The Mill on the Floss · Chapter
Mrs. Tulliver's Teraphim, or Household Gods explained
Tom and Maggie return home to find a bailiff in the house, signaling the family's ruin.
What happens
Tom and Maggie return home to find a bailiff in the house, signaling the family's ruin. Mrs. Tulliver mourns the loss of her treasured household linens and china, which she had marked with her maiden name. Tom resolves to support his mother, while Maggie's grief and anger at the blame cast on her father lead to a tense confrontation with her mother and brother, though the siblings are ultimately united in their shared sorrow.
Themes in this chapter
Family Obligation and Conflict
Tom and Maggie are torn between loyalty to their father and their mother's grief; Maggie's outburst reveals the tension between defending her father and her mother's material concerns.
Social Class and Respectability
The family's ruin and the sale of household goods threaten their social standing; Mrs. Tulliver's anguish over her linens reflects the link between possessions and identity.
Gender Roles and Limitations
Tom feels compelled to 'behave like a man' and provide for his mother, while Maggie's emotional response is dismissed as 'hectoring' by Tom, highlighting gendered expectations.
Characters to notice
- Maggie Tulliver
Grieves for her father and resents her mother's focus on material possessions; defends her father passionately and later reconciles with Tom.
- Tom Tulliver
Shocked by the bailiff's presence, he resolves to take responsibility for his mother and seeks a situation to earn money.
- Mrs. Tulliver
Distraught over the impending sale of her household goods, especially those marked with her maiden name; blames her husband for their ruin.
- Mr. Tulliver
Lies in a state of living death, unaware of the family's crisis; his condition deepens the children's sorrow.
Key passages
“The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.”
Tom's inherent resolve starts to emerge, driven by anger at his aunts and the realization that he must act maturely and support his mother.
Tom's character development as he steps into a protective role.
“Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father—her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death—neutralised all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china.”
Maggie's anger grows as she hears implied criticism of her father, whose near-death state makes her indifferent to her mother's distress over household items.
Maggie's fierce loyalty to her father overrides her sympathy for her mother's material losses.
“To think o' these cloths as I spun myself... and I marked 'em so as nobody ever saw such marking—they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it's a particular stitch. And they're all to be sold, and go into strange people's houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out before I'm dead.”
Mrs. Tulliver laments the fate of the linens she spun and marked with a unique stitch, now destined to be sold and possibly ruined by strangers.
Mrs. Tulliver's attachment to her linens as symbols of her identity and labor.