The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion
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The Mill on the Floss
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Mill on the Floss, The: Week 2 - Book Second
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There is a beautiful start to The Christmas Holidays chapter, which we can probably all appreciate at this time of year:-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 color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.
Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of colour; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified "in unrecumbent
sadness"; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow.'
The dyke and irrigation work Mr Tulliver is speaking of in Chapter 2 were a result of the work done to drain the low lying and frequently flooded land of this area. They were known as 'the Forty Foot drains'. The River Trent ('Floss') and other rivers were dammed and diverted to create more agricultural land. The area Eliot is writing of is near Boston, Lincolnshire. There was great opposition to these works which reduced the number of watermills needed in the region, of which there used to be a large number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sl...
http://homepages.which.net/~rex/bourn...
George Eliot was of a scientific bent and in her research for the Mill on the Floss, she and Lewes visited water mills in Dorset and Lincolnshire and she studied an account of floods in Scotland as well as treatises on the hydraulics appertaining to water mills of the period. She was fascinated by the 'uncontrollable power' of natural energy sources and linked these to the similar uncontrollable power of human emotions. Perhaps she read Samuel Smiles 'Self Help' wherein he wrote, with Stephenson's Rocket in mind, that 'strong temper displays itself in fitful outbreaks of passion - like steam pent up within the organised mechanism of a steam engine, the use of which is regulated by slide valves, governors and levers - it may become a source of energetic power and usefulness. Hence some of the greatest characters in history have been men of strong temper but of equally strong determination to hold their motive power under strict regulation and control.'
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objec...
We can perhaps see Maggie, described elsewhere as a 'boiler furnace', as functioning like an unstable and unsuccessful engine, out of control and in danger of explosion? Eliot several times refers to the 'narrowness' of Maggie and Tom's lives and this too relates to the way in which steam is forced through narrow passages/tubes before it erupts into a driving force. I am not scientific enough to describe this well, but you cleverer folks will hopefully know what I am getting at! We should perhaps be looking for more allusions to the power of machinery, its use and misuse, in this novel, written as it was when steam power was beginning to transform the world.
Mod
Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty ..."
The descriptions are beautiful. They fill me with a sense of silence - the quiet that only a snowfall or snow on the ground seems to create.
I cannot help but wonder at what significance there may be in the character of Phillip. I feel that surely Eliot must have had some particular intention in the introduction of this humpbacked boy being made a fellow students of Tom's. The idea of the sins of the father being visited upon the offspring kept popping up into my mind. Though I do not know if this was intended, but by the Tulliver's, especially Mr. Tulliver and Tom hold Phillip in judgement because of his father's actions.
I did really enjoy their interaction with each other and the way in which they played their weaknesses and strengths off one another. I loved that first meeting between them in which Phillip used his intellectual superiority to gain the advantage over Tom, and Tom in turn used his physical prowess over Phillip.
Eliot makes mention of Physiognomy in the chapter 'Schoolfellow': An anatomist - even a mere physiognomist - would h ave seen that the deformity of Philip's spine was not a congenital hump, but the result of an accident in infancy...' She became very interested in physiognomy and the theories of Johann Lavatar, a pseudo science of the Victorian era which purported to read the character by the looks of people, facial characteristics, deformities etc. Later, as a result of further study, she decided that outward appearances were not an indication of character. It is therefore significant that although Philip is humpbacked, he has a pleasant, 'not disagreeable', face and is 'not spiteful', much to Tom's surprise. He decided that the hump was not 'congenital' so perhaps it did not mean that Philip, though weak and not 'manly', was a 'rascal' and therefore he could be friends with him.
Eliot may be introducing Philip as a pleasant, non-rascally character to cast doubt upon the current ideas about the character of deformed people and we may see further indications that his humped back is not an 'evil' which predisposes him to be wicked.
http://www.caslon.com.au/physiognomyn...
I found these comments on Eliot's portraiture on the Victorian Web:-'...To avoid slosh, the Pre-Raphaelites maintained, one must paint from new pictorial models and from the direct observation of nature. By the same token, George Eliot wanted her literary portraits to present fresh perspectives and real knowledge of character rather than occasions for effusive sentiment.
