As teenagers, we both feel unsure about our future, and the pressure around us seems to become heavier each day, especially when we are facing our parents’ censures.

It also implies the struggles and difficulties that a woman has to go through in her progressive life. He feels that educating Tom will make his son more successful, while an over-cute woman’s no better nor a long-tailed sheep –she’ll fetch none the higher price for that.Įliot subtly reveals the fact that women are evidently absent from history. Tulliver’s opinion on the matter is partly justified by economic considerations. He reasons that an educated woman is an economic liability and therefore does not allow her to cultivate her heroic potential as an intellectual. He recognizes her potential but ultimately rejects it as inappropriate because she is a girl. He doesn’t believe that she should be educated. Tulliver’s dual support of Maggie’s symbolic masculinity and of her cleverness, however, is incomplete. Maggie wants to be an economic contender like Tom but is disallowed this form of achievement because of prejudice against women and the economic structure of society, which influence her father’s actions in regards to her education. That she gives this respect such great importance betrays her desire to become Tom’s equal. Therefore, Maggie yearns for Tom’s respect. Tom’s responses to her unconstrained protestations of love are often cold and standoffish.

Maggie looks up to Tom this is evident in her frequent expressions of love for her older sibling. Eliot sets up Maggie’s early childhood as the juxtaposition of the experience of Maggie with that of her brother. She does so through a rejection of femininity, which is also a failed attempt to own the status granted to masculine Tom. Maggie’s first attempt at heroism is an attempt to secure the heroic independence and leadership possessed by her brother Tom. They will never understand anything that needs really careful thought” (David, 2000). Stelling, the schoolteacher, proclaims, “ Girls can be quite clever, but their cleverness is shallow.

The mill on the floss