Just Who is Maggie Tulliver?

What kind of a girl/woman/person do you think George Eliot is presenting/creating/defining with Maggie?  Look at her from a couple of perspectives.  There are plenty of models of womanhood--for better or for worse--that Eliot presents in the novel, with the Dodson sisters, Mrs. Moss and even Mrs. Snelling.   We also have the narrative perspective--how do you think the narrator feels about Maggie (which, of course, can be seen not only in how she describes Maggie, but in how she describes the other women)?  And then you also have the perspective of the men--Mr. Tulliver, Tom and Philip.

Spring Break Week off

Look for the next blog prompt on Friday, March 26.  I bet you all plan to spend your break reading The Mill on the Floss.  I know I am!

Aurora Leigh Take Two

If you agree with Deborah Logan that the poem explores deviations from the "Victorian norm of acceptable female sexuality" do you find anything revealing in that exploration (294)?  Does the deviance defined by Aurora, Lady Waldemar and/or Marian empower them in any way?  What is the effect of any empowerment, if you see it?

Ultimately, it seems, despite the ending of Aurora's marriage to Romney, Logan concludes that the poem is an example of one woman writer (Barrett Browning, not Aurora) who acknowledges the presence of a character like Marian who "demands recognition and articulation on her own terms" in the case of defining her own sexuality, and that Barrett Browning uses Marian to "say the unsayable and think the unthinkable" and posits a "femaleness not bound by social, sexual, or economic constructs" (305).  Does it matter that the poem is not about Marian?  What about how Aurora ultimately defines her sexuality?