilling medicine in the middle of the 
night (131-2). 
Gwendolen is more reluctant in her ambition than Hetty. Though she is determined to 
acquire a rich husband, she pursues this ambition mainly because there are few other 
options for her. Gwendolen‟s true goal is happiness and independence, and though she 
does not anticipate finding happiness in marriage, she believes that it will offer her more 
Wyko 16 
 
opportunities to be independent than, for example, becoming a governess. Indeed, after 
observing her mother‟s unhappiness with her second marriage, Gwendolen is skeptical 
that marriage is the key to her happiness at all, and happiness is what she insists upon: “I 
am determined to be happy—at least not to go on muddling away my life as other people 
do, being and doing nothing remarkable. I have made up my mind not to let other people 
interfere with me as they have done” (Daniel Deronda 22). Those around her expect her 
to make a “brilliant marriage” (Daniel Deronda 30)—she is beautiful and charming and 
not so impoverished that she appears to be a fortune hunter. However, she is less 
interested in marriage than she is in the negotiations: “To be very much sued or 
hopelessly sighed for as a bride was indeed an indispensable and agreeable guarantee of 
womanly power; but to become a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that condition, 
was on the whole a vexatious necessity” (Daniel Deronda 31).  
Despite her pursuit of a husband, Gwendolen actually appears to be asexual. Though 
she enjoys the “womanly power” of being pursued by her cousin Rex Gascoigne and her 
eventual husband Henleigh Grandcourt, “she objected, with sort of physical repulsion, to 
being directly made love to” (Daniel Deronda 60). Eliot‟s description of Gwendolen in 
the first part of the novel makes Gwendolen seem strikingly like Diana the huntress of 
Greek and Roman myth—she hunts with the men against her family‟s wishes, she wins 
the gold star at the Archery Meeting, and “there was a certain fierceness of maidenhood 
in her” (Daniel Deronda 60). Like a goddess, she is content with being worshipped, but 
she finds distaste in being romanced. Allison Booth remarks, “Gwendolen‟s greater 
likeness to a pagan goddess than a Christian martyr parallels her endeavor to be a ruler 
rather than a subject” (Booth 257).  
Wyko 17 
 
Though Grandcourt suspects Gwendolen of infidelity (or at the very least, 
impropriety) with Daniel Deronda after their marriage, Gwendolen never shows any sign 
of being attracted to Deronda. She looks upon him instead as a spiritual advisor—he fills 
the role of priest, not lover. Gwendolen goes to him for confession and acts of contrition 
instead of romantic trysts. As Dorothea Barrett notes, “George Eliot suggests that Daniel 
is not capable of sexual interaction” (169). She continues, “Both Gwendolen and Mirah 
first encounter Daniel in a long mutual look, but neither woman blushes, as the narrator 
takes pains to tell us. Daniel‟s effect is not sexual” (169). 
Gwendolen also does not enjoy the company of women, mainly because “women did 
not give her homage” (Daniel Deronda 100). As Linda Hunt notes: 
 When Gwendolen comes to Offendene, she takes a dim view of her own 
sex. … While she is strongly attached to her mothe r, she treats her with a 
combination of infantile selfishness and marked disdain. Gwendolen is 
convinced that she will manage marital matters better than did her mother 
whose two marriages were unhappy, and feels thoroughly superior to Mrs. 
Davilow‟s suffering. She has no interest in being part of female society 
(158).  
She continues, “Seeing the powerlessness of women and their tendency to be victims, 
Gwendolen arrogantly refuses to identify with her sex” (159). Nevertheless, as Booth 
comments, “In spite of parading as huntress … Gwendolen unconsciously understands 
her role as huntsman‟s prey or explorer‟s prize” (257). Kennard concurs, “In spite of her 
fear of sexuality, Gwendolen is finally forced to attempt to satisfy her ambitions through 
marriage, though she initially yearns for success outside it” (132). Especially when faced 
Wyko 18 
 
with her family‟s financial failure, there is no other option for Gwendolen except 
obtaining a rich husband. 
Gwendolen‟s ultimate ambition is to marry well but to retain her independent 
personality: “She meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner; or rather, 
whatever she could do so as to strike others with admiration” (Daniel Deronda 31). 
Booth notes, “Though men objectify (Gwendolen) either as an animal to be tamed … or a 
creature who turns men to animals … she figures herself as masterful subject” (258). 
Gwendolen has been raised to believe that she is extraordinary, and to be an ordinary 
wife with an ordinary life is simply unacceptable. Linda Hunt comments, “She is unable 
to imaginatively transcend the social forms pertaining to women, so there is no actual 
basis for her unique expectations” (159). To her, marriage is a necessary evil, something 
that she must endure to get the independence she desires.  To that end, she gains the 
admiration of the wealthy Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt, seen by her family and 
neighbors to be an excellent match, by excelling at the archery match and by ignoring 
him. Grandcourt appeals to her more than her scorned lover Rex Gascoigne in that “he is 
not ridiculous” (Daniel Deronda 96). 
Nonetheless, she rejects Grandcourt after meeting his mistress, Lydia Glasher, and 
promising her that she will not wed Grandcourt. This is no hardship for her, since 
Gwendolen does not find Grandcourt attractive or very interesting and had already 
resolved to reject him before concluding “that the life of an unmarried woman who could 
not go about and had no command of anything must necessarily be dull through all 
degrees of comparison as time went on” (Daniel Deronda 98).  
Wyko 19 
 
Things begin to go wrong for Gwendolen when she discovers that her family is 
ruined—all that awaits her on her return from abroad is a life of poverty and deprivation. 
With her family‟s financial reversal go all her hopes of a good marriage, independence 
and having her own way. She must turn her thoughts to providing for herself and her 
family. Her uncle obtains two possible situations for her as a governess for a bishop‟s 
family or as an instructor in a high class school, neither of which appeals to Gwendolen. 
If she must earn a living for herself, she decides that she would like to be an actress, a 
career that would allow her to be admired and adored from afar as she likes. Herr 
Klesmer thwarts this plan, however, when he explains to her the hard work and scant 
rewards awaiting a beginning actress, as well as the lack of success she would likely 
encounter as an untrained, undisciplined novice. As Hunt notes, though new opportunities 
for women had opened up by this time, Eliot does not include these options for 
Gwendolen:  
When her family suffers financial reverses, Gwendolen has two choices: 
she must either marry or become a governess. New employment 
possibilities for women are ignored and so is any suggestion that answers 
to Gwendolen‟s plight not yet available may become so in the future 
through social change (Hunt 166-7). 
In Grandcourt‟s eyes, poverty becomes Gwendolen. She rejected him when she still 
had the potential to attract other rich suitors, but a penniless girl, however pretty she may 
be, does not have the same opportunities to mix in society as one with some money, and 
few men would be willing to take on a wife who has nothing to offer but a pretty face. 
Wyko 20 
 
With her family‟s bankruptcy, Gwendolen has everything to gain by marrying 
Grandcourt, which is what he counts on. As Barrett comments:  
Gwendolen‟s desire to protect and provide for her mother differs from a 
man‟s desire to protect and provide for his family only in that Gwendolen 
has not been given the education and is not given the opportunity to do so 
in a healthy and satisfying way. She can and does provide for her family 
by selling herself to Grandcourt—and this is the only solution left open to 
her after she has been more or less told by Klesmer that such talents as she 
possesses are marketable only on the marriage market (167).  
Patricia Beer notes: 
The financial considerations that impel Gwendolen into marrying 
Grandcourt are felt to be inexorable. Genuinely the only alternative for her 
is to take a post as governess with Mrs. Mompert, the Bishop‟s wife, and 
this is made to seem as impossible to us as it does to her, though we may 
perhaps feel that Mrs. Mompert might have been the greater sufferer had 
the arrangement gone through (191). 
Though she has vowed not to accept Grandcourt because of his mistress and children, 
he offers her escape from poverty, rescue for her family, and the hope of fulfilling her 
ambition of independence and admiration. Indeed, she declares her independence as soon 
as they are engaged: 
“I notice when people are married the husband is not so much with his wife as 
when they are engaged. But perhaps I shall like that better, too.” 
She laughed charmingly. 
Wyko 21 
 
“You shall have whatever you like,” said Grandcourt. 
“And nothing that I don‟t like?—please say that; because I think I dislike what 
I don't like more than I like what I like,” said Gwendolen, finding herself in the 
woman‟s paradise, where all her nonsense is adorable (Daniel Deronda 227). 
Gwendolen‟s marriage to Grandcourt ultimately fulfills her ambitions (so she thinks). 
As Barrett notes, “Grandcourt sees Gwendolen as a commodity to be acquired and used 
for her sexual and ornamental value; Gwendolen sees Grandcourt as a commodity to be 
acquired and used for his monetary and prestige value” (163). Gwendolen makes a match 
that gives her greater social status and admiration, and she believes that she has chosen a 
man whose wealth and temperament will allow her to pursue whatever interests she 
desires. She gets what she wants—and is punished for it. 
Gwendolen has committed two crimes for which she is punished: she has succumbed 
to mercenary desires and has married not for love but for money, and she has broken the 
promise she made to Lydia Glasher, who does not hesitate to remind Gwendolen that she 
has gone back on her word. In a letter to Gwendolen, Lydia Glasher curses her and vows 
punishment. However, Gwendolen is quick to punish herself and feels horribly guilty at 
breaking her promise. Gwendolen has a strong conscience, and when she believes she has 
done wrong, she imposes penance upon herself. However, the enormity of the wrong she 
perceives that she has committed upon Lydia Glasher and her children is beyond her 
ability to punish herself. She is also filled with self-loathing for having broken her vow. 
A solution presents itself in her chosen husband and their life together. Patricia Beer 
remarks:  
Wyko 22 
 
