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Marriage to John Cross and deathOn 16 May 1880 George Eliot courted controversy once more by marrying a man twenty years younger than herself, and again changing her name, this time to Mary Anne Cross. The legal marriage at least pleased her brother Isaac, who sent his congratulations after breaking off relations with his sister when she had begun to live with Lewes. John Cross was a rather unstable character, and apparently jumped or fell from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal in Venice during their honeymoon. Cross survived and they returned to England. The couple moved to a new house in Chelsea but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease she had been afflicted with for the past few years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.[12]
Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey because of her denial of the Christian faith and her "irregular" though monogamous life with Lewes. She was interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London in the area reserved for religious dissenters or agnostics, next to George Henry Lewes; Karl Marx's memorial is nearby. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets’ Corner.
Several key buildings in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named after her or titles of her novels. For example George Eliot Hospital, George Eliot Community School and Middlemarch Junior School. Key Facts about “The Mill on the Floss” GENRE · Victorian novel, tragedy NARRATOR · The unnamed narrator was alive for Maggie Tulliver's life and is narrating the events many years later. PROTAGONIST · Maggie Tulliver MAJOR CONFLICT · Maggie must choose between her inner desire toward passion and sensuous life and her impulse towards moral responsibility and the need for her brother's approval and love. RISING ACTION · Incurious Tom is sent to school, while Maggie is held "uncanny" for her intelligence. Mr. Tulliver's pride and inability to adapt to the changing economic world causes him to lose his property in a lawsuit against Lawyer Wakem and eventually die as the result of his fury toward Wakem. To Tom's dismay, Maggie becomes secretly close to Wakem's sensitive crippled son, Philip. CLIMAX · At the age of nineteen, Maggie visits her cousin Lucy and becomes hopelessly attracted to Lucy's wealthy and polished suitor, Stephen Guest, and he to her. Stephen and Maggie are inadvertently left to themselves for a boat ride. Stephen rows them further down river than planned and tries to convince Maggie to elope with him. FALLING ACTION · Maggie parts with Stephen, arguing that they each cannot ignore the claims that Lucy and Philip have on them. Maggie returns to St. Ogg's several days later and is met with repudiation from the entire town and from Tom. Philip and Lucy contact Maggie and forgive her. The Floss floods, and Maggie seizes a boat and rows to the Mill to save Tom. Their boat is capsized by floating machinery, Tom and Maggie drown in each other's arms. SYMBOLS · The Floss The Floss is a somewhat difficult symbol to track, as it also exists for realistic effect in the workings of the novel. On the symbolic level, the Floss is related most often to Maggie, and the river, with its depth and potential to flood, symbolizes Maggie's deeply running and unpredictable emotions. The river's path, nonexistent on maps, is also used to symbolize the unforeseeable path of Maggie's destiny. St. Ogg St. Ogg, the legendary patron saint of the town, was a Floss ferryman. The parable of Ogg rewards the human feeling of pity or sympathy. Maggie has a dream during her night on the boat with Stephen, wherein Tom and Lucy row past them, and Tom is St. Ogg, while Lucy is the Virgin. The dream makes explicit Maggie's fear of having neglected to sympathize with those whom she hurts during her night with Stephen (and also, perhaps, her fear that they will not sympathize with her in the future). But it is Maggie, finally, who stands for St. Ogg, as she rows down river thinking only of Tom's safety during the flood "almost miraculous, divinely-protected effort." Maggie's eyes Eliot depicts Maggie's eyes as her most striking feature. All men (including Philip, Bob Jakin, and Stephen) notice her eyes first and become entranced. Maggie's eyes are a symbol of the power of emotion she contains—the depth of feeling and hunger for love that make her a tragic character. This unique force of character seems to give her power over others, for better or for worse. In Book First, Maggie is associated with Medusa, the monster who turns men to stone by looking at them. Maggie's eyes compel people, and different characters' reactions to them often reflect the character's relationship with Maggie. Thus, Philip, who will become Maggie's teacher, in a sense, and first love, notices that her eyes "were full of unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied, beseeching affection." Bob Jakin, who views Maggie as superior to him and a figure of whom to be in awe, reports that Maggie has "such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow as they made him feel nohow." Finally, Stephen, who will exploit the inner struggle that Maggie has felt for the entire novel, notices that Maggie's eyes are "full of delicious opposites." FORESHADOWING · As the story is being told in the past tense, the narrator often alludes to future circumstances when describing the present moment. An example of this is the narration of the figure of Maggie at the St. Ogg's bazaar in Chapter IX of Book Sixth, when the narrator alludes to the future attitudes of the women of St. Ogg's toward Maggie in light of her "subsequent conduct." The use of the Floss to symbolize Maggie's destiny throughout the novel also foreshadows her eventual drowning. THEME OF FAMILY Family is at the core of “The Mill on the Floss”. Most of the book’s characters are somehow related, and the sibling relationship between Tom and Maggie is arguably the most important one in the book. Family is something inescapable, with positive and negative results, for the characters here. As frustrating and as painful as family relations often are, they are ultimately binding and unavoidable. Family duty is a powerful guiding principle here as well, to the point where it often completely overshadows individual desires. This book even questions whether people do, or can, exist outside of their families, and whether or not it’s possible to have an identity separate from the family. THEME OF CHOICES Choices are rarely black and white in “The Mill on the Floss”. Though certain characters like to force people to choose between two arbitrary alternatives, choices are rarely that easy. Choices are much more like a tangled web of competing options, none of which are absolutely right or absolutely wrong. Choice is also never without consequences, often very painful ones. In the end, characters have to decide not only what choice to make but also what factors to consider in making a choice. Do characters favor family in their decisions, or themselves? The past or the present, friendship or romance? Choices are endless and are infinitely complicated. THEME OF SUFFERING Suffering, particularly of the emotional variety, seems to be the one universal constant in “The Mill on the Floss”. Suffering isn’t just expected by everyone, it’s even welcome by some of them. Maggie and her masochistic tendencies, or her tendency to seek out and even embrace her own suffering, comes to mind. Since everyone in this book suffers, what distinguishes people is how they deal with suffering, both their own and the suffering of others. Date: 2015-12-17; view: 888
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