In pursuing that aim, her portraiture passed through three major phases. In Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede, she was primarily concerned to show that looks do mirror personality, that there are, as G. H. Lewes put it in "The Novels of Jane Austen," "subtle connections between physical and mental organisation" . In these early works, phrenology helped her to create portraits that give reliable clues to temperament and behavior. With Romola and Felix Holt, however, the correlation between appearance and reality becomes more problematic. Influenced less by phrenology and more by Ruskin and Hawthorne, Eliot grew preoccupied with the portrayal of evil and with the discrepancy between innocent-looking portraits and corrupt sitters. Finally, the gap between static picture and changing person becomes normative in Eliot's portraiture, so that Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda abound with partial portraits, visual definitions of character that are qualified as soon as given. The knowledge afforded by portraiture grows more uncertain and more complex as Eliot's work progresses, and the significance of the English portrait tradition itself becomes ambiguous. Sometimes the tradition represents an admirable continuity of English history, but at other times it reflects only the vanity of an exclusive and dying aristocracy. The variety of meanings it can encompass, from the moral and psychological to the historical and sociological, makes Eliot's literary portraiture richer than that of any earlier novelist in English.'
As a teacher, I was interested Elliot's thoughts on education.On one hand, I agree that not every student needs the traditional curriculum. Vocational training is important, and someone like Tom would have been better left at his first school.
Not that Tom received a good education. It seemed as if he was missing math and science, two important elements of any type of education.
But on the other hand, there is a reason why we focus on language arts, literature, and the classics. They teach us critical thinking skills, cultural knowledge, communication skills, etc.
Despite the fact that the minister wasn't the best of teachers, Phillip seemed to get a lot out of his studies, even if Tom didn't.
And obviously, Elliot was making a point about Tom getting the education that Maggie should have received. She had the intellect to do well in that environment.
Lynnm wrote:Despite the fact that the minister wasn't the best of teachers, Phillip seemed to get a lot out of his studies, even if Tom didn't. "In regards to Phillip, in addition to the fact that he was more intellectually inclined than Tom was, it seems he had also been given a better education than Tom prior to coming to the Stelling's.
The things in which Tom thought he could impress Phillip with, Phillip had already mastered in previous schooling. So Phillip was coming into the Stellings with a more advanced educational background it seems.
One other thing I began to wonder about in reading this, though Maggie's is eventually sent to school by her aunts, it seems prior to that she had not had been given any education.
So I always wondered just how had she learned to read? It is hard to imagine her father actually teaching her. Though he indulged it in her, considering his views it doesn't seem like he would have taken an active role in her learning. Did she just learn through Tom? Or are we to presume she taught herself?
It seemed as if he was missing math and science, two important elements of any type of education.Tom was receiving a inferior classical education in which Euclid and geometry counted for maths. Science was taught via Greek history and it seems that Tom is not doing Greek. It was thought that if a gentleman had a classical education it enabled you to pick up anything you chose later on and gave you something in common with other gentlemen. As Philip says: 'I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like by-and-by.' Philip's previous school appears to have been better than Mr Stelling's establishment.
There were a lot of teaching primers around at this time which helped children to learn their 'letters' and a bright child could pick reading up. Embroidering the alphabet and 'mottoes' for samplers was another method. We teach children to read formally (and not always successfully!) but it was common in the days before compulsory schooling for people to teach themselves to read. (Have you seen the film The Reader which gives a good example of how someone can do this.)
http://publishing.bl.uk/book/golden-p...
http://www.hydroponicsonline.com/stor...
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch....
Here is a description of the sort of classical education' Tom and Philip were undergoing. Of course, its efficacy would be dependent upon the school attended and the masters who taught. There were very few good schools with trained teachers at this time. A trained teacher would be one who had studied the classics at either Oxford or Cambridge or who had studied privately under an Oxbridge classics graduate:-http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classi...
MadgeUK wrote: "There were a lot of teaching primers around at this time which helped children to learn their 'letters' and a bright child could pick reading up. Embroidering the alphabet and 'mottoes' for samplers was another method. We teach children to read formally (and not always successfully!) but it was common in the days before compulsory schooling for people to teach themselves to read. "I wasn't surprised Maggie knew how to read either for this very reason.
Some parents were also a part of the process. I'm sure in Maggie's case, at least her mother was involved. And even if Mr. Tulliver didn't feel that Maggie needed the same level of education as Tom, he certainly wouldn't want her to be unable to read or write. Even before young girls were taught how to read and write in the home and formally sent to schools, girls from more well off families were taught enough reading and writing to be able to run a household.