After a courtship where Gwendolen is made to feel she is complete 
mistress of the situation, a complete reversal of the balance of power takes 
place, so that within a few weeks she not only comes to obey Grandcourt 
but to fear him. His stranglehold over her is something we almost 
physically feel, as she herself does (187).  
Dorothea Barrett comments:  
Gwendolen moves from a pleasant anticipation of mounting to the 
uncomfortable realization of being mounted. This is a double-edged 
metaphor: on the level of power struggle, Gwendolen is unpleasantly 
surprised to find herself dominated where she had hoped to dominate; on 
the level of sexual symbolism, the sexual aversion we witness in her 
repulse of Rex becomes sexual terror as she realized that Grandcourt‟s 
coldness does not, as she had thought, exempt her from sexual obligations 
in marriage but rather obliges her to be subjected to cold, power-seeking, 
and loveless sex (162). 
Gwendolen is filled with hate and revulsion for Grandcourt following her receipt of 
Lydia Glasher‟s letter. She is reminded that her husband abandoned a woman that he had 
ruined, along with his children. Grandcourt perceives her revulsion and her fear of him, 
and he quickly becomes master of her. As Booth notes, “Grandcourt‟s perfect demeanor 
and respectability mask the misogynist brutality condoned by genteel practices” (258). 
He chose Gwendolen for the pleasure of breaking her spirit, or as Gwendolen notes, “He 
delights in making the dogs and horses quail: that is half his pleasure in calling them his. 
It will come to be so with me; and I shall quail. What else is there for me? I will not say 
Wyko 23 
 
to the world, „Pity me‟” (Daniel Deronda386). Beer comments, “Grandcourt wants the 
fun of dominating a spirited girl who is to be a kind of supernumerary and more complex 
horse or dog” (Beer 193). Gwendolen‟s ambition of being the ruling force in her marriage 
crumbles. Eliot makes note of this:  “... the poor thing‟s belief in her power, with her 
other dreams before marriage, had often to be thrust aside now like the toys of a sick 
child, which it looks at with dull eyes, and has no heart to play with, however it may try” 
(Daniel Deronda 374). Grandcourt keeps her in check through subtle verbal and 
emotional abuse, and Gwendolen, who once had such belief in her own power, submits to 
his abuse because she believes she deserves it for breaking her vow. As Eliot writes, “Her 
confidence in herself and her destiny had turned into remorse and dread; she trusted 
neither herself nor her future” (Daniel Deronda 389).  
Gwendolen‟s chosen penance for wronging Lydia Glasher is to remain her marriage, 
but she feels that it is more than she could bear. “At one point she seriously contemplates 
leaving Grandcourt,” Beer notes, “but dismisses the idea on entirely practical grounds” 
(191). “Morally repugnant,” as Kennard notes, “is … just what Gwendolen begins to find 
him under the suffering her marriage brings. She gradually begins to change, a change 
which is revealed chiefly in conversations with Deronda. She admits her selfishness and 
begins to act more generously towards her mother and sisters” (133). She turns to 
Deronda, believing that he can help her. Though he does pity Gwendolen and wants to 
help her, his absorption in the fate of Mirah Lapidoth and his eventual discovery of his 
Jewish background leave him unable to give Gwendolen the complete guidance she 
desires. Gwendolen‟s hatred and fear of Grandcourt begins to consume her, and her 
thoughts turn darker; she fantasizes about murdering her husband.  It is in this mood that 
Wyko 24 
 
she goes out in the yacht with Grandcourt, and he drowns after being struck from the 
boat. Gwendolen hesitates to save him at first, then, when it is too late, throws herself 
into the water after him. “Having „chosen‟ badly in marriage,” Richard Kaye remarks, 
“Gwendolen finds liberation through a brutal split-second decision that borders on 
manslaughter” (140). 
Unlike Eliot‟s characterization of Hetty Sorrel, it is evident that Gwendolen has it in 
her to be a killer. As Patricia Beer notes, “George Eliot makes it clear from the first 
paragraph of Daniel Deronda that there is evil in her. Daniel feels it as he watches her at 
the gaming table; Mr. Vandervoordt likens her to a snake” (200). Eliot writes that in a fit 
of temper, Gwendolen once killed her sister‟s canary. Hunt‟s explanation of Gwendolen‟s 
act of killing the canary is that “Gwendolen‟s murderous impulse is an expression of her 
anger at the restrictions women endure and her determination not to be part of such a 
victimized group” (160). As the abused wife of a sadist, Gwendolen‟s hesitation in 
rescuing Grandcourt can be seen as another impulse to not be a victim and to escape the 
restrictions put upon her. Kennard comments, “It is the recognition of the will to destroy 
in herself and her desire to conquer it that truly begins Gwendolen‟s spiritual 
rehabilitation” (133). 
It seems now that Gwendolen‟s ambitions are truly fulfilled—she is rid of her abusive 
husband and should inherit his estates and wealth since he left no legitimate heir. 
However, again her ambitions are thwarted. She is wracked with guilt over Grandcourt‟s 
death, though Deronda notes that she could not have saved him. Again, Gwendolen turns 
to Deronda for guidance—he urges her to use her life for good—to become “one of the 
best of women, who make others glad that they were born” (Daniel Deronda 736). As 
Wyko 25 
 
Dorothea Barrett comments, “In Daniel Deronda, (Eliot) destroys the coercive man and 
insists that the only path to change in Gwendolen is personal evolution with the guidance 
of an ideal, personified in Daniel” (158). Gwendolen‟s “good” marriage has destroyed 
her confidence, and she is back where she started, at Offendene with her mother. Her new 
goal is to live simply and for others as Deronda has suggested. Barrett remarks that  
Daniel‟s guidance helps Gwendolen through her crisis, but the 
metamorphosis it affects in her is not all positive. It diminishes her, as 
marriage diminishes Dinah and Dorothea. The Gwendolen of the opening 
scenes might have been vain, manipulative, deluded, and selfish but she 
was also powerful and monumental (172).  
At the end of the novel, this spoiled girl is broken by the fulfillment of her ambition. 
Hetty Sorrel and Gwendolen Harleth are selfish characters with selfish ambitions. 
They are more concerned for their own wealth and happiness than they are for their 
fellow man. Gwendolen, at least, is transformed by the punishment she undergoes. After 
experiencing cruelty at the hands of Grandcourt, Gwendolen makes more of an effort to 
be kind to her sisters and her mother, and she strives to live for others, as Daniel Deronda 
has suggested, and to be a better woman. As a result, she is allowed to live in relative 
peace at home again with her mother. Though Hetty, too, receives counsel from a 
spiritual advisor—Dinah Morris—she does not take Dinah‟s words, urging her to turn to 
God in times of trouble, to heart. Instead, when she discovers her pregnancy, she looks to 
Donnithorne to save her, not God. Indeed, when Hetty is on her way to the gallows, 
though she clings to Dinah and the spiritual salvation she represents, it is man—
Donnithorne—who is her savior. He brings her a pardon and a temporary reprieve from 
Wyko 26 
 
death. But there is no redemption for Hetty. She never comes to an understanding that 
other people have lives and feelings and needs as well, and her world begins and ends 
with herself. Thus, she receives the ultimate punishment from Eliot: death. 
Wyko 27 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 2 
THE MARTYRS 
 
Methodist preacher Dinah Morris of Adam Bede and the passionate Dorothea Brooke 
of Middlemarch are George Eliot‟s martyrs. They believe that they are meant for a higher 
purpose and are willing to sacrifice their personal desires in the service of others. Both 
women are admired by their family and friends but are also thought to be too odd or 
different—they don‟t quite fit in. While the women who surround them are hoping for 
good marriages, Dinah and Dorothea have other ideas. Dinah quietly rejects the idea of 
marriage. She has a calling to be a preacher, and she believes that marriage would 
interfere with her duty to God. Dorothea does not want to marry the type of man her 
family and Middlemarch society expect her to, personified in the character of Sir James 
Chettam. Instead, she wishes to devote herself, mind and body, to an intellectual. It is her 
ambition to serve another John Milton or Richard Hooker. Dinah and Dorothea are 
altruistically ambitious, but this does not help redeem them. It is not normal even for 
good Victorian girls to want to serve people outside of their own homes—they are meant 
to be of service to their husbands and families—and Eliot metes out punishment 
accordingly.  
Dinah and Dorothea are very similar women in very different circumstances. One 
could just as easily picture Dorothea preaching to the poor out on the green as Dinah, and 
had she found herself independently wealthy, Dinah might have spent her time designing 
cottages and trying to better the poorer people around her, just as Dorothea did. Their 
Wyko 28 
 
lives are outwardly not very similar, but they are “sisters under their skins.” Dinah could 
even be seen as something of a “rough draft” of Dorothea since Adam Bede was written 
13 years before Middlemarch. Dinah is more reserved than Dorothea—Dinah would 
never have outbursts of temper like Dorothea occasionally does with Casaubon—and is 
perhaps a bit too perfect. Dorothea‟s temper and barely restrained passion make her more 
interesting than Dinah, who is always in control and completely pure. This is evidence of 
how Eliot‟s writing matured between writing Adam Bede and Middlemarch. Dorothea is 
more fleshed out, more human than Dinah, who is practically otherworldly in her 
goodness. 
The people around Dinah and Dorothea see them in similar ways. The people of 
Hayslope liked Dinah, not just because they respected her uncle, but because they saw 
that she was genuine and did genuine good among the people. She was a source of 
comfort to Lizbeth Bede when her husband died, and she was useful to her aunt Poyser. 
But at the same time, people didn‟t think she should be traveling through the countryside 
and preaching. It wasn‟t proper, and she was considered odd because of it, as well as for 
being a Methodist. The people of Hayslope dismissed her ambitions and shook their 
heads over her, but she was respected for her own sake. Dorothea, too, wants to help the 
poor, but no one takes her seriously. Her uncle is condescending, and Sir James Chettam 
only takes interest in her plans for the cottages because he wants to marry her. Celia 
wishes Dorothea was more frivolous and feminine since Dorothea can‟t even summon 
interest in their mother‟s jewelry. She gets frustrated with Dorothea‟s constant self-denial 
and abstinence. No one can understand what Dorothea sees in Edward Casaubon, though 
her uncle concedes that Dorothea might prefer the quiet life Casaubon leads.  The people 
Wyko 29 
 
