Categories: Society & Culture

Elopement: The Result of Ignoring Children in Childhood

Maggie is the heroine of the novel due to be prominent in all characters because the whole story revolves around her character and due to her character the story develops with the passage of time. It is the writer’s skill that every girl considers herself Maggie while reading the novel. It is the Maggie’s character due to which the readers identify themselves.

Under the Maggie’s story George Eliot presents her own story in the novel due to which the novel does not lose its plot construction the interest of the story belongs to Maggie’s childhood, youth and madrigal incidents of her life that actually belong to George Eliot’s own life.

Maggie has some positive and negative traits in her character as her love for her brother and father and her pitiful nature but along with it she wayward and stubborn, emotional and rebellious and sometimes she manifests the sensitive and sexual nature in the novel due to which she has to suffer a lot from the beginning tell end in the whole novel.

Maggie’s elopement with Stephen to get marriage exposes Maggie’s sensitivity and she has also the sense of right and wrong. She knew well the difference between the duty and desire and that is why she does not marry Stephen keeping in mind her first love Philip while he brother  Tom forbade her not to speak with Philip because her the son of his father’s enemy. She loved her brother, father and saves them from her aunts’ criticism.

At one step she pushed Luc into mud when Tom ignore her knowing and ran away from her house with gypsies. At last both died in the Floss-Mill flood and drowned in it together their drowning shows their spiritual love. Here Francis Harkins says, “The Mill on the Floss” is the novel of moral conflict in other words the conflict of injured ego and family prestige in which love defeats ego.”

Maggie’s dual nature walks side by side as we see her love with Philip shows her merciful nature because he was on one side physically unattractive and on the other side the son of his father’s enemy but her love with Stephen pertains to physical lust. Because she likes Stephen’s physical beauty and his wealth but she does not forget her childhood-innocence that compels to love Philip keeping in her mind deserving of mercy.

Her stubborn, wayward and moody behavior nature since her childhood creates problems for her family. As we see she ignores Tom’s rabbits and all die at once.

She does not like patch work with her aunts and works according to her thinking ignoring its effects in future when she cut her locks ignoring them knowingly in spite of her parents’ and aunts’ forbidding.

Here Dr Jung says, “Maggie is the story of George Eliot’s own story that debunks her childhood prattling and youth’s incidents. Her two loves one with Philip and other with Stephen at a time shows dual nature; the first reveals her duty and the second reveals her desire in love.”

To sum up, it is the novel of ego conflict that remains from the beginning till end. Maggie character shows duty and desire and her aunts show ego and prestige. On the other hand Maggie is torn into pieces of duty and desire, parents’ love and her aunts’ jealousy and envy. Critics call the character of Maggie a true model of fine girl for the other girls of our society.




  • jhsayyar

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    • Ignoring children at their childhood age is very bad because that is their moulding age. The goodness and badness of an adult depends on how he was trained at his childhood age. So parents should take note of what happens to their children at their childhood age and they kinda character they display should be closely monitored. A child in his childhood age should be monitored not ignored because bad characters children tend to display can be easily changed while they were still kid but if they pass that childhood stage with that character, curtailing them will be very difficult.
      Parents who ignore thierchildren in their childhood age end up regretting it at last especially when they see their children are beyond control by them.
      If a child is ignored in his childhood age and he grows being obedient to the parents, all praises to God but if he thinks he has overgrown his parents, I pity the parents as they will talk and talk for him to hear but is too late. Sometimes some of them die of heart attack.
      Same applies to parents who called themselves white collar job workers employ a maid who looks after their children. They do have little or no time for their children as the main is there to do everything for them. I pray the maid has a good character. If the maid has a good character, your children will be good but once you have a maid that is immoral, the kind of things your children will even be doing at young age will surprise you to the core. Because I have realized children behave like who they are with whether their parents or not. So I think the result of parents ignoring their children in their childhood age is consequential

    • When parents divorce when their children are tender or when one eloped leaving the other with the children, the children certainly will be ignored. If proper care is not taken the children will be user as rags and no one will respect them until their parents home back. I will advice every couple who wants divorce or elope to remember their young kids at home and plan on how to take then along so as not to expose them to hardship. But if you know the marriage will not part, don't bother trying to give birth to his kids, quit it from time.

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