(I'm trying to remember - I think it was in the 1600s that women started to be more formally trained beyond knowledge for running the household. And if I remember correctly, women started to have more formal schooling to read and write at higher levels was because of religious arguments that women were responsible for their soul and therefore should be able to read the Bible.)
There was very little education for ordinary women before the 1800s and the bible was read to people in church by the priest or by the male head of the household. It was often in Latin so not intelligible to uneducated people. Being able to read was not a common accomplishment and it could be a disadvantage to a woman to be thought too clever - as we see with Maggie. The ability to do simple household accounts was not dependent upon literacy.It was the printing of bibles in English and their wider circulation which led to a higher rate of literacy in general as people became anxious to read the bible instead of being read to by the priest. The earliest normal size printings of the bible were made around 1611 after King James had larger ones sent to all parish churches. But they were far too expensive for ordinary people until the English Revised version was published in 1880s. Both magazines and penny novels became available around the same time and it was perhaps these which influenced female literacy. The Victorians also published many sermons and some of these were 'bestsellers'.
The history of bible printing was different in America and maybe women had more access to them. 'The first English language Bible to be printed in America by Robert Aitken in 1782 was a King James Version. Robert Aitken’s 1782 Bible was also the only Bible ever authorized by the United States Congress. He was commended by President George Washington for providing Americans with Bibles during the embargo of imported English goods due to the Revolutionary War. In 1808, Robert’s daughter, Jane Aitken, would become the first woman to ever print a Bible… and to do so in America. In 1791, Isaac Collins vastly improved upon the quality and size of the typesetting of American Bibles and produced the first "Family Bible" printed in America... also a King James Version.'
Lynnm wrote: Some parents were also a part of the process. I'm sure in Maggie's case, at least her mother was involved. And even if Mr. Tulliver didn't feel that Maggie needed the same level of education as Tom, he certainly wouldn't want her to be unable to read or write.."It is my understanding that women/girls from the lower and working classes were not necessarily given an education and often were largely illiterate. I was not altogether certain if Mrs. Tulliver would know how to read herself. Though it seems she did come from a fairly good family and her sisters (particuarly Mrs. Glegg) seem to have been educated, so presumably she would been given some education, but Mr. Tulliver did marry her on account of her lack of intelligence. It is hard to imagine he acutally teaching her children.
As far as Mr. Tuillver goes, it does not seem as if he looked very favorably on the idea of women knowing how to read. I recall him making some remark about it when Riley was visiting and Maggie was in the room reading. He made a jest about it. Though it is possible he had taught her to read to indulge her desire to learn.
And it is my understanding Maggie had no schooling up until the point that her aunts sent her after Tom began his tutelage with Stelling.
MadgeUK wrote: "There was very little education for ordinary women before the 1800s and the bible was read to people in church by the priest or by the male head of the household. It was often in Latin so not intel..."There was very little education for ordinary boys before the 1800s as well.
I'm talking more about the mid- to upper classes.
Juan Luis Vives (mid-1500s) was the one that promoted women being able to read so that they could understand Christianity. He wrote an essay, The Education of a Christian Woman. A lot of it seems very demeaning to women today from a 2000s lens, but really, he was an advocate for women's education.
And wasn't the King James Bible translated into English in the early 1600s? And wasn't part of the Protestant Reformation more access to the Bible? In English, not Latin.
It has been quite awhile, but I do recall some of these discussions from grad school.
Women like Rachel Specht (early 1600s) knew the Bible well. She used it to fight Joseph Swetham who wrote a very popular conduct manual track that was very anti-women: The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women. Ditto Aemilia Lanyer, who used the New Testament to argue the superiority of women.
And there is a big difference in the writing of women pre-1600s and from the 1600s on. Pre-1600s, few women wrote, and when they did, it wasn't grammatically correct - it was more phonetical. And yes, indeed, they used writing for household duties. And women kept accounts for spending.
During the 1600s, you begin to have a lot of women writing: Speght, Lanyer, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Cary, etc. There was a period in the 1600s when censorship laws were lifted, and everyone - including many women were writing.
Look at all the women who wrote in the 1700s, and then the explosion in the 1800s.
Silver wrote: "And it is my understanding Maggie had no schooling up until the point that her aunts sent her after Tom began his tutelage with Stelling. "You are confusing my points. I'm not saying she had formal education. But many people at that time didn't have formal education. But she was educated at home. She was well read. Obviously, either she taught herself or her mother or father taught her to read.
