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George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans who was born in 1819. She had a love for the countryside which is evident in her novels. She received a strict religious training, read a lot and learnt several languages. Later she abandoned religion and became rationalist but she never rejected the sense of duty and moral integrity. In London she met important men of culture like Lewes and they fell in love so they decided to live together but he was already married thus society condemned this relationship and she was isolated as a moral sinner. After the difficulties getting published she decided to use the pseudonym of George Eliot and she wrote many fiction like Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch. She died in 1880.
Eliot was involved in the philosophical and scientific debates of the period. In her work there was a beginning, a middle and an end, a small group of characters taken from different social levels and all stories ended with a marriage or a death so the reader knew the story was complete. She was an innovator because her novels were based on characters and her language was based on two levels, colloquial and accepted.
The Mill on the Floss talks about Tom and Maggie are the children of Mr. Tulliver, the miller Darlcote Mill, outside the town of St. Oggs on the river Floss. Tom is a selfish boy with a tendency to control others and Maggie is intelligent and sensitive. When Tom comes back home Maggie welcomes him who has brought her a fishing-line and invites her to go fishing together the following day. Later he tells at his sister that he refused to share the biscuits with the other boys to save the money for the fishing-line and they fought him for this so Maggie is full of gratitude and admiration for him.
