The Mill on the Floss

by George Eliot

“W

ell, well, do as you like, Bessy,” said Mr. Tulliver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed—as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dod­sons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well—not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson fam­ily. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of the house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family; the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, eve­rybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated: if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanour, and the only bit­ter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in “strange houses”, always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confi­dence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling.

Notes and exercises:

1.   The sound [Ù] is represented by the letter “o” in the following words:

glove	ton	stomach	worry	love	doth	fishmonger
son	comfort	discover	Monday	become	sponge	ironmonger
cover	shove	honey	come	govern	compass	thorough
money	governor	monk	covey	wonder	combat	twopence
month	covetous	wonderful	onions	borough	won	dove
shovel	oven	London	some	monkey	among	conjure
government	dozen	frontier	covet	done	none	tongue

2.   Explain the meaning of the following verbs and memorize their spelling: admit, emit, permit, commit, submit, omit.

3.   Insert “ee” or “ea” in the following words:

ind..d	b..n	bl..ch	k..p	disagr..	R..gan
disagr..able	dem..nour	f..ble	l..st	f..tures	b..n

4.         Give derivatives:

Verb	Noun	Adjective	Adverb
complicate	...	...	...
shame	...	...	...
multiply	...	...	...
exhaust	...	...	...
intimidate	...	...	...

5. Word study:

floss           a brook, rivulet, stream

bleach        to whiten in sunlight or by a chemical process

condiment  seasoning, spice, something used to give flavour and relish to food, e.g. pepper, salt, etc.

preserves   jam

6. Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

mill dam, mill pond, the sea is like a mill pond, mill-race, he is between the upper and the nether/lower mill-stone, coffee mill (coffee grinder), pepper mill, put somebody through the mill, to go through the mill (