The Mill on the Floss
The novel details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up on the fictional river Floss near the fictional village of St. Oggs, after the Napoleonic Wars but prior to the first Reform Bill in 1832. Spanning the years from Tom and Maggie’s childhood up until their deaths in a river flood, the book is loosely autobiographical and reflects the disgrace that the author herself faced while in a relationship with a married man.
Approx. 207,828 words.
afore two hours together passes my cunning. An' now you put me i' mind," continued Mrs. Tulliver, rising and going to the window, "I don't know where she is now, an' it's pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so,--wanderin' up an' down by the water, like a wild thing: She'll tumble in some day."
Mrs. Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook her head,--a process which she repeated more than once before she returned to her chair.
"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr. Tulliver," she observed as she sat down, "but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God! no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Providence, but it seems hard as I should have but one gell, an' her s