The Mill on the Floss Themes

Although The Mill on the Floss covers about fifteen years in the lives of its protagonists, siblings Tom and Maggie Tulliver, the story constantly hearkens back to their childhood. In the novel, seemingly trivial incidences in those early years later take on new significance. Maggie’s conflict with Tom and her desire for his love and acceptance, for instance, is a thread that continues from their early lives at Dorlcote Mill, through their school years…

The narrator of The Mill on the Floss describes St. Ogg’s, the town where Tom and Maggie Tulliver grew up, as a place where “ignorance was much more comfortable than at present”—meaning the reader’s present is a more “enlightened” age. Throughout the novel, both Tom and Maggie struggle with the smallness of their home town and its provincial, narrow-minded values. The less bookish Tom eventually manages to find a respected place for himself in this…

The community depicted in The Mill on the Floss is a small one, and old grudges die hard. Many of the families living in the town of St. Ogg’s have done so for generations, and people feel a strong sense of loyalty to their community and traditions. Often, this cleaving to tradition can take the form of intolerance towards those who deviate from social norms or who are thought to have shamed or betrayed their…