George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860). Part 1

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans, 1819-80) is regarded by many as the greatest English novelist. Her masterpiece is Middlemarch (1871-2) but her previous novels, particularly The Mill on the Floss (1860), paved the way for it, in terms of both the development of Eliot’s sophisticated narrative technique (as a means of rendering the experience both of the individual and of a whole society) and her characteristic themes (human ambition, the desire to improve the world and the struggle of women for recognition, among them).
At this meeting we will begin a reading of Eliot’s wonderful novel, The Mill on the Floss, the story of siblings Tom and Maggie Tulliver, caught in the expectations of family and society as they begin to grow up. The text of the novel can be found here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6688/6688-h/6688-h.htm
You don’t need to have read the novel in order to participate. All are welcome. We will focus both on the novel in general and on individual chapters such as Book First, Chapter VIII; Book Fifth, Chapter V; Book Sixth Chapter XIV; and Book Seventh, Chapter V.