Maggie is a romantic character and a dutiful daughter and sister she is devoted, tender and longing to give and receive love. Maggie is often read as Eliot's critique of the opportunities available to women in 19th century. However, these readings tend to be overly autobiographical: they read Maggie as an avatar of Eliot herself. As you read Maggie's story, the connections we can draw between her life story - particularly its often-unfulfilled ambitions - and Victorian constructions of femininity. As Maggie Tulliver approaches adulthood, her spirited temperament brings her into conflict with her family, her community, and her much-loved brother Tom. Still more painfully, she finds her own nature divided between the claims of moral responsibility and her passionate hunger for self-fulfilment.
The effect that the immediate family has on a child has changed quite significantly, which may not always be for the best. Freedom of speech is expressed more openly and people are encouraged to express their individuality. Where as in the Victorian society it was quite the opposite. This can bee shown by looking at Maggie and her impetuous and violent behaviour has been likened to that of her fathers- stressing the theme of heredity and her anomalies as a woman with masculine character traits. Maggie's anger can be seen as a symbol of feminist frustration and rage at the oppression of women in Victorian society.
Today at the discovery of intellect and knowledge, it would want to be perused and developed rather than ignored, as seen unimportant for a woman to have these qualities, which was a view of the past. In "Mill on The Floss" Maggie's family environment is central to her problematic sense of identity as a woman, for instance, although her father praises Maggie's intelligence and quickness, he also maintains the socially conventional view that "an over cute woman's no better nor a long tailed sheep.