And I think you are confusing Mr. Tulliver's comments. Yes, he wouldn't dream of giving Maggie the education that Tom is getting. But good grief, he doesn't want an illiterate, completely unaware daughter. If she marries or even if she lives with Tom, she will have household duties that require some type of education and intelligence.
When he mocks her reading, it is when she's reading things he doesn't think that she would need as a woman. Not that he's against her reading period.
Lynnm wrote: And I think you are confusing Mr. Tulliver's comments. Yes, he wouldn't dream of giving Maggie the education that Tom is getting. But good grief, he doesn't want an illiterate, completely unaware daughter. If she marries or even if she lives with Tom, she will have household duties that require some type of education and intelligence. ."Among the lower and working classes I am sure there were plenty of women who were in fact illiterate and yet still managed to keep a household. I do not think that knowing how to read would be exclusively necessary to a woman to be able to attend to her domestic duties.
In regards to Mr. Tuillver, I was not confusing or misunderstanding his remarks. This is what Mr. Tuillver says to Mr. Riley about Maggie reading, prior to the mention no the specific book:
"She understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read--straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But its bad--it's bad," Mr. Tulliver added, sadly checking this blamable exudation, "a woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble.."
Than after that they discover what book she is acutally reading and remark upon it.
And when he talks of Mrs. Tuillver he remarks about how a woman who is not clever makes for a better wife. He considers his own wife's lack of intelligence as being one of her virtues as a wife.
And wasn't the King James Bible translated into English in the early 1600s? And wasn't part of the Protestant Reformation more access to the Bible? In English, not Latin.The English bible posed a threat to the church's power and thousands of copies of Tyndale's 1530 English bible were burned by the bishops. There are now only 2 known copies left.
Of course the upper classes of both sexes had access to books and reading but not the middle and lower classes. I mentioned 1611 and the KJV. King James was followed by Bloody Mary who was a catholic and their bibles were (are?) in Latin. English Protestant bibles became illegal. Witch hunting was prevalent and a woman reading could be accused of witchcraft - I think Maggie is being treated as if she were a witch, or evil, because she reads. Access to English was mainly for the head of households, not women or workers, although of course there were exceptions.
Bunwat: I do not believe those literacy figures! They must relate to the middle and upper classes only. There were so few schools in the UK until the 1870s, which you had to pay for. It would not be possible to get those percentages unless from a very small middle/upper class sample. Literacy figures are always suspect because the authorities (and teachers) want to 'big them up'.
It is strange that Eliot does not refer to Maggie's education considering how important it is to the novel. Perhaps she assumed that her readers would know how she became literate. Sunday school was the most likely IMO. This novel is considered to be strongly autobiographical but Maggie's education bears no relation to George Eliot's:-
'The young Evans was obviously intelligent and a voracious reader. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, and thus not thought to have much chance of marriage, and because of her intelligence, her father invested in an education not often afforded women. From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough, from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry.' (From Wikipedia.)
(I have posted something about the autobiographical details of MotF in the Background thread.)
We have to be careful in making our points that we don't overstate our cases. I remember one of my professor's making that point as well. Yes, women were no where close to being equal: they weren't educated like men were, they didn't have work opportunities, property issues, etc. But they also weren't isolated, as if they were in a cloister.Women who weren't married or whose husbands died with no male heir had many rights - and sometimes quite a bit of money. Indeed, they were considered to be a threat - hence the term "masterless women" - but the fact that they were considered to be a threat and were written about means that they existed.
It is fact that some middle and a lot of upper class women were literate and had education. Not the same education as men, but certainly some of them were very well read.
And I'll have to see if I can dig out my 17th Century British women's lit course notes, but I remember my professor talking about how women in the upper classes were taught to minimally read and write in order to take care of the household. Their husbands traveled, they took care of the sometimes extensive home, and there are letters and household accounts that were written by women.
Also, women had legal rights. Court records from the 1600s and 1700s show that women sued quite often.
I don't want to overstate in the other direction - as if women didn't have problems. They were considered inferior to men. But we can't ignore the countless examples of women who were literate, who wrote, and who were educated at home.
Yes, lower class women and many middle class women didn't have mcuh education. But again, that could be said for many of the men as well.
Silver - there's a difference between Mr. Tulliver not wanting Maggie or his wife to be "clever" and wanting them to be completely uneducation and not read at all. He thinks that women should be lower than men - him in particular. Again, Maggie could read - and well. He didn't stop her. And in fact, despite his words, he's obviously very proud of Maggie.