of Middlemarch see her as an eccentric with odd habits, but they assume she‟ll “grow 
out” of them or that when she marries, she‟ll become “normal.” 
Dinah and Dorothea‟s ambitions are along the same lines: they both want to help 
others. They‟re both considered to be odd and eccentric for having these ambitions. They 
shouldn‟t want to help others. They should be thinking about marriage and babies and 
keeping house because that was what Victorian women were supposed to do. 
Though Dinah and Dorothea are both punished for their ambitions, Eliot seems to 
have more sympathy for them than she does for spoiled girls Hetty Sorrel and Gwendolen 
Harleth. Laura Morgan Green notes that Dinah and Dorothea are among Eliot‟s “most 
socially effective heroines,” meaning that they fulfill Eliot‟s ideal that women should be 
self-sacrificing and devote themselves to the service of others. As Green writes, “She 
celebrates … their exclusion from institutions of cultural influence, as a kind of purity, 
and the compensation that she supplies is nostalgic—the reward of martyrdom” (73). 
Indeed, both Dinah and Dorothea suffer for their ambitions, though Eliot ultimately gives 
each a happy, if not especially fulfilling, ending. 
Dinah Morris shares the stage in Adam Bede with spoiled girl Hetty Sorrel and stands 
in contrast to coquettish, selfish Hetty. As Kimberly Reynolds and Nicola Humble 
remark:  
In adult fiction, women writers tended to use one member of the pair to 
represent domestic ideals and the other to embody worldliness and sexual 
experience. The former is generally successful and rewarded with 
marriage and motherhood while the latter fails with the loss of her virtue 
(35).  
Wyko 30 
 
Hetty is the “failure” of the two women, falling victim to an unplanned pregnancy, 
committing infanticide and being convicted of murder. Dinah is rewarded for her virtue 
and her service to the poor. Though Dinah eventually does become a wife and mother, as 
Adam Bede begins, her only goal is to continue her ministry among the people of 
Hayslope and Snowfield.  
Dinah is the only one of George Eliot‟s ambitious women to have her dream fulfilled 
at the outset, yet to the people of Hayslope and to 19th century readers, she is a curiosity. 
Susan Rowland Tush remarks, “Although there were female preachers in the late 
eighteenth and early nineteenth century, in conventional religious fiction, women were 
relegated to the role of prized convert, never religious leaders in their own right” (26). A 
large crowd gathers to hear her preach, at her first appearance in chapter 2 of Adam Bede, 
yet more are there to gawk at the Methodist woman than to hear the word of God. Even 
the traveler passing through Hayslope stops to listen when “curiosity to see the young 
female preacher proved too much for his anxiety to get to the end of his journey” (Adam 
Bede 15). Dinah is given some deference initially because her aunt‟s husband, Poyser, is 
a well-respected farmer in Hayslope. As Mr. Casson says, “Poyser wouldn‟t like to hear 
as his wife‟s niece was treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn‟t be fond of her 
taking on herself to preach.” (Adam Bede 20).  
However, once Dinah begins speaking, her simple yet earnest way of preaching wins 
the respect, if not the conversion of the crowd. She has a way of addressing her audience 
that makes them stop and listen. As the traveler observes, “…she had thoroughly arrested 
her hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no longer anything but 
grave attention on all faces” (Adam Bede 26). Christine L. Krueger remarks:  
Wyko 31 
 
Dinah‟s sermons, extemporaneous prayers, and dialogue are among some 
of the best extant examples of evangelical preaching rhetoric; her language 
so closely resembles that found in women preachers‟ letters, memoirs, and 
biographies that one historian of Methodism treated George Eliot‟s 
character as a real person (251).  
Dinah believes what she says, and she truly wants to do God‟s will in the world and 
to help the poor people among whom she lives and works. The traveler notes, “She was 
not preaching as she heard others preach, but speaking directly from her own emotions 
and under the inspiration of her own simple faith” (Adam Bede 27). Her goal is to 
continue with her ministry. 
Dinah‟s conflict comes from her belief that marriage and ministry do not mix. In the 
early chapters of Adam Bede, Dinah rejects Seth Bede‟s proposal for this very reason. As 
she explains to him:  
My heart is not free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a 
great and a blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but „as God has 
distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him 
walk.‟ God has called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or 
sorrows of my own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep 
with those that weep. …  My life is too short, and God‟s work is too great 
for me to think of making a home for myself in this world (Adam Bede 34-
35).  
She tells him that she has gone to her Bible for guidance, as was the Methodist 
practice, and each time she meditated on the idea of marriage, her Bible has pointed her 
Wyko 32 
 
another way. “I desire to live and die without husband or children,” Dinah says. “I seem 
to have no room in my soul for wants and fears of my own, it has pleased God to fill my 
heart so full with the wants and sufferings of his poor people” (Adam Bede 35).  
In the traditional Victorian marriage, there would be no room, too, for Dinah‟s 
extraneous pursuits. As Philippa Levine notes, “For the woman who did enter wedlock, 
marriage spelled, simultaneously, a loss of freedom in both political and financial 
matters, perhaps domestic drudgery and frequent pregnancy” (150). If she married, Dinah 
would have to submit to the wishes of her husband—indeed, the Bible told her as much: 
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is 
the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the 
body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own 
husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5: 22-24). As Paula Marantz Cohen notes, “This 
basic inequality (men and women in the family) was, of course, an accepted part of the 
nineteenth-century ideology of „separate spheres,‟ which dictated that the woman was the 
emotional helpmate of the man … as well as his legal subordinate” (21).  
Nonetheless, Dinah has all the qualities of a good wife and mother in addition to her 
natural aptitude for preaching. Kimberly Reynolds and Nicola Humble note, “Dinah 
Morris, for all that she wanders unescorted (except by God) in her capacity as Methodist 
preacher, is the only young woman who could possibly clean and cook to old Mrs. 
Bede‟s satisfaction” (35). Dinah‟s Aunt Poyser tells her that “there‟d be plenty ready to 
have you, if you‟d only leave off that preaching” (Adam Bede 79) though she has no 
confidence that Dinah would actually do so. “I know it „ud be just the same if I was to 
talk to you for hours,” she says, when Dinah explains that she “can no more help 
Wyko 33 
 
spending my life in trying to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help 
running if you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house” (Adam Bede 80). 
Dinah is firm in her beliefs and utterly convince she is doing the will of God. As Susan 
Rowland Tush comments, “George Eliot … very carefully establishes Dinah‟s religious 
credentials long before showing her heroine‟s romantic interests” (27). 
Thus it is all the more disconcerting for Dinah when she realizes she has fallen in love 
with Adam Bede. When she first discovers her feelings for Adam, she rushes from the 
room weeping and turns to prayer, or, as her little cousin Totty remarks, “Dinah was 
saying her prayers and crying ever so” (Adam Bede 502). For the first time, Dinah finds 
herself reluctant to do what she feels is her duty. She tells her Aunt Poyser and Adam that 
she must return to Snowfield and her ministry there, but she tells Adam, “I know it is a 
vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us” (Adam Bede 503). When Adam 
declares his love for her, Dinah still resists, calling her love for him “a great temptation,” 
and reiterating that “the command was clear that I must go away” (Adam Bede 530). As 
Tush notes, “Like many of her more zealous religious predecessors, Dinah fears earthly, 
romantic love as an impediment to her love for God” (24). Dinah is convinced that “since 
my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. 
I have felt as it were a division in my heart” (Adam Bede 531). 
Tush and Krueger both suggest that what Dinah fears most is not division from God 
but the loss of independence. Her preaching has given her freedoms that the average 
woman of the time did not enjoy: she could travel alone and at her leisure and she could 
speak freely to men and women alike of any station. Tush notes that  
Wyko 34 
 
if Dinah‟s demand for independence were not couched in her religious 
belief, the radical nature of her independence in a Victorian heroine would 
be more immediately apparent. As it is, Dinah‟s adherence to her religion 
acts as a camouflage for her emancipation, which allows her more 
freedom of choice than any other of George Eliot‟s heroines. Dinah has a 
professional „career,‟ and because this career is devoted to God, she has 
autonomy from any human authority (32-33).  
Krueger comments, “When Dinah at first refuses to marry Adam Bede, whom she 
does love, she casts her argument in terms of duty versus desire. But Dinah‟s language 
suggests that her desire for Adam threatens her desire for authority, rather than her 
conventionally feminine duty” (260). She adds, “Dinah uses her vocation as an argument 
against domestication, the imposition on her freedom of allegedly „natural, lawful 
affections‟” (261). Tush agrees and notes, “Even after Dinah knows that Adam does love 
her, her greatest objection to marrying is still that it will tie her down” (33). 
Dinah is resolute and returns to her work in Snowfield, yet after only a few short 
weeks of separation, when Adam comes to her, her feelings have changed. “It is the 
Divine Will,” she tells Adam. “My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I 
live without you” (Adam Bede 554). She tells him that his presence gives her “a fullness 
of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father‟s Will that I had lost before” (Adam Bede 
554). Dinah and Adam are married soon after, and Dinah receives her punishment for 
being ambitious: the Methodist Conference forbids preaching by women, so Dinah must 
give up her ministry. As Krueger explains:  
Wyko 35 
 
