Education and Women’s Roles

Abstract

Mr Tulliver, in The Mill on the Floss, decides ‘to give Tom a good eddication: an eddication as’ll be a bread to him’ (p. 56). As a consequence Tom, his son, is sent away to live in the house of the Reverend Stelling who boarded and taught two pupils in order to supplement his income. Maggie, Tulliver’s daughter, however, has to make do with a local education. It is important that Tulliver does not look upon this as a deprivation of the girl, and he certainly does not act from any malevolence towards his daughter. He explains that Maggie is: ‘allays at her book! But it’s bad — it’s bad … a woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble … she’ll read the books and understand ‘em, better nor half the folks as are growed up’ (p. 66). Tulliver oscillates between concern at Maggie’s propensity for reading, and admiration for it: ‘being so clever’ is a great talent, but it is unnatural in a female and will lead ‘to trouble’ for ‘a woman’. It is for this reason Tulliver’s attitudes towards his daughter’s education are not deliberately repressive, but protective — he is both admiring and regretful of Maggie’s intelligence. His comment on the gender difference between Maggie and Tom is: ‘It’s a pity but what she’d been the lad’ (p. 68).