Hello there,
It's Mandy here.
Thanks for joining me tonight.
I'm going to be reading you an extract from The Mill on the Floss and it's an extract that focuses on the main character Maggie Tulliver when she was a little girl.
And the novel is written of course by George Eliot,
The pen name adopted by Mary Ann Evans when in her late 30s she began to write fiction.
And some of the most interesting observations in Mill on the Floss are the things that George Eliot perceived about children and about how they deal with each other.
The relationship between Maggie and her brother Tom is absolutely key to the novel.
But before I go ahead,
Please feel free to make yourself really comfortable.
Settle down into your chair or into your bed,
Relax your hands,
Soften your shoulders and release any tension that you're feeling in your jaw.
That's very good.
So if you're ready,
Then I shall begin.
The excerpt is called Tom is Expected and it's from quite early on in the novel.
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,
Mrs Tulliver said,
For a little girl to go out in her best bonnet.
Maggie took the opposite view very strongly and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop,
Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.
Maggie,
Maggie,
Exclaimed Mrs Tulliver,
Sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap.
What is to become of you if you're so naughty?
I'll tell your Aunt Gleg and your Aunt Pullet when they come next week and they'll never love you anymore.
Oh dear,
Oh dear,
Look at your clean pinafore,
Wet from top to bottom.
Folks will think it's a judgment on me as I've got such a child.
They'll think I've done something wicked.
Before this remonstrance was finished,
Maggie was already out of hearing,
Making her way towards the great attic that ran under the old high-pitched roof,
Shaking the water from her black locks as she ran like a sky terrier escaped from his bath.
This attic was Maggie's favourite retreat on a wet day when the weather was not too cold.
Here she fretted out all her ill humours and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs and here she kept a fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes.
This was the trunk of a large wooden doll which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering.
Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly struggle,
That luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of JL destroying Caesara in the old bible.
The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual for the fetish on that occasion represented Aunt Glegg but immediately afterwards Maggie had reflected that if she drove many nails in she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she knocked it against the wall nor to comfort it and make believe to poultice it when her fury was abated for even Aunt Glegg would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much and thoroughly humiliated so as to beg her niece's pardon.
Since then she had driven no more nails in but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys that made two square pillars supporting the roof.
That was what she did this morning on reaching the attic sobbing all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of consciousness even the memory of the grievance that had caused it.
As at last the sobs were getting quieter and the grinding less fierce a sudden beam of sunshine falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves made her throw away the fetish and run to the window.
The sun was really breaking out the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again the granary doors were open and there was Yap the strange white and brown terrier with one ear turned back trotting about and sniffing vaguely as if he were in search of a companion.
It was irresistible Maggie tossed her hair back and ran downstairs seized her bonnet without putting it on peeped and then dashed along the passage lest she should encounter her mother and was quickly out in the yard whirling round like a pythoness and singing as she whirled Yap Yap Tom's coming home while Yap danced and barked around her as much as to say if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for it.
Hey hey miss you'll make yourself giddy and tumble down in the dirt said Luke the head miller a tall broad-shouldered man of 40 black-eyed and black-haired subdued by a general mealyness like an auricular.
Maggie paused in her whirling and said staggering a little oh no it doesn't make me giddy Luke may I go into the mill with you.
Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flush out with new fire.
The resolute din the unresting motion of the great stones giving her a delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force the meal forever pouring pouring the fine white powder softening all surfaces and making the very spider nets look like fairy lace work the sweet pure scent of the meal all helped to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her outside everyday life the spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her she wondered if they had any relations outside the mill for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family a fat and flowery spider accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal must suffer a little at a cousin's table where the fly was au naturel and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance but the part of the mill she liked best was the topmost story the corn hutch where there were great heaps of grain which she could sit on and slide down continually she was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with luke to whom she was very communicative wishing him to think well of her understanding as her father did perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion for as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself she said at that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill society i think you never read any book but the bible did you luke namus and not much of that said luke with great frankness i'm no reader i aren't but if i lent you one of my books luke i've not got any very pretty books that would be easy for you to read but there's pug's tour of europe that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world and if you didn't understand the reading the pictures would help you they show the looks and ways of the people and what they do there are the dutch men very fat and smoking you know and one sitting on a barrel namus i'm no opinion a dutch man they bent much good in knowing about them but they're our fellow creatures luke we ought to know about our fellow creatures not much of fellow creatures i think miss all i know my old master as we're a knowing man used to say says he if i sew my wheat we out brining i'm a dutch man says he and that were as much as to say a dutchman were a fool or next door nay nay i aren't gonna bother my son about dutchman there's fools enough and rogues enough without looking in books for them oh well said maggie rather foiled by luke's unexpectedly decided views about dutch men perhaps you would like animated nature better that's not dutchman you know but elephants and kangaroos and the civet cat and the sunfish and a bird sitting on its tail i forget its name there are countries full of those creatures instead of horses and cows you know shouldn't you like to know about them luke name is i've got to keep count of the flour and corn i can't do with knowing so many things besides my work that's what brings folks to the gallows knowing everything but what they've got to get their bread by and they're mostly lies i think what's printed in the books then printed sheets are anyhow as the men cry in the streets why you're like my brother tom luke said maggie wishing to turn the conversation agreeably tom's not fond of reading i love tom so dearly luke better than anybody else in the world when he grows up i shall keep his house and we shall always live together i can tell him everything he doesn't know but i think tom's clever for all he doesn't like books he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit pens ah said luke but he'll be fine and vexed as the rabbits are all dead dead screamed maggie jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn oh dear luke what the lop-eared one and the dough that tom spent all his money to buy as dead as moles said luke fetching his comparison from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall oh dear luke said maggie in a piteous tone while the big tears rolled down her cheeks tom told me to take care of him and i forgot what shall i do well you see miss they were in that far tool house and it was nobody's business to see to him i reckon master tom told harry to feed him but there's no counting on harry he's an awful creature has ever come about the premises he is he remembers nothing but his own inside and i wish it had griped him oh luke tom told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day but how could i when they didn't come into my head you know oh he will be so angry with me i know he will and so sorry about his rabbits and i am so sorry oh what shall i do don't you fret miss said luke soothingly there are nash things them lop-eared rabbits they'd happen and died if they'd been fed things out of nature never thrive god almighty doesn't like him he made the rabbit's ears to lie back and it's nothing but contrariness to make them hang down like a mastiff dogs master tom will know better nor buy such things another time don't you fret miss will you come home along with me and see my wife i'm going this minute the invitation offered an agreeable distraction to maggie's grief and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by luke's side to his pleasant cottage which stood with its apple and pear trees and with the added dignity of a lean two pigsty close to the brink of the ripple mrs moggs luke's wife was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance she exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle and possessed various works of art maggie actually forgot that she had any special calls of sadness this morning as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the prodigal son in the costume of sir charles grandison except that as might have been expected from his defective moral character he had not like that accomplished hero the taste and strength of mine to dispense with a wig but the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak young man particularly when she looked at the picture where he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance his knee bridge is unbuttoned and his wig awry while the swine apparently of some foreign breed seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks i'm very glad his father took him back again aren't you luke she said for he was very sorry you know and wouldn't do wrong again a myth said luke he'd be no great shakes i doubt let's father do what he would for him that was a painful thought to maggie and she wished much that the subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank
