SOURCE: "A Reinterpretation of The Mill on the Floss," in PMLA, Vol. 87, No. 1, January, 1972, pp. 53-63.

In the following essay, Hagan challenges the conclusions drawn by several earlier critics, maintaining that the relationship between Maggie Tulliver, her brother Tom, and by extension their father, is the main concern of The Mill on the Floss.

The salient fact about the most significant and representative of the recent interpretations of The Mill on the Floss is the extent to which they have become polarized, with William R. Steinhoff and Jerome Thale exemplifying one kind of reading and Bernard J. Paris, Reva Stump, and George Levine the other [respectively, in "Intent and Fulfillment in the Ending of The Mill on the Floss," in The Image of the Work, edited by B. H. Lehman et al., 1955; "Intelligence as Deception: The Mill on the Floss," PMLA, 80, September 1965; "Toward a Revaluation of George Eliot's...