The Conference of 1802 debated the question of women preaching. The 
result was a resolution „that it is contrary to both Scripture and prudence 
that women should preach or exhort in public.‟ As a deterrent to further 
disobedience, the Conference decided to exclude from Methodist meetings 
all women who continued to preach. This is the step which curtailed Dinah 
Morris‟s preaching in Adam Bede (75).  
Jean E. Kennard expresses disappointment in Dinah‟s marriage and abandonment of 
her work. “The problem with Dinah‟s conversion and subsequent marriage to Adam is 
that she appears so fully human when we see her as preacher. Her preaching is natural to 
her and her constant effort is toward alleviating other‟s pain,” she comments.  
Suddenly, at the end, Dinah abruptly reverses her position and abandons 
her objection to being „enslaved to an earthly affection.‟ She gives up 
preaching—it is convenient that the Methodist conference chooses this 
moment to forbid women to preach—and marries Adam (Kennard 116). 
Dinah, who is the purest of George Eliot‟s heroines, seems to find satisfaction in her 
role as wife and mother, so her punishment is not as severe as that which befalls her 
cousin Hetty Sorrel or Daniel Deronda’s Gwendolen Harleth. As Tush remarks, “George 
Eliot uses Dinah‟s character to demonstrate the need for personal fulfillment in this world 
rather than waiting for rewards supposedly found in the next” (22-23). She adds, “As 
Dinah ultimately realizes and explains to Adam, her life, rather than being limited by her 
love, is expanded” (25). Dinah is even able to continue her work somewhat, as Krueger 
notes, “Rather than continuing her attempt to penetrate a public discourse, Dinah turns, 
like some of her historical counterparts, to indirect, subversive rhetorical techniques. She 
Wyko 36 
 
continues to engage in private, hidden practices, „talking to people a bit in their houses‟ 
(262). Thus, though she cannot maintain the career she had before her marriage, Dinah is 
rewarded with her happy ending. 
Like spoiled girls Hetty Sorrel and Gwendolen Harleth, Middlemarch‟s Dorothea 
Brooke‟s ambition is to marry wealthy. However, unlike Hetty and Gwendolen, Dorothea 
is not looking for financial wealth but intellectual wealth. She pictures herself as 
ministering to someone with a great mind, such as the theologian Richard Hooker or the 
poet John Milton. She envisions herself as a secretary and muse, making life easier for 
her chosen scholar and aiding in his research and studies. But like Dinah Morris, 
Dorothea is a genuinely good person and is well liked by her family and friends, though 
they think she is odd. She is too intense for a woman and has too many opinions of her 
own. As Lloyd Fernando notes, “Her behavior does not conform to the accepted 
conventions regarding the well-brought-up young woman. She is not satisfied with the 
only two avenues open to her: charitable activity or marriage” (42). Nevertheless, 
Dorothea is determined to give both options her best attempts. She takes great delight in 
ministering to the poor—she has set up a school for young children in Tipton, and she 
spends her free time designing cottages for her uncle‟s renters. And she has no objections 
to the idea of marriage so long as she can marry on her own terms, which means rejecting 
Sir James Chettam, who Middlemarch society expects her to marry. Dorothea does 
expect to marry eventually—indeed, the thought of not marrying probably had never 
occurred to her. 
In Victorian society, women were expected to marry. As Philippa Levine writes, 
“Women who did not marry—those whom the Victorians, with characteristic linguistic 
Wyko 37 
 
inelegance, dubbed „surplus women‟—were seen as doomed to an unhappily penniless 
and lonely existence, unenriched by the social cachet and putative material comforts of 
the marital state” (151). Though Dorothea would not be penniless and lonely if she did 
not marry—she had a comfortable inheritance coming to her and would likely spend her 
days tending to Celia‟s children—she saw marriage as a means of obtaining some 
measure of freedom where she could pursue an extended education and perhaps put into 
motion some of her social improvement schemes like her cottages. “The really delightful 
marriage,” according to Dorothea, “must be that where your husband was a sort of father, 
and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it” (Middlemarch 10). 
Dorothea has settled upon her ambition—to serve an intellectual in whatever capacity 
she can, and she finds her subject shortly, when the Rev. Edward Casaubon comes to dine 
at Tipton Grange. By the end of the first evening of their acquaintance, Dorothea has 
decided “that Mr. Casaubon was the most interesting man she had ever seen” 
(Middlemarch 18) and she can already picture herself fulfilling his needs as he explains, 
“I want a reader for my evenings; but I am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure 
listening to an imperfect reader. … But I find it necessary to use the utmost caution about 
my eyesight” (Middlemarch 17-18).  
In Casaubon, Dorothea finds someone she can talk to about “certain themes which 
she could speak of to no one whom she had before seen at Tipton” (Middlemarch 25). As 
she wishes, his knowledge far exceeds her own: “he thinks a whole world of which my 
thought is but a poor twopenny mirror. And his feelings too, his whole experience—what 
a lake compared with my little pool!” (Middlemarch 25). Casaubon takes interest in 
Dorothea as well, noting to her “that he felt the disadvantage of loneliness, the need of 
Wyko 38 
 
that cheerful companionship with which the presence of youth can lighten or vary the 
serious toils of maturity” (Middlemarch 26). As she begins to believe that Casaubon may 
propose, Dorothea sees all her ambitions coming to fruition, and delights in the idea that 
the paths of knowledge were opening up before her.  
Though Casaubon is not the husband her friends and family would choose for her, 
Dorothea‟s chosen husband is not completely unconventional. Kimberley Reynolds and 
Nicola Humble remark, “Dorothea‟s choice of Casaubon, though surprising to her family 
and friends, is certainly in a familiar tradition of father-daughter styled marriages in 
Victorian literature” (17). Her uncle, Mr. Brooke, has his reservations about the match 
and attempts to dissuade her or at least postpone a marriage, pointing out that Casaubon 
is 27 years older than Dorothea and not in the best health. However, he also notes that 
Casaubon has a good income and says tells Dorothea, “You are not fond of show, a great 
establishment, balls, dinners, that kind of thing. I can see that Casaubon‟s ways might suit 
you better than Chettam‟s” (Middlemarch 41). In the end, the choice is Dorothea‟s, and 
she is adamant in choosing Casaubon. As Susan Rowland Tush writes, “Even Sir James 
as an unofficial rejected lover, and something less than a paragon of intellect, recognizes 
Dorothea‟s dignity of choice. Whatever mistakes this heroine makes, it is not from 
external coercion but rather by her own prerogative” (130).  
Dorothea is firm in her decision to marry Casaubon, but even before the wedding 
takes place, Eliot foreshadows Dorothea‟s eventual unhappiness. In preparation for her 
marriage, instead of picking out trousseau, Dorothea asks Casaubon if it should be 
helpful to him that she learn Latin and Greek. When he tacitly agrees, she plunges into 
study but is shocked and dismayed to discover that she does not have a natural aptitude 
Wyko 39 
 
for the languages and struggles to learn. She is disappointed yet again when she visits her 
future home at Lowick. Though Casaubon‟s home is everything she could desire, his 
estate is well maintained, and “She felt some disappointment, of which she was yet 
ashamed, that there was nothing for her to do in Lowick” (Middlemarch 78). She 
consoles herself by thinking that she can still tend to Casaubon and that there might be 
duties awaiting her that she was not yet aware of.  
Dorothea seeks an occupation in her marriage—acting as a secretary of sorts for 
Casaubon and as the benevolent mistress of his estate. As Tush comments, “Dorothea 
knows real boredom, for, as she explains to Lydgate, she „has very little to do‟” (155). 
Though she is a wealthy woman, Tush notes, Dorothea is not able to use her money as 
she would wish: “What she would like to do with her money is to „make other people‟s 
lives better,‟ which, although sounding easy enough, proves not to be so” (155). Jean E. 
Kennard remarks that “Marriage to Casaubon is the only outlet offered for (Dorothea‟s) 
curious mind,” and this is not ideal: “Of course, Dorothea‟s willingness to satisfy her 
ambitions through any man is a second best choice. Like so many women of her 
generation, and a few in ours, she has been taught that glory for a woman was to be a 
reflected beam of her husband‟s” (Kennard 124). 
Dorothea believes that she has achieved her ambition when she marries Casaubon, 
but she is mistaken, and her punishment begins almost immediately. The Casaubons are 
still on their honeymoon when Dorothea starts to realize that Casaubon is not the man she 
imagined him to be, though Eliot points out that the fault is Dorothea‟s and not 
Casaubon‟s: “no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he 
was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in 
Wyko 40 
 
creating any illusions about himself” (Middlemarch 195). She has misunderstood 
Casaubon completely, and he cannot sympathize with her. As Kennard notes, “Dorothea 
has invented the Mr. Casaubon she marries … she is not perceptive enough to recognize 
that he, too, is the center of his own world” (125). Tush agrees, remarking that “From 
Casaubon‟s first appearance the reader knows that Dorothea‟s idealized version of him is 
an illusion” (119). 
As Dorothea reevaluates her new home and her marriage, she realizes that her 
ambitions of being a partner and helpmate to Casaubon may never come about, especially 
not as she first imagined her married life to be. When they are discussing the progress of 
Mr. Casaubon‟s studies during their stay in Rome, Dorothea expresses her desire to work 
for Mr. Casaubon and to assist him more when they return home. He acknowledges that 
she can help him sort his notes, and Dorothea, anxious to find her purpose in life, pushes 
him to begin work on his key to all mythologies, unaware that this is a sore spot with 
Casaubon. Feeling attacked, Casaubon speaks sharply to Dorothea, telling her, “you may 
rely upon me for knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to the different stages of a 
work which is not to be measured by the facile conjectures of ignorant onlookers” 
(Middlemarch 200-201). Angry in turn, Dorothea reiterates that she only wanted to help 
him, noting that, “You showed me the rows of notebooks—you have often spoken of 
them—you have often said that they wanted digesting. But I never heard you speak of the 
writing that is to be published. Those were very simple facts, and my judgment went no 
farther” (Middlemarch 201). As Kennard comments:  
Casaubon believes that women are gifted with „the capability of an ardent 
self-sacrificing affection‟ and should be subordinate to their husbands. 
Wyko 41 
 
Dorothea finds this self-sacrifice cold and unrewarding; Casaubon has 
little time for her even on their honeymoon and resists allowing her to help 
in his work (124-6). 
Marital harmony is even more elusive when the Casaubons return to Lowick. The 
home that Dorothea had once looked upon as needing no improvement at all now seems a 
dead and shrunken landscape. She does manage to get Casaubon to allow her to assist in 
his work, though he is reluctant: “she had succeeded in making it a matter of course that 
she should take her place at an early hour in the library and have work either of reading 
aloud or copying assigned her” (Middlemarch 281). However, as Kennard remarks, 
“Ironically, it is the very intelligence she hoped to satisfy in this marriage that makes her 
perceive Casaubon‟s faults as a scholar” (126), and thus, even this work that she had 
hoped to do is unsatisfying. 
Though she is unhappy in her marriage, Dorothea struggles to make it work as best as 
she can. As Tush notes, “Dorothea will attempt to make the best of her marriage, not 
because she is consciously aiming at being a paragon of religious perfection but because 
it is her nature” (133). The onset of Casaubon‟s health problems brings forth a purpose 
for Dorothea—she must become his nurse, keeping him from strenuous activity, too 
much study or any anxiety. “According to the official model,” Reynolds and Humble 
write: 
 Dorothea should now become the „angel in the house‟; her refined 
sensibilities should temper her husband‟s rougher nature and provide him 
with a haven of peace and virtue into which to retreat from the hurly-burly 
of the world. …Dorothea attempts a variation of this role in her 
Wyko 42 
 
ministrations (both academic and medical) to her husband, and finds it 
ultimately barren (17).  
Dorothea struggles with her duties as a wife even as Casaubon‟s health worsens. 
Casaubon attempts to extract a promise from Dorothea to complete his work—the key to 
all mythologies—when he dies, and Dorothea despairs because she knows it cannot be 
completed and she has no wish to try. Fortunately for her, Casaubon dies before she can 
give him an answer, and she is free again. 
Like Dinah, Dorothea is fundamentally good. Before her marriage, she occupies her 
time trying to make life more comfortable for the farmers who rented from her uncle and 
succeeds in attracting Sir James Chettam‟s interest in her cottages, thus helping to 
improve the lives of some of the poorer people among whom she lives. She shows 
compassion toward Tertius Lydgate when he is ruined by his involvement with 
Bulstrode. And despite her disappointed ambitions, Dorothea tries to be the best wife she 
can be to Casaubon. Thus, she is ultimately rewarded after Casaubon‟s death when she 
marries Will Ladislaw, whom she truly loves. 
Dorothea‟s marriage to Will is a source of contention, not just for her family and 
friends who believe Dorothea is making another marital misstep, but for readers and 
critics who also do not think that Will is good enough for Dorothea and that Dorothea 
should not have had to settle for being a wife and mother. Eliot herself writes in the finale 
of Middlemarch:  
Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a 
creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only 
known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly 
Wyko 43 
 
what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done—not even 
Sir James Chettam, who went no further than the negative prescription that 
she ought not to have married Will Ladislaw (Middlemarch 836).  
Zelda Austen suggests that  
Feminist critics are angry with George Eliot because she did not permit 
Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch to do what George Eliot did in real life: 
translate, publish articles, edit a periodical, refuse to marry until she was 
middle-aged, live an independent existence as a spinster, and finally live 
openly with a man whom she could not marry (549).  
Patricia Beer says that Dorothea‟s marriage to Ladislaw is only slightly less than 
tragic: “In terms of melancholy rather than tragedy the worst fate of all is surely that of 
Dorothea, happy wife of Will Ladislaw and happy mother of his children. How little she 
settles for” (179). Jean E. Kennard allows that “Dorothea Brooke, who after suffering for 
choosing the wrong suitor, Casaubon, marries the right suitor Will Ladislaw, is one of the 
few heroines in the nineteenth century fiction allowed to go on to happiness after the 
wrong choice” (121), but even she notes:  
The structure and imagery of the novel argue for seeing this marriage as 
the fulfillment of Dorothea‟s dreams, but we have surely been invited to 
see Dorothea as having a nobility, an intensity, that should not have been 
satisfied by Will Ladislaw nor indeed by becoming a copy of anyone else 
(128). 
Nevertheless, Will Ladislaw is the man Dorothea loves, and any success he has is 
likely due to her passion, support and encouragement. Rather than the scholar she once 
Wyko 44 
 
dreamed of and found in practice to be less than an ideal match, she winds up with 
politician who can right wrongs where she cannot: “Dorothea could have liked nothing 
better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle 
against them, and that she should give him wifely help” (Middlemarch 836). As Susan 
Rowland Tush remarks, “Dorothea herself is aware that, contrary to normal nineteenth 
century marriages, hers to Will will give her more freedom than she could have had as a 
widow. Dorothea paradoxically gains more control over her life by remarrying than by 
remaining single” (Tush 145). Tush explains that to George Eliot, this was the only 
possible realistic outcome for Dorothea:  
George Eliot, a realist in more than just her fiction, must have realized that 
the only other publishable ways to end a Victorian heroine‟s saga besides 
marriage, were death (like Maggie Tulliver) or perpetual chastity (like 
Romola de‟Bardi). These possibilities seem even less satisfactory for 
Dorothea than her less than perfect final marriage, especially since her 
obviously sexual marriage to Will counters her sterile marriage to 
Casaubon (147). 
One would think that as a wealthy woman, Dorothea would have more freedom to 
pursue her own interests than Dinah Morris, who divided her time between her aunt and 
uncle‟s farm and work in a factory town. However, it is Dorothea who is trapped by 
convention, while Dinah has the freedom to pursue her ambition as a preacher. Dorothea 
can only envision freedom to pursue her ambitions through marriage, and ultimately 
obtains the sort of freedom she desires in marriage to Will Ladislaw. Dinah, on the other 
hand, sees marriage as an obstacle to her ambition and resists it, even as she is in love 
Wyko 45 
 
with and longs for Adam Bede, until she convinces herself that it is God‟s will that she 
marry. Marriage alters Dinah‟s ambition, and the decision of the Methodist Conference to 
ban women from preaching only affirms Dinah‟s new place as wife and mother.  
Though Adam Bede and Middlemarch end happily for Dinah and Dorothea, it is 
frustrating for modern readers to see such dynamic and ambitious women settling for the 
seemingly simple pleasures of marriage and family. Today, Dorothea would not need to 
marry for knowledge; she could pursue her education in whatever field she wished. 
Dinah, too, could follow her evangelical pursuits among the spiritually poor of her own 
country or anywhere in the world. Both women would not have to choose between 
marriage and a career but could have both if they wished, or follow their dreams without 
marrying. But Dinah and Dorothea—and to a certain extent Eliot herself—were trapped 
by the time in which they lived. As Austen writes, “The conclusion one might draw from 
these fictions is that the heroine does better to accept her lot, submit to the yoke of 
marriage, and curb her desires rather than continue willful, aspiring, unconventional, and 
impatient of restraint” (551). 
Wyko 46 
 
 
CHAPTER 3 
POOR MAGGIE TULLIVER 
 
Maggie Tulliver of George Eliot‟s Mill on the Floss cannot be categorized as either a 
martyr like Dinah Morris and Dorothea Brooke or a spoiled girl like Hetty Sorrel and 
Gwendolen Harleth. Of all Eliot‟s ambitious characters, Maggie never comes to an 
understanding of what her ambition is. She is aware that there is something more to life, 
and she has the urge and intelligence to want to make something of herself, but she finds 
herself thwarted at every turn. She has the compassion and the self-sacrificing attitude to 
be a martyr like Dorothea Brooke and Dinah Morris, but lacks the conviction of her 
beliefs. She desires knowledge like Dorothea, but is rebuffed. And like Gwendolen 
Harleth and Hetty Sorrel, the wrong man ruins Maggie‟s life.  
There are many similarities between Maggie Tulliver and Mary Anne Evans. Indeed, 
Gordon S. Haight‟s well-known biography of George Eliot begins by pointing out the 
similarities between the Evans family and various characters in Mill on the Floss. Like 
Maggie, Mary Anne Evans was especially close to her older brother and was the pet of 
her father. Evans also had ambition that eventually would lead to her estrangement from 
her family. Mary Anne Evans weighed the consequences of pursuing love and career at 
the cost of family ties and deemed the cost of her actions acceptable, achieving fame as 
George Eliot and living as the wife of George Henry Lewes. Maggie Tulliver, on the 
other hand, seems to represent the road not taken for George Eliot—if Mary Anne Evans 
had made different choices, she may have met the same fate as Maggie. 
Wyko 47 
 