Forgot one point. Upper class and some middle class women were also expected to have certain accomplishments. Again, they weren't the same as men, but they had to read literature, play a musical instrument, speak French, etc. We see that in Austen's Pride and Prejudice when Darcy gives Lizzie a list of what he expects in a woman.
I don't think anyone doubts that upper class and some middle class women had these advantages (and many more) Lynn but we are here dealing with working class and lower middle class country people. The other problem is that it is upper class males who have mainly done the writing too and so our view of society is skewed towards them until the greater development of literacy in the 1800s. Women first came into their own after The Black Death (1348) which killed so many men in Europe. This is reflected, for instance, in Chaucer and The Widow of Bath. Women and lower class men were then presented with opportunities to take over the running of estates and businesses. We see quite a few instances of clever and resourceful women in this period, especially in the aristocracy but in the interim period men regained ground and by the Victorian era they had gained the ascendancy again.
Darcy was an aristocrat, Lizzie was a lower middle class gel - an unlikely romance:). A better example is in Eliot's Middlemarch where the fact that Rosemary was educated 'above her station' to be a lady, with accomplishments, did not make her fit to be the practical wife of a doctor. It was this airy-fairy impractical education of women which had feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft up in arms. They thought that women were just being educated to be house-wives and foils of men - The Angel on the Hearth - and not to be people in their own right, pursuing their own intellectual desires. In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft ridiculed prevailing notions about women as helpless, charming adornments in the household. Society had bred "gentle domestic brutes." "Educated in slavish dependence and enervated by luxury and sloth, women were too often nauseatingly sentimental and foolish. A confined existence also produced the sheer frustration that transformed these angels of the household into tyrants over child and servant.'
Maggie, having educated herself and not having been to a 'Dame' school for girls, is growing up to be a woman in her own right and I think this is what Eliot is revealing to us as preferable.
I realize all that Madge. I'm just trying to have a counterpoint from the ideas here that somehow it is such an incredibly absurd notion that Maggie is allowed to read or that the vast majority of women were illiterate. It is just simply not the case. Even if the woman is in the working class. Also, Mr. Tulliver, while not rich, is certainly not poor, and Mrs. Tulliver's sisters have husbands who are relatively successful business people. And Mrs. Tulliver's family doesn't sound as if they were poor by any means. Maybe I'm misreading it, but they certainly aren't the poor we find in a Dickens novel.Maybe I'm confusing the Brits and the Americans, but even poor people out in the middle of nowhere on the praries here in the 1800s knew how to read because of primer books. Obviously, there were still many illiterate people, but we shouldn't be surprised when someone can read - even a girl - at that time.
Lynnm wrote: "I realize all that Madge. I'm just trying to have a counterpoint from the ideas here that somehow it is such an incredibly absurd notion that Maggie is allowed to read or that the vast majority of..."First of all I did not by any means imply that it was completely absurd that Maggie would know how to read. I was just surprised by such because I wondered how she would have leaned, both in considering that she is part of the working class (in which it was true fewer women of the working class were literate than those among the upper class) even if they were not completely impoverished I would not consider the Tulliver's to be well off.
Knowing Maggie had not had any form of schooling, and well it is hard to imagine Mrs. Tuillver teaching Maggie to read simply because well I cannot imagine her teaching anyone anything, because of the nature of her personality, and because she herself is a bit flighty and air headed. And I was not certain if Mr. Tuillver would have taught her considering the views he expresses about women who are too clever.
So I was just curious where she would have learned from since she was in a position in which it did not seem she was provided with many opportunities to learn.
You make some good points Lynn and Bunwat.I also suspect that literacy was higher in the US than in the UK where social customs and the class sytem kept people 'in their place'. Again, newspaper reading was a male pursuit and not for 'ladies', who might learn things they should not know from them. They were also comparatively expensive and even when I was young relatively few working people could afford a daily newspaper. 23 million is only half of the population and half were sold in London. When Dickens' magazines were published many people clubbed together to buy them and one person would read the serialised stories aloud. Reading aloud to others who could not read was a common activity. When novels began to be printed and women borrowed them from the circulating libraries, this was an activity which was frowned upon for 'nice' women and there are numerous references to novels corrupting their minds.
