The Mill on the Floss

The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs Glegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs Tulliver’s arm-chair, no impartial observer could have d...

Tom Tulliver’s sufferings during the first quarter he was at King’s Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were rather severe. At Mr Jacob’s academy l...

While Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows forever rising again, Tom was engaged in a d...

It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlour, and poor Mrs Tulliver, with a con...

One afternoon, when the chestnuts were coming into flower, Maggie had brought her chair outside the front door, and was seated there with a book on her knees. Her dark eyes had...

While the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying her father’s mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no forebodings; but th...

In less than a week Maggie was at St Ogg’s again,—outwardly in much the same position as when her visit there had just begun. It was easy for her to fill her mornings apart from...

The next morning was very wet,—the sort of morning on which male neighbours who have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay their fair friends an illimitable visit....

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver, is Mr Riley, a gentleman with a waxen complexio...

In order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we must enter the town of St Ogg’s,—that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships...

“He is very clever, Maggie,” said Lucy. She was kneeling on a footstool at Maggie’s feet, after placing that dark lady in the large crimson-velvet chair. “I feel sure you will l...

The family sitting-room was a long room with a window at each end; one looking toward the croft and along the Ripple to the banks of the Floss, the other into the mill-yard. Mag...

The days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition; the paralytic obstr...

In the second week of September, Maggie was again sitting in her lonely room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever slain and rising again. It was past midnigh...

The next day, at ten o’clock, Tom was on his way to St Ogg’s, to see his uncle Deane, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said; and Tom had made up his mind that his u...

Maggie’s intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Tom imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy had walked away, was not so simple as that...

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite o...

It was Easter week, and Mrs Tulliver’s cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. “A puff o’ wind ’ud make ’em blow about like feathers,” Kezia the housemaid said, feel...

When Maggie was gone to sleep, Stephen, weary too with his unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the last twelve hours, but too restless to sleep, w...

The alterations of feeling in that first dialogue between Tom and Philip continued to mark their intercourse even after many weeks of schoolboy intimacy. Tom never quite lost th...

It is evident to you now that Maggie had arrived at a moment in her life which must be considered by all prudent persons as a great opportunity for a young woman. Launched into...

“Suppose sister Glegg should call her money in; it ’ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now,” said Mrs Tulliver to her husband that evening, as she t...

Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if...

The culmination of Maggie’s career as an admired member of society in St Ogg’s was certainly the day of the bazaar, when her simple noble beauty, clad in a white muslin of some...

It was soon known throughout St Ogg’s that Miss Tulliver was come back; she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr Stephen Guest,—at all events, Mr Stephen Guest had...

The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr Deane’s. The neat litt...

It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr Tulliver first came downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the roofs opposite his window had made him impatiently de...

Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and colour with all the heig...

Maggie was obliged to go to Tom’s lodgings in the middle of the day, when he would be coming in to dinner, else she would not have found him at home. He was not lodging with ent...

In that dark time of December, the sale of the household furniture lasted beyond the middle of the second day. Mr Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to...

Between four and five o’clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St Ogg’s, Tom Tulliver was standing on the gravel walk outside the...

Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just overheard between Lucy and her father she had contrived to have a private interview with Philip during a visit...

When Maggie was at home again, her mother brought her news of an unexpected line of conduct in aunt Glegg. As long as Maggie had not been heard of, Mrs Glegg had half closed her...

I said that Maggie went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a mental conflict already begun. You have seen clearly enough, in her interview with Philip, what that conflict...

By the end of the week Dr Kenn had made up his mind that there was only one way in which he could secure to Maggie a suitable living at St Ogg’s. Even with his twenty years’ exp...

When Mr Tulliver first knew the fact that the lawsuit was decided against him, and that Pivart and Wakem were triumphant, every one who happened to observe him at the time thoug...

Maggie left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the week, and went to Garum Firs to pay her visit to aunt Pullet according to agreement. In the mean time very unexpected things h...

So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year—till he was turned sixteen—at King’s Lorton, while Maggie was growing with a rapidity which her aunts considered highly reprehensible,...

Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss’s giving the early June sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that affectionate woman, and making an epoch for he...

Mr Tulliver was an essentially sober man,—able to take his glass and not averse to it, but never exceeding the bounds of moderation. He had naturally an active Hotspur temperame...

“What I want, you know,” said Mr Tulliver,—“what I want is to give Tom a good eddication; an eddication as’ll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I gave noti...

The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of sixteen couples, with attendant parents and...

The startling object which thus made an epoch for uncle Pullet was no other than little Lucy, with one side of her person, from her small foot to her bonnet-crown, wet and disco...

That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days of violent struggle in the miller’s mind, as the gradual access of bodily strength brought with it increasi...

It was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went back to school; a day quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he had not carried in his pocket a parcel of su...

Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Maggie entering the Red Deeps through the group o...

There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is...

It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, M...

When the coach set down Tom and Maggie, it was five hours since she had started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that her father had perhaps missed her, and a...

Journeying down the Rhone on a summer’s day, you have perhaps felt the sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud the banks in certain parts of its course, telling...

Poor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in not “telling” of Mr Poulter more than was unavoidable; the five-shilling piece remained a secret even to Maggie. Bu...

This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of temperament made...

Three weeks later, when Dorlcote Mill was at its prettiest moment in all the year,—the great chestnuts in blossom, and the grass all deep and daisied,—Tom Tulliver came home to...

“And now we’ve settled this Newcastle business, Tom,” said Mr Deane, that same afternoon, as they were seated in the private room at the Bank together, “there’s another matter I...

When Maggie went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she was not at all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the first table that presented itself, and beg...

Mr Tulliver, even between the fits of spasmodic rigidity which had recurred at intervals ever since he had been found fallen from his horse, was usually in so apathetic a condit...

Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs Glegg’s thoughts, Mrs Pullet found her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs Glegg, indeed checked her rather sharply for thi...

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On...