mill on the floss:

eliot’s psychological:

A psychological novelist analyses the motives, impulses and mental processes which move his
characters to act in a particular way. The psychological novelist depicts the inner struggles of his
characters and thus lays bare their souls before his reader. Thus in psychological novel there is
much soul-dissection. George Eliot is one of the pioneers of psychological novels.

She goes deep into the obscure recesses of human nature and deals elaborately and in great
variety with those spiritual conflicts and moral disorders which bring about the ruin and downfall
of an individual. The tragedies which take place in her novels are all tragedies caused by some
moral lapse or weakness, and George Eliot shows how that moral weaknesses slowly but
inexorably operates within the human soul, ultimately driving the individual to his doom. Each
individual thus is shown to bear his own fate within him. She rationalizes life and character,
bringing the obscure into clear daylight, with her zeal of truth applying the most rigorous logic to
the resolution of each problem, working it out with the accuracy and solemnity appropriate to a
judicial inquiry and issuing verdicts as irrefutable as the results of a scientific experiment. This
was to view life tragically and the novel had to be reshaped to bear the stress of the new
conception.

Eliot was not a psychologist. She didn’t have even the knowledge required by a psychologist;
yet, she is called the first modern novelist since her approach is psychological. She is the pioneer
of psychological fiction. With the transcription of the visible and real, she traces the ups and
downs of the mental processes and the emotional states of complex character. Her sharp analysis
helps her to come nearer to the truth of human nature, motives and impulses.

“The Mill on the Floss” is a psychological study of the state of an intellectual and sensitive girl
in the English middle-class society, bound by convention. Maggie’s character is primarily the
study of child psychology. Eliot’s psychological approach finds its best and main expression in
characterization.

Stephen Guest is a vital character. There would have been no condition for him to make a moral
choice, and Maggie wouldn’t have come across the greatest conflict which agitated her and
caused her deep agony. Some critics accuse Stephen as a weakling for he was unable to allure
Maggie. Stephen condemns himself as a mere “hair dresser’s block” and, to Swinburne, he
was “a cur”. But, he did attract even Maggie like intellectual girl. The link between Stephen and
Maggie and the moral choice that follows it together constitute a fine psychological study.

Though Eliot collared all her aspects as a novelist, her intellectual approach is more clearly
found in characterization. She does not begin with the apparent personality but with the
psychological forces and basics underlying the personality. Her portraits are ‘of the inner man’.
Through intellectual and psychological approach, she traced virtues and sins to their causes.

Her characters are always consistent. Charlotte, who lays stress on the outer man, often fails to
make the inner constant. There is a wide gap which even imagination can't fill up. The directing
principles on which Eliot focuses and around which she construct her characters remain clearly
understandable through every change. The insight into human nature makes her picture
homogeneous that that of the Victorians.

She presents aspects of human nature which the Victorians cannot. She successfully describes
how a character develops. Others cut a character into good and bad without explaining the
essential causes that make a good character bad and vice versa. Eliot, however, portrays the
evidences of this change with acuteness of observation.

She draws complex characters better than the Victorians because her method is inside-out. She
shows the twisting of motives and gripping impulses. She shows that human mind is like a battle
field where a tug-of-war between the two hostile forces ever persists. She shows how temptation
comes, and leaves at the warning of conscience, comes back disguised and how it shows death to
rise again and approach. As Maggie’s is tempted towards Stephen, she decides to resist it for her
duty towards Philip and Lucy; temptation comes back when both declare love for each other, but
decide not to pursue it; finally, the temptation, which shows death, rises again and attacks both
Stephen and Maggie.
Because of the sharp and intellectual approach, she treats plain and living characters. Her
characters are rather more life-like, for they are nearer to truth, outside as well as inside.

The world of “The Mill on the Floss” is of deceit, pride, vain glory, hatred, malice, cheap
quarrels, etc. Eliot was a well-read and experienced person. She observed life minutely and
deeply. She draws characters from her personal experience and paints them realistically. Moral
conflict lies at the root of her chief characters. The conflict is possibly between duty and love,
asceticism and sensuousness, the ideal and the real, or amid eternal forces and discipline.
Her portraits are characters and nature of men and their inner conflict. As her novels proceed, her
characters grow to new dimensions. Maggie, who was impulsive, became matured and more
balanced. Every character has tinge goodness and no one is thoroughly contemptible.

