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Lord David Cecil wrote an interesting book in the 1930s EARLY VICTORIAN NOVELISTS, where he looked at the works of Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, and Emily Bronte. He selected these writers as the popular favorites of the first half of the Victorian period, and he explained their strengths and weaknesses (as he saw them) to the reading public. Some of his comments are quite relevant to this day, but like all criticism it gives an idea of the spirit of the times of the critic's life as well.
Cecil thought highly of George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross), who wrote about seven or eight books (including sketches and poetry). But for most modern readers, they are usually acquainted with her shortest book, SILAS MARNER, which is still read in some high school curriculum. The other books, FELIX HOLT THE RADICAL, DANIEL DERONDA, MIDDLEMARCH, THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, ADAM BEDE, ROMOLA, SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, are still in print (Penguin, for example, has most of them in print), but are mostly unread. The one of most interest today is her last novel, DERONDA, where she discusses the Jews in English society, and an incipient, pre-Hertzl type of Zionism. ROMOLA is her sole attempt at a historic novel (about Savanarola's experiment of a religiously pure republic in Florence in the 1490s). Her meatiest novel is MIDDLEMARCH, which is concerned with English society in the provinces in 1832, the year of the great Reform Bill of Lord Grey. I had to read MIDDLEMARCH in college for a literature course. It certainly is a thoughtful book (Virginia Woolf called it the most grown-up book in the English language). But it suffers (like all of Eliot's novels) from one defect - she cannot write livable, exciting prose. While Dickens is overly exuberant at times, and Thackeray can become pompous and prolix, and Trollope can become (as Lord Cecil says) very ordinary in his discussion, and Charlotte Bronte can fail to explain certain relationships well, and Mrs. Gaskell seems best dealing with female characters, all of them (and Emily Bronte in her single novel) hold the reader's interest. Reading most of Eliot's novels is like trying to chisel sentences out of blocks of marble with a toothpick!
To date I have read about fifty pages of MILL OF THE FLOSS. I notice that one of the other reviewers never finished the novel too. But I have read a synopsis of what it is about. The Tullivers (Maggie and her brother Tom) are the central figures - they own the mill in the title. Although close at the start of the story, Maggie falls in love with the son of a neighbor whose father is involved in legal difficulties with Mr. Tulliver Sr. Tom takes a dim view of this relationship, and the tragedy of the story is regarding the split between the siblings, culminating in their demise at the conclusion (Maggie runs back to the mill to rescue Tom during a heavy flood, and they die together). It must have been a success with Victorian readers, but it is very gloomy and depressing to modern audiences.
The movie changed the ending a little - Maggie (Geraldine Fitzgerald) does die at the end with her lover, and Tom (James Mason) notes their deaths at the conclusion in his record book. The story is totally rewritten, except for a double death in the flood at the conclusion. It doesn't really help matters. Although Fitzgerald and Mason do pretty well with their parts, they can't really pull the film up by their work alone. The end result is a fairly minor film, that fortunately did not hurt the lead's careers. The only other thing to note is that the boyfriend was played by Frank Lawton, who two years earlier played David Copperfield as a grown up opposite W.C.Fields, Lionel Barrymore, and Maureen O'Sullivan. But then, Lawton never really had a major film career - he just happened to always be around in pictures, some good, some mediocre.


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