Maggie pursues several different avenues in trying to determine her ambition and is 
punished with each attempt. As Jean E. Kennard writes, “Maggie Tulliver, the heroine in 
The Mill on the Floss, is the first of George Eliot‟s sensitive and intelligent women 
frustrated by their environments” (116). Had Maggie lived in other times, her desire for 
self-fulfillment would be natural and she would be encouraged to explore her options. 
But Mr. Tulliver, who is Maggie‟s greatest champion, observes to his neighbor, Mr. 
Riley, “She understands what one‟s talking about so as never was. And you should hear 
her read—straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But it‟s 
bad—it‟s bad … a woman‟s no business wi‟ being so clever; it‟ll turn to trouble, I doubt” 
(The Mill on the Floss 13). Mr. Tulliver is proud of Maggie‟s cleverness, yet he 
worries—and rightly so—that it will come to no good for Maggie. As Mr. Deane says to 
Tom later in the book, “If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of 
yourself” (The Mill on the Floss 260), and Maggie is a square peg in her spherical world. 
As Linda C. Hunt observes, “In  Mill on the Floss, George Eliot was able to allow herself 
a female protagonist, and she directly confronts the theme of a bright girl‟s sufferings in a 
society which devalues girls and which insists on a limited conception of female 
character” (136). 
Maggie‟s frustrations begin in her youth at Dorlcote Mill. As a child, she focuses her 
budding ambition in two areas: service to the men in her life and education. Throughout 
her life, Maggie devotes much of her energy to the men she loves, beginning with her 
father and her older brother Tom, and later, Philip Wakem and Stephen Guest. However, 
her devotion is never rewarded in the way she wishes, particularly with Tom, whom she 
idolizes. Tom tolerates her and enjoys her worship of him, but sees her as an inferior and 
Wyko 48 
 
imperfect person who must be punished. Tom is like Henleigh Grandcourt without the 
sadistic tendencies. Maggie is to be trained, like a puppy or a horse. Every time Tom 
chooses to bestow a favor upon Maggie, he makes sure she realizes his 
magnanimousness, like when he comes home from school and brings her a fishing line of 
her own: “Wasn‟t I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself? You know, I 
needn‟t have bought it if I hadn‟t liked” (The Mill on the Floss 33). However, when he 
learns that his rabbits are dead because Maggie forgot to care for them in his absence, he 
takes away the favor he has bestowed, telling Maggie he doesn‟t love her and that he 
won‟t take her fishing after all. Despite Maggie‟s anguish at having upset him, Tom 
shows no pity or mercy upon her. She has done wrong and must be punished for it. This 
is the entire nature of the relationship between Tom and Maggie, and it undoubtedly 
warps Maggie.  
Maggie is also very devoted to her father, and when she is a child, Mr. Tulliver is the 
only member of Maggie‟s extended family to appreciate and defend her. However, Mr. 
Tulliver is also perplexed by Maggie, saying, “The little un takes after my side, now: 
she‟s twice as ‟cute as Tom. Too ‟cute for a woman, I‟m afraid” (The Mill on the Floss 
7). Susan Rowland Tush remarks, “Although Mr. Tulliver always defends Maggie, he 
does not fully understand her character or his own feelings about her being female” (93). 
He does not think it natural for a girl to be as clever as Maggie and is afraid of what 
might become of her as a result. Following Mr. Tulliver‟s bankruptcy, however, his 
relationship with Maggie changes. While he is ill, Maggie is his greatest comfort, and he 
is never more at rest than when his “little wench” is with him. But once his health 
recovers enough for him to return to work, Mr. Tulliver sees Maggie as a source of 
Wyko 49 
 
anxiety instead of comfort—he sees her blossoming womanhood and thinks that he has 
spoiled her chances for a good marriage. And marriage is seen as the only option for 
Maggie, as it was for many women of the Victorian era. In her famous book, A 
Vindication of the Rights of Women, written nearly 70 years before Eliot would write Mill 
on the Floss, Mary Wollstonecraft laments, “… men, in their youth, are prepared for 
professions, and marriage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives; whilst 
women, on the contrary, have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties” (77). Though 
Maggie would like to do something to alleviate her father‟s suffering, she does not have 
the resources, and when she does try to make a little money by sewing, she earns the 
disapproval of Tom, who tells her, “I don‟t like my sister to do such things. I‟ll take care 
that the debts are paid without your lowering yourself in that way” (The Mill on the Floss 
331). As Richard A. Kaye writes of Maggie‟s life following the Tullivers‟ bankruptcy, 
“For Maggie, familial and communal bonds allow for permanence and survival but also 
bitterness, despair, and suffocated longings. Eliot depicts Maggie‟s Edenic state of 
childhood as fading, as memories replace actualities” (119). 
Her relationships with her father and brother are not enough to satisfy Maggie‟s 
undefined ambition. She harbors hopes that an education could give her the fulfillment 
she needs, but that dream, too, is dashed. Mr. Tulliver notes that Tom is not as clever as 
Maggie, yet it is Tom, as the male child and heir, who is sent for schooling to make 
something better of himself, and he decides to send Tom to be tutored by the Rev. 
Stelling. Maggie is later sent to Miss Firniss‟ boarding school with her cousin, Lucy 
Deane, but Eliot does show the reader any of Maggie‟s experiences there, and Maggie 
does not seem to get much out of her education. As Kennard remarks, “The early 
Wyko 50 
 
chapters of the novel, which dramatize Maggie‟s childhood at the Dorlcote Mill and in 
the surrounding Warwickshire countryside, portray Maggie as a girl whose limited world 
provides no outlet for female intelligence” (117). 
At the Rev. Stelling‟s, Tom struggles with Latin and geometry, and when Maggie 
comes to visit him, he expects to display his superiority by showing her how difficult his 
studies are. However, upon arriving, Maggie promptly offers to help him and displays her 
own knowledge of language, to Tom‟s amazement and disgust. Though she has not read 
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, she logically concludes that if she 
wants to know, “I should look inside and see what it was about” (The Mill on the Floss 
164). Maggie cannot comprehend Tom‟s Euclid, however, when he hands her the book. 
Tom is triumphant that Maggie is “not so clever as you thought you were” (The Mill on 
the Floss 166), though Maggie retorts that if she had been taught the book from the 
beginning, she would not have any problem understanding Tom‟s lesson. She is more 
comfortable with Tom‟s Latin grammar book, “for she delighted in new words” (The Mill 
on the Floss 166), but is again scolded by Tom because she sensibly refers to the English 
key at the back of the book. “Any donkey can do that,” Tom tells her (The Mill on the 
Floss 167).  
Maggie enjoys her visit to the Stellings, and sure that she could be as good a student 
as Tom—likely better—she asks the Rev. Stelling if she might stay and learn from him 
instead of Tom. Maggie is once again ridiculed by Tom, who tells her, “Girls never learn 
such things. They‟re too silly” (The Mill on the Floss 163). The Rev. Stelling, 
unfortunately, affirms Tom‟s view, telling Maggie and Tom that women have “a great 
deal of superficial cleverness, but they couldn‟t go far into anything. They‟re quick and 
Wyko 51 
 
shallow” (The Mill on the Floss 170). Tom delights in this answer, but Maggie, who had 
been told all her life how quick she was, “had hardly ever been so mortified” (The Mill on 
the Floss 170). This virtue that she had thought she had was now revealed to be a “brand 
of inferiority” (The Mill on the Floss 170). However, Tom learned more during Maggie‟s 
visit than he had before because Maggie‟s curiosity and imagination led her to question 
the Rev. Stelling, which allowed Tom some sort of context for his geometry and Latin. 
As for Maggie, though she has picked up some Latin and Euclid during her visit, she also 
learns that, according to the educated men of the time, women aren‟t meant to be 
educated in the same way as men. 
As Wollstonecraft observes, “The grand source of female folly and vice has ever 
appeared to me to arise from narrowness of mind; and the very constitution of civil 
governments has put almost insuperable obstacles in the way to prevent the cultivation of 
female understanding” (71). One of the first feminists, Wollstonecraft led the charge for 
improved education for women in the latter part of the 18th century, and during the 
Victorian era, much thought and discussion was given to “The Woman Question”—that 
is, the proper place of women in society and what rights they may be entitled to. At the 
time Eliot set Mill on the Floss, the Rev. Stelling‟s dismissal of Maggie‟s ambition for 
education would not have been an uncommon sentiment. Jacqueline Banerjee remarks:  
Vituperation rather than guidance is offered to „difficult‟ (i.e. intelligent) 
young girls in Victorian novels; cruel and unusual punishments, not 
rewards, are regularly meted out to older ones who want something more 
than to conform to the expected (i.e., domestic) pattern. Their wits have to 
be blunted, subdued; their ambitions crushed (38-39).  
Wyko 52 
 
Even George Eliot herself, who published Mill on the Floss in 1860, conformed to the 
traditional view. As Linda Hunt writes: 
 By the eighteen-sixties she (Eliot) was explicitly affirming in her letters 
the conventional view of women as self-effacing, dependent, and best able 
to find fulfillment in domestic and maternal duties; she saw her own life as 
an exception to the general rule as far as domesticity and maternity were 
concerned, but cultivated the qualities of character she considered to be 
inherently feminine (139) 
Though she yearns for knowledge, being excluded from the type of education Tom 
receives may not be as bad as Maggie believes. “Although Maggie views Tom‟s 
educational opportunities as a privilege from which she, by virtue of her gender, has been 
excluded,” Laura Morgan Green notes, “Eliot suggests that Maggie is unwittingly 
privileged in being excluded from an educational practice whose effect on Tom is 
entirely narrowing and stultifying” (78). Indeed, Tom finds his schooling of absolutely no 
use once Mr. Tulliver becomes bankrupt and he must work for his living. Additionally, 
his belief that Maggie, as a woman, is an inferior being is reinforced by the Rev. Stelling, 
justifying his reasoning that Maggie is full of faults and must be punished for them.  
When Mr. Tulliver becomes bankrupt, Maggie turns to her old schoolbooks for 
refuge, but still finds something lacking: “Even at school she had often wished for books 
with more in them; everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that 
snapped immediately” (The Mill on the Floss 323). Maggie is convinced that education is 
the key to escaping the drudgery of her life, if she only had access to it. She believes that 
if she can just find the right books, she can find “some explanation of this hard, real life” 
Wyko 53 
 
