Mill on the Floss 5.3

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, 
but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society.
~     Eliot, George (2012-05-17). The Mill on the Floss (p. 22).  . Kindle Edition. 

I think perhaps I will not be able to properly categorize this book for some time to come. The child has much of the agency of the author, often doing things with the filter of self-consciousness stripped away. She mutilates a doll to express anger when she cannot do so in public (14). She accidentally kills her brother's rabbits (16), and of course the hair-cutting incident, which criticism has noted as a common occurence at a time when girls' hair held a lot of social pressure. Several of these are things that either require total humility to admit, or an objective distance, though it seems Eliot had a large enough share of objective distance to laugh at herself, or use her own image to elicit pity. 

One rhetorical purpose of the book seems to be to reprimand Eliot's own brother for his conduct towards her after her public and unconventional extra-marital relationship. She seems to be giving a film to the events which interferes with a pure autobiographical reading, making Maggie NOT a remembered child. It places the image of Maggie somewhere nearer Linda, as a character in the Sentimental genre. Although in many instances the child and woman acts passionately and seems to make her own decisions and act as agent, in essential moments, the character often presents herself as the victim, because in a Sentimental novel, it is essential that the reader not judge her from any objective distance. Their sentiment must be engaged on her behalf. On page 59, for instance, she remarks, "Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all chased out of her soul, and the seven small demons all in again." She is the victim of a situation, and is now housing passions she might not be able to control. Eliot also calls it "the daring that comes from overmastering impulse" (68). It all reeks of Tess of the D'urbervilles sleeping syndrome, but with passion rather than drowsiness.

This mixing of fiction and autobiography in the sentimental mode produces frustrating conundrums of judgment and pity. The speaker knows the character is being judged, and if the author identifies too much with the character, as in the case of autobiography (of various tinctures), the result is half defiance, half cowardly veneer. Fear turns autobiography into fiction. This dynamic is further complicated in Eliot's writing (especially this novel) because the sin she is decrying is cruel or unrighteous judgment. The text roundly condemns characters who mistreat Maggie for crimes she did not commit, or did not intend.

Because the reader, specifically Eliot's brother, is so often the focus of the sentiment of the novel, I think I must call Maggie an object-child, who serves to elicit sympathy from the audience.

This text bears further scrutiny, especially at moments of turning or decision-making for Maggie, or at her "running away" with Stephen.

Might she be attempting to show that a passionless life is worse than an error-filled life, as the prude judge?