In “The Mill in the Floss”, she deals with child psychology and reveals it through action and
words. She plans the working of child’s mind, his nature, imagination and impulsiveness. Child
prefers to live in his own world and, for him, the forbidden things are the very apples for
plucking. Maggie is a fine agent of child psychology. She is jealous, impulsive and has desire for
Tom’s affection. Sensitivity, imagination and impulsiveness are linked together to make her
suffer in a deep agony as a child, leading her into troubles and sufferings. Later, Maggie grows
into a fine and matured woman.

Eliot presents a deep view of the problems of life relating the clash of hearts and emotions. Like
Maggie, she shows that a child has more and more intellectual gifts. In the final analysis,
Maggie’s character no longer remains the study of child psychology alone rather Eliot transforms
it into a great study in characters, incited by complex impulses.

In a word, Eliot’s approach, intellectual and psychological, distinguishes her from other
Victorians novelist and brings her on the brink of modern novelist.

here are a lot of characters in this novel, and going over the internal conflicts of each could very
well be a novel in its own right. I'll pick a few characters.
Mr. Tulliver is a good starting place. He is a man who is constantly trying to figure out the
puzzles of the world. He would do great with it, too, if the novel took place 100 years earlier.
The problem for Mr. Tulliver is that the world is modernizing faster than he can mentally keep
up with. He works hard, saves his money, and grows his wealth slowly. He is completely
incapable of understanding the new venture capitalism that is emerging around him. Mr. Tulliver
is old school. Business is done through interpersonal relationships. His flawed logic within the
new business structure is what causes Mr. Tulliver to see enemies that don't really exist. In the
end he is consumed with anger, bitterness, and regret.

Tom Tulliver is another conflicted character. His internal conflict, though, is a far cry from his
father's world puzzling. Tom's conflict is that he sees the world as way too black and white. He
has a huge sense of justice and right and wrong. That's not a problem in and of itself, but Tom
doesn't ever seem to point that lens back at himself. His attitude pushes people away from him.
He's not a compassionate or empathetic character to begin with, so as people distance
themselves from him, Tom becomes more cold and harsh and less and less compassionate. His
sense of justice and high work ethic are positive traits , so Tom isn't a bad guy in the novel. He
is a very frustrated character, though, because in his mind he is doing everything right, but
people still don't like him.

Philip Wakem is just as conflicted as Tom, but in the opposite way. First, he has a physical
deformity, so people already are cold and distant from him. Next, he is a very intelligent and
well read individual. Additionally he is a very compassionate character. Sounds great, but none
of the above description translates into a "manly" stereotype, which may be a reason a
relationship with Maggie is never considered. He's an odd character as well, because while he is
constantly encouraging Maggie and Maggie's independence, he can never seem to follow his
own advice.
In this novel, the protagonist (unlike the inarticulate Amos) tries to communicate to society the
nobility of her feelings, but because of inner 3 conflict, and because she is rejected by a
dehumanized society, she is led to tragedy. George Eliot's realism is moral, and the private lives
of the different characters is then a process of education. The individual learns that: One can
never make a clear cut break with the society in which one has been brought up, with one's
friends and relations, with one's past. Any such break diminishes a man's wholeness and is the
result of his failure to recognize his ultimate dependence on others, their claims on him, and the
consequent need for human solidarity.* George Eliot is not only interested in showing man's
everyday life, she uses realism to illustrate the moral and psychological problems that result from
the conflict between the character's will and the pressures from the outside, hence her use of
determinism. Within this conflict between the individual and the external forces, which may be
moral or amoral, there is a corresponding process of education, that shows the novelist's moral
view of life as a process of moral growth. Yet the balance achieved when this process is finished,
at the end of the process of education, in some cases can coincide with death, as in Maggie's
case.