or “if she could have had all Scott‟s novels and all Byron‟s poems, then perhaps she 
might have found happiness enough to dull her sensibility to her actual daily life” (The 
Mill on the Floss 323). As Eliot writes, “If she had been taught „real learning and 
wisdom, such as great men knew,‟ she thought she should have held the secret of life; if 
she had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise men knew!” (The Mill on 
the Floss 324). Linda C. Hunt remarks:  
Maggie feels that the impoverished education she receives in a girl‟s 
school is one reason for her inability to cope with the vicissitudes of her 
life, but in a foreshadowing of the way the feminist implications of 
Dorothea‟s experience will be muted in Middlemarch, George Eliot 
broadens her critique of female education to an attack on educational 
theories and practices for both sexes (136).  
After all, Tom‟s education is perhaps even more useless than Maggie‟s. Jean E. 
Kennard notes, “The question of education dominates one section of the novel, and 
George Eliot makes clear the faults of the prevailing system which is as inadequate to the 
needs of practical minded boys like Tom as to those of intellectual girls” (117-18). 
Following her father‟s bankruptcy, Maggie‟s next attempt at fulfillment is self-
sacrifice, learned from a copy of Thomas à Kempis‟ Imitation of Christ obtained from the 
cheerful peddler Bob Jakin. Frustrated by her lack of education, Maggie throws herself 
into self-denial and sacrifice, thinking that renunciation of her pleasures is the secret to 
happiness. Maggie essentially puts together her own religion as a means of finding 
fulfillment in her simple life and duties, and for a while, she manages to bring about an 
Wyko 54 
 
acceptance of her difficulties. As is her nature, Maggie throws herself into her new way 
of thinking with great exuberance. As Eliot writes:  
From what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some 
exaggeration and willfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her 
self-renunciation; her own life was still a drama for her in which she 
demanded of herself that her part should be played with intensity (The Mill 
on the Floss 331).  
Hunt remarks, “George Eliot is aware that Maggie rather enjoys thinking of herself as 
a martyr, a fact which makes her prone to unnecessary excesses” (145). Nevertheless, 
through self-sacrifice, Maggie‟s character is refined. Her wild nature is gentled to the 
point where Mrs. Tulliver, who had always seen Maggie as a thorn in her side, is amazed 
“that this once „contrary‟ child was become so submissive” (The Mill on the Floss 332). 
Peter New comments, “There is in fact a real development in Maggie here, despite its 
incompleteness. She does discipline her self-pity and replace it with sensitive concern for 
her mother and father; and the effect on herself is manifest” (185).  
This is the sort of development Eliot believes women should strive for—to put others 
first. It is the advice that Daniel Deronda gives Gwendolen Harleth following the death of 
her husband: to live for others and to “be among the best of women, such as to make 
others glad that they were born” (Daniel Deronda 699). It is the way of life that Dinah 
Morris and Dorothea Brooke live. As Patricia Beer notes: 
 The whole concept of renunciation, as entertained and practiced by 
women, is one which George Eliot analyses very carefully. It takes place 
in two stages: at first the unsatisfactory nature of a woman‟s life leads her 
Wyko 55 
 
to renunciation in an unrealistic and almost pleasurable way; later 
experience also leads her to it, but this time it is painful (180).  
Eliot seems to believe that refinement of character comes through suffering, and this 
is what happens to Maggie at this point in the novel. 
Despite the gentling effect her self-denial has on her, Maggie goes about her regimen 
of renunciation for the wrong reasons—she believes that it will bring her happiness, 
when, in Eliot‟s view, she should be considering the happiness of others. Contrary as it 
may seem, self-sacrifice is rather easy for Maggie. As Kennard writes:  
The attractions of this path for Maggie are clear enough. First, it is 
romantic and self-dramatizing … Second, she can do it for herself … 
Third, it is within the bounds of virtuous activity allowed to females and 
she therefore does not have to be a clever woman whom nobody will like 
(118).  
Maggie gets satisfaction from her new lifestyle, and for once in her life, her activities 
are not ridiculed or derided by her family, Tom in particular. Kennard notes, “She selects 
the one path which will meet (Tom‟s) requirements and fulfill some of her own; indeed it 
is the path, though divested of its religious overtones, which Tom chooses for himself 
later in the novel” (118-19). Therefore, Maggie is not punished for her pursuit of this 
ambition, but because her motives were not entirely pure, Maggie is not rewarded for her 
martyr-like behavior either. 
By sacrificing her ambitions for education and satisfying herself with an austere 
lifestyle, Maggie also sacrifices a portion of herself, which is what Philip Wakem objects 
to. Drawn to Philip when she met him at the Rev. Stelling‟s home, Maggie meets him 
Wyko 56 
 
again when she is entirely caught up in her program of self-denial and recalls how much 
she enjoyed his company. However, their friendship, which was frowned upon before due 
to Mr. Tulliver‟s hatred of Philip‟s father, is now even more taboo since Mr. Tulliver‟s 
lawsuit against Wakem led to his bankruptcy. Nevertheless, Maggie rekindles her 
friendship with Philip for two reasons: she enjoys his company, and she convinces herself 
(with Philip‟s help) that their relationship could ease the tensions between the two 
families. Her new ambition is to pursue her friendship with Philip while trying to 
maintain her new self-sacrificing lifestyle. 
Philip Wakem is the only character in Mill on the Floss to truly recognize Maggie‟s 
potential and to encourage it, thus he is appalled at her practice of self-denial and 
abstinence from pleasure. He immediately begins to plant seeds of doubt in Maggie‟s 
mind, telling her, “There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must 
hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are 
deadened?” (The Mill on the Floss 342). When she refuses to borrow the book he offers 
her, Maggie tells Philip, “It would make me in love with this world again, as I used to be; 
it would make me long to see and know many things; it would make me long for a full 
life” (The Mill on the Floss 346). Philip attempts to persuade her by saying, “But you will 
not always be shut up in your present lot; why should you starve your mind in that way? 
It is narrow asceticism; I don‟t like to see you persisting in it, Maggie” (The Mill on the 
Floss 346). Eventually, Maggie agrees to meet with Philip, and over time, Philip renews 
in Maggie that ambition for something other than her small lot in life by offering her 
books and intelligent conversation. As Peter New writes, “Through Philip her longings 
for expansion of her intellectual and aesthetic horizons can be fulfilled … Most 
Wyko 57 
 
immediately, Philip provides for her, in this romantically named place (the Red Deeps), 
an escape from the mundane dreariness of renunciation” (186). 
Philip‟s reasons for meeting with Maggie are selfish, though he sees himself as “her 
guardian angel,” “persuading her out of her system of privation” (The Mill on the Floss 
348). He is in love with Maggie, and hopes to gain her affections through their 
clandestine meetings. Though she loves Philip, Maggie loves him like the brother she 
wishes Tom could be, and thus she is surprised by Philip‟s declaration of romantic love. 
But before she can give any sort of real thought to love and romance—an ambition that 
had never occurred to her up to this point—and specifically, loving Philip, their meetings 
are discovered by Tom. Though Maggie was able to enjoy Philip‟s company and the 
education he gave her for a year, their idyll comes to an end when Tom discovers their 
secret meetings and puts an end to it, making Maggie swear on the Bible that she would 
not meet Philip again. Thus, Maggie is punished again for her pursuit of friendship and 
the potential for love.  
Maggie pursues the ambition of romance again following an absence of several years 
from St. Ogg. After her father‟s death, Maggie goes to work in a school, because though 
Tom has saved enough to pay Mr. Tulliver‟s debts, he does not have enough to support 
his mother and Maggie the way he wishes. Eliot does not write of Maggie‟s time away 
from St. Ogg, but in conversation with her cousin Lucy Deane, Maggie tells her, “One 
gets a bad habit of being unhappy” (The Mill on the Floss 421), indicating that she does 
not enjoy her work. Maggie comes to stay with Lucy for a while and meets Lucy‟s suitor 
and likely fiancé, Stephen Guest. Maggie and Stephen are attracted to one another from 
the moment they meet. 
Wyko 58 
 
Stephen Guest comes from a life completely unknown to Maggie. He is the son of a 
wealthy man and has been bred for leisure. Unlike Maggie, with her restless stirrings of 
unformed ambition, Stephen has no ambition other than to be comfortable, amuse himself 
and enjoy pleasant people and surroundings. Maggie is an unknown quantity to Stephen 
as well—her energy and beauty make her unlike any of the other girls of St. Ogg, 
including her own cousin, Lucy Deane, who everyone expects Stephen to marry. He is 
instantly infatuated with Maggie, and Maggie is drawn to him as well, at first because of 
the novelty of having a handsome young man pay attention to her. As Eliot describes, 
“Maggie felt herself for the first time in her life receiving the tribute of a very deep blush 
and a very deep bow from a person towards whom she herself was conscious of timidity. 
This new experience was very agreeable to her” (The Mill on the Floss 424-5).   
Though Maggie has grown up to be quite beautiful, she has never given much thought 
to courtship. Since Tom discovered and put an end to the meetings with Philip Wakem 
and Mr. Tulliver died not long after that, Maggie had not had the opportunity to imagine 
herself as the heroine of a romance with Philip or any other man. Teaching at a girls‟ 
school would not give her the chance to meet and socialize with eligible men, so this visit 
with Lucy is the first time Maggie is truly able to allow herself to consider romance. For 
a love-starved girl, the attention and admiration of a handsome, wealthy man is pleasant 
and intoxicating. Soon after meeting Stephen Guest, Philip Wakem reenters Maggie‟s 
life, and she finds herself in the center of a love triangle. Though she loves Philip, his 
presence does not create the electricity that she feels when Stephen is present.  As 
Dorothea Barrett notes, “No matter how intellectually and spiritually appropriate Philip 
might be for Maggie, Maggie also has sexual needs that cannot be fulfilled by Philip” 
Wyko 59 
 
(61). Jean E. Kennard agrees, writing, “Maggie does not romanticize Philip; their 
relationship is based on openness, trust, and common interests. It is Maggie‟s misfortune 
that she cannot love him enough to resist the temptations of the wrong suitor, Stephen 
Guest” (119).  
Maggie realizes that pursuing a relationship with Stephen would be a betrayal of her 
cousin Lucy and of Philip Wakem, to whom she is tacitly engaged. Yet she cannot resist 
him. Eliot suggests that Maggie‟s feelings for Stephen are a form of rebellion. As 
Dorothea Barrett notes, “Being exceptional, and therefore socially unacceptable, is 
enough to drive one mad. The fear of madness and the pain of alienation produce violent 
eruptions in Maggie from time to time” (57), and Philip says something like this when he 
tells Maggie, “You will be thrown into the world some day, and then every rational 
satisfaction of your nature that you deny now will assault you like a savage appetite” 
(The Mill on the Floss 373). Maggie has stifled her wants and needs and emotions for so 
long that she cannot entirely control herself when confronted with the admiration and 
romance that Stephen Guest offers. Richard A. Kaye remarks:  
Maggie‟s attraction to Stephen is not simply a minor complication of plot 
or a youthful peccadillo; like her impulsive decision as a girl to escape 
from home in order to live with a tribe of gypsies, Maggie‟s awareness of 
Guest as a „great temptation‟ arises from a suppressed but deep rebellious 
spirit (127).  
She is carried along on a tide of feeling, just as she and Stephen are carried away 
when they go boating, leading to their tragic and aborted elopement.  
Wyko 60 
 
Though Maggie does not elope with Stephen, her reputation is ruined, Tom shuns her 
and she is an object of scorn and shame in St. Ogg‟s. This is by far the worst punishment 
yet that Maggie must undergo—her latest attempt at finding a place for herself in the 
world leaves her in utter ruin. As Wollstonecraft describes, Maggie‟s future seems very 
bleak indeed:  
A woman who has lost her honour, imagines that she cannot fall lower, 
and as for recovering her former station it is impossible; no exertion can 
wash this stain away. Losing thus every spur, and having no other means 
of support, prostitution becomes her only refuge (92).  
Though Maggie does not turn to prostitution in her despair, there is no other avenue 
she can pursue in St. Ogg‟s, and to make a life for herself, she realizes she must leave 
everything she loves and begin again somewhere far away. 
 But Eliot does not seem to know what to do with Maggie when the relationship is 
aborted. Maggie does not marry Stephen because doing so would hurt Philip and Lucy, 
and is left with the ruins of her reputation. There is nothing left for her in St. Ogg‟s, and 
she is filled with despair at the prospect of leaving everything she knows and loves in 
order to start over. A letter from Stephen reiterating his passion for her causes Maggie 
more anguish, though she vows to bear the pain until her death. With everything lost to 
her, Maggie wishes for death to end her suffering, crying out, “I will bear it, and bear it 
till death … But how long it will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy” ( The 
Mill on the Floss 587-8), and no sooner does she finish that speech than the floodwaters 
are already lapping at her feet. With no other way to deal with Maggie, Eliot brings death 
swiftly, and Maggie receives the ultimate punishment — not, perhaps, for the ambition of 
Wyko 61 
 
love and her relationship with Stephen, but because there is simply no place for an 
ambitious girl in the world Eliot has created. As Banerjee comments, “Many factors are 
involved in Maggie‟s and her author‟s final submission to the fantasy of an eternal 
brotherly embrace, but the lack of opportunity to satisfy and capitalize on her intellectual 
potential is an important one” (38). Maggie never truly determines what she wants from 
life. She continually yearns for something more and tries in vain to fill the void in her life 
with devotion to her father and Tom, education, self-renunciation, and romance. 
Therefore, Maggie is punished as severely as spoiled girl Hetty Sorrel and loses her life.  
Every attempt at finding her way in the world turns out wrong for Maggie. She is 
denied an education and ridiculed for thinking she could successfully pursue the same 
studies as Tom. Though her efforts at a life of self-denial are fruitful for a while, Philip 
Wakem makes her realize that she is merely stifling her ambitions and that that practice is 
ultimately unhealthy. When Maggie‟s thoughts begin to turn to romance and fulfillment 
through love, she is separated from Philip by Tom. Her unfortunate attraction to Stephen 
Guest is painful to Maggie because Stephen is all but engaged to her cousin Lucy, and 
Maggie herself has promised Philip that if it is at all possible, she would marry him. Her 
aborted elopement leads to a seemingly final estrangement from Tom and ruins all her 
chances for a place in St. Ogg society. Having put her heroine through all this, Eliot ends 
her book by killing Maggie in a flood. 
As noted previously, Mill on the Floss is often considered the most biographical of 
Eliot's works. Eliot's brother Isaac shunned her as determinedly as Tom shuns Maggie 
when Eliot entered into a scandalous relationship with George Henry Lewes. With Mill 
on the Floss, Eliot illustrates a world where there is no vent for “that besetting sin” of 
Wyko 62 
 
ambition, and unlike Eliot herself, Maggie cannot run off and pursue a literary career. 
Susan Rowland Tush notes, “As so many critics have noted, neither Stephen nor Philip 
offers Maggie a complete and fulfilling relationship. However, it is perhaps more likely 
that the world which George Eliot intentionally creates in Mill is simply too limited to 
meet all of Maggie‟s needs” (99). Tush continues, “George Eliot‟s intention was probably 
to show that her own world was too limited for the bright but difficult Maggie Tulliver, a 
fact that the young Mary Anne Evans had no doubt discovered” (106). Perhaps, though, 
death is not punishment for Maggie. In her grave, with Tom at her side, Maggie‟s restless 
longings are finally at peace. 
Wyko 63 
 
 
CONCLUSION 
In The Mill on the Floss, a young Maggie Tulliver took out her frustrations with her 
family and her childish hurts on a wooden doll in the attic—her “fetish, which she 
punished for all her misfortunes”(The Mill on the Floss 26). Eliot takes out her 
frustrations on a society that stifled female creativity and ambition by inflicting suffering 
and punishment on her ambitious female characters. As Linda C. Hunt writes:  
... her (Eliot‟s) personal experiences had given her a visceral awareness of 
the oppressiveness of the Victorian feminine ideal, which made a woman 
feel unnatural if she wanted more than domesticity, and she felt strong 
personal outrage at society‟s deprecations of women (133-4).  
Eliot clearly recognized the rough road women had to trod during the Victorian era. 
As Mary Wollstonecraft wrote 45 years before Queen Victoria was crowned, “To rise in 
the world, and have the liberty of running from pleasure to pleasure, they (women) must 
marry advantageously, and to this object their time is sacrificed, and their persons often 
legally prostituted” (77). For much of Eliot‟s lifetime, women were not even recognized 
as individual legal entities. Tim Dolin explains:  
Women became femes coverts, or covered women, and were absorbed into 
their husband‟s legal identity upon marriage … For that reason women 
could not obtain a divorce until the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act 
established divorce courts and gave women (very limited) access to 
divorce (72).  
Wyko 64 
 
Though Hunt notes, “The latter part of the nineteenth century saw increasing 
educational and employment opportunities for women” (165), the Victorian era was a 
frustrating time to be a woman, and Eliot reflects this in her writing.  
Hunt remarks: 
Because Eliot is a more talented novelist, and perhaps because of a 
personal sense of outrage at her own inability to conform to the demands 
of the social order, she depicts in more detail and with more power the 
social context which can have such a stifling impact on an intelligent 
woman; yet the resolutions of Eliot‟s novels do not point in the direction 
of social reform but instead recommend endurance, resignation, and the 
growth in sympathy which can come from suffering (137). 
Eliot‟s treatment of her female characters reflects this. Those like Dinah Morris, 
Dorothea Brooke and Gwendolen Harleth, who endure hardship with some measure of 
dignity, are relieved of their suffering and, in the case of Dorothea and Dinah, given 
happy endings with husbands and children to care for. Hetty Sorrel, lacking sympathy 
and resignation of her fate, is punished with death. Poor Maggie Tulliver, who has tried 
endurance and resignation and still remains oppressed, is punished—and perhaps also 
rewarded—with death. 
As for Eliot herself, Dolin argues that had Mary Anne Evans lived a conventional life, 
George Eliot may not have existed: “Had Marian Evans not met and fallen in love with 
George Henry Lewes, and not resisted the extreme pressure on a middle-class woman to 
behave respectably, the novels of George Eliot might never have been written: would 
never have been written” (40). Though she achieved love and success by unconventional 
Wyko 65 
 
means, Eliot‟s novels were cautionary tales for other Victorian women. As Zelda Austen 
notes, “The conclusion one might draw from these fictions is that the heroine does better 
to accept her lot, submit to the yoke of marriage, and curb her desires rather than continue 
willful, aspiring, unconventional, and impatient of restraint” (551). Hampered by the 
strictures of Victorian society and without the genius that Eliot possessed, ordinary 
Victorian women, in Eliot‟s view, would do well to do as Eliot said (and wrote), not as 
she did.  
Wyko 66 
 
 
Works cited 
 
Primary Works 
 
Eliot, George. Adam Bede. (1859). New York: Signet Classics, 2004. 
 
______. Daniel Deronda. (1876). New York: Random House, 2002. 
 
______. Middlemarch. (1872). New York: Penguin Books, 2003. 
 
______. Mill on the Floss. (1860). New York: Signet Classics, 2002. 
 
______. Life and Letters: The Works of George Eliot. Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. New 
York and Boston: 1884. 8 October 2009. 
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Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. (1792). Penguin Books. New York: 
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Wyko 67 
 
Green, Laura Morgan. Educating Women: Cultural Conflict and Victorian Literature. Ohio 
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Levine, Philippa. “„So Few Prizes and So Many Blanks‟: Marriage and Feminism in Later 
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New, Peter. Fiction and Purpose in “Utopia,” “Rasselas,” “The Mill on the Floss” and “Women 
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