Keeping people 'in their place' was dependent upon keeping them ignorant and I really do think that you both exaggerate the amount of female literacy in the UK at this time. That Maggie was unusual in being such a good reader is illustrated a number of times in the text where she is frequently criticised for being too 'clever'.
After all, we have problems with achieving good literacy levels in our own time when access to all kinds of reading matter is possible and affordable. For me, it stands to reason that it would have been far more difficult in earlier times.
This Wikipedia entry has some good stats on the history of literacy in Europe:-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy...
It is interesting to note that at least one historian thinks that the introduction of schooling reduced literacy.
Silver wrote: "Lynnm wrote: "I realize all that Madge. I'm just trying to have a counterpoint from the ideas here that somehow it is such an incredibly absurd notion that Maggie is allowed to read or that the va..."Silver, my apologies. I must have had a flashback to my grad school days when arguments flared at times, but since we were face to face, everyone knew that it wasn't personal and we were merely striving for the "truth" - whatever that might be.
I remember once, I was mocked for 30 minutes straight because I made an off-handed comment that I thought photograph wasn't "real" art. You would have thought the world was ending, my classmates were so much up in arms. ;)
No, you didn't imply that it was absurd that Maggie could read.
Again, sorry for getting carried away.
I agree with BunWat that it is a different interpretation of what defines literacy. And I also think that it is a different interpretation of the Tulliver's class. Like BunWat, I think of the Tulliver's as middle class where Madge thinks of them as the working class or lower middle class. I'm not sure who is right or who is wrong in this case.Once we've gotten to the end of the book, and we don't have to worry about spoilers, I'm going to look into some research by Ph.D.s in scholarly journals to see their take on the Tulliver's class and Maggie's education. Obviously, Ph.D.s don't agree on certain points as well, but we might get some more insight into these issues.
Madge - you've got a good point - we may be overstating the literacy.
And Madge and BunWat, thanks for the all the great information on the topics. Interesting discussion.
As for the differences between British and American women, I agree that yes there were some major differences. America is often seen as a matriarchal rather than a patriarchal country. I think that is a bit of an overstatement, but women truly had much more of a say than in other countries. In fact, in the 1800s, women were considered to be the torchbearers of American ideals. Not that women here didn't have to fight for equality (and still haven't gotten there yet). But it was a different type of fight, and there were many influential women throughout history, starting with the founding of the country.
The Tullivers are definitely not working class - I see them, with my Brit classwise eyes:) - as lower middle class country folk, complete with their dialects and lack of education. The lawyers, clergymen and teachers ('professionals') are middle class and have had a formal, probably 'classical', education. The upper middle class are 'the gentry', land/property owners who are not aristocrats but have independent wealth and do not work. All of which reminds me of this old Monty Python sketch:-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3E5vY...
Two quotes from the above Wikipedia link on European literacy are pertinent:-
'...as late as 1841, 33% of all Englishmen and 44% of Englishwomen signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write (government-financed public education was not available in England until 1870 and, even then, on a limited basis).'
'It was not until the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century that paper and books became financially affordable to all classes of industrialized society. Until then, only a small percentage of the population were literate as only wealthy individuals and institutions could afford the prohibitively expensive materials.'
I agree that the American Puritan tradition, with its emphasis on bible reading, led to a higher literacy rate but like Bunwat I see American women as being just as repressed as British ones until the 20thC, when the Suffrage movements on both sides of the Atlantic, and the work available during WWI, made a tremendous difference.
It is perhaps the American way to concentrate on the rags-to-riches stories of those who made it from poor origins to success. As someone from the British working class I tend to concentrate on the millions who were oppressed and had no real chance of making it because the system was deliberately weighted again them, who were actually taught that they were inferior and should keep to the place which God had ordained.
Hi everyone. I've been lurking around this discussion, enjoying both it and the book. I didn't find it particularly surprising that Maggie could read. Her family is not dirt poor; her father and uncles are in business and have some means. If I had thought about it at all, I would have presumed that Maggie is the kind of child who just has to read. Plenty of kids have learned to read before being exposed to any kind of formal education. All they need is some exposure to books, and there were clearly some books in the Tulliver household.
No spoilers here, but I'm ahead on the reading, about 90% completed.I will only say that the Tulliver's class will come up again and be definitively resolved.
What I meant about differences for the fight for equality between British and American women was not that one was easier or better. (I personally don't like those types of verbal contests that sadly seem to take quite a bit across the pond - not here, but in general.)When people came to America - and this includes women - there was this idea that people could start over again: the old restrictions were thrown off and there was an opportunity to create a new paradigm. Part of that was the role of women.
