A Victim And A Martyr--On The Duality Of Maggie's Tragedy

The Mill on the Floss written by George Eliot is a record of Maggie Tulliver's sad struggle for love and recognition in mid -Victorian Britain. Her drowning in the flood with her brother Tom has long been a controversial issue. This dissertation aims to vindicate Maggie Tulliver's death through an analysis of the duality of her suffering as a victim and a martyr from a feminist perspective.Chapter 1 traces the tragic history of Maggie Tulliver chronologically from her childhood to the final moment of her drowning together with her brother Tom in the catastrophe of a flood. It analyzes how the seed of being both a victim and a martyr is planted in her childhood and, how, during the process of her growth, she plays the dual role of a victim and a martyr, and, at last in face of the flood and Tom's potential danger, she is martyred heroically and willingly.Chapter 2 focuses on Maggie Tulliver's relationship with the major male and female characters in the novel and analyzes how in the male dominated society no single man can satisfy Maggie's multisided needs and how when they think they are loving her they actually hurt her instead, and that how Maggie's fellow women help those hurt her. This chapter aims to show that under such circumstances, Maggie's fate is doomed, whether as a victim or a martyr.Chapter 3 deals with the causes and the significance of Maggie Tulliver's tragedy. There are mainly two reasons for Maggie's suffering: one is that the kind of woman Maggie wants to become contradicts the traditionally acceptable mode of womanhood; the other reason, a deeper reason is the existence of the patriarchal society. The significance of Maggie Tulliver's tragedy is that her suffering will help the advance of humankind and her death will arouse people's sympathy for women's status. And that is exactly why Maggie Tulliver has to be abandoned to death by the catastrophe of flood.