I was watching a morning political show, and one of the guests on the show was a female academic. She is teaching a course in historical influential females in America, and she talked about Abigail Adams. I know from my own readings that Abigail wrote and talked to John about making sure that women were treated better than the "ancients" treated women. Not that these women in the background were always successful, but we see from the writings of the men from this period, that they listened to their wives input regarding the direction of the new nation.
Alexis de Tocqueville in "Democracy in America" talked about the differences between Europe and America, and one of the things he considered was the dynamic of the family. Now, admittedly, he focused on the relationship between father and son, but he did talk about how the American family was far more democratic than the European family, where father was the head and "king" of the family.
We see that same idea for women in books like Anzia Yezierska's "Bread Givers." She also talked about how when they first arrived in America, her immigrant father acted as if he was still the "king" of the family and could dictate what his wife and daughter could do. But she saw the freedom of opportunity in the U.S., and took advantage of it - went to school, learned a skill, wrote a book, and went to Hollywood when it became a film. Her father lost that authority once they crossed the Atlantic.
Other immigrant women who worked in the garment industry in poor conditions, fought for better conditions. They marched and got laws changed.
The women who helped settle the west definitely had a bit of power. Husband and wife had to work as a team or they wouldn't survive. We still have countless letters and other narratives from those women, talking about their expanded roles.
Think of the women who drove the anti-slavery movement. And it was women who spearheaded movements to protest the poor treatment of Native Americans.
Obviously, there are bold women in every country - American women are definitely not the only women who did great things in the past. But again, let's not overstate the repression of American women to make a point.
When I think of American women being repressed, I think more of post-World War II - the women of the 1950s. After the war, women were forced from every angle - including television and magazines - into the isolated suburbs. Educated women just had a support role, no voice, only defined as caretakers of their children. Women took quite a few steps backwards in that era. Great portrayals recently in television and film about women in that period, including Revolutionary Road and Betty Draper's character in Mad Men.
Of course, that poor treatment drove the women's movements in the late 60s and 70s.
Howver, as always, just MHO. :-)
EDIT: After posting, didn't realize how long this was. Sorrrry! Won't do that again. :-)
Great post Lynnm.I was a woman of the 1950s. Most women here had to work then because the Uk was so broke. Very few stayed at home to bring up kids although part time work was common. All my friends worked and further education courses at local colleges enabled them to further their secondary education before university became universal. It was a good time and a kind time, when the camaraderie of the war still held good and when the respect that women gained then also still held good. I came to London from the provinces in the 'flower power' era of the 60s and that was a good time too and even better for women. Times they a-changed for the worse in the 70s and it has been downhill since IMO:(
I can imagine that the 'pioneer' times in America were good for the increasing independence of women. Women are resourceful in hard times - as the wars showed - and become the backbone of their families. Who earns the money becomes not as important as who spends it wisely or even manages to run a home without it.
And I suppose life after the Black Death was a kind of frontier for the people left, especially for women. (More men died because they were the ones who travelled.)http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/...
This is an interesting little piece about the changing role of women after the Black Death:-
http://philobiblon.co.uk/?p=2481
It is said over here that it was WWI which gave women the vote not just because of the loss of men's lives but because women had been such a help in the factories etc that Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, could no longer deny them the right they had fought so hard for before the war. A great many widows and spinsters were left by the wars:(. Many women who had just been 'engaged' never married and became independent. And when I came to London in the 1960s I was surprised how many working single women from WWII, who had been engaged to soldiers, were living alone enjoying independent lives. The National Spinsters' Association was in the forefront of the fight for better pensions for women then.
Oh dear, we have strayed a long way from poor, reading Maggie:(.
MadgeUK wrote: "It is said over here that it was WWI which gave women the vote not just because of the loss of men's lives but because women had been such a help in the factories etc that Lloyd George, the Prime M..."As we discussed in the Chat area, WWI is a favorite topic of mine. I find the shift for women in that time to be interesting - Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite feminist readings.
And yes, we have digressed terribly from Maggie and the Mill on the Floss!
1. Tom's "First Half"
2. The Christmas Holidays
3. The New Schoolfellow
4. "The Young Idea"
5. Maggie's Second Visit
6. A Love-Scene
7. The Golden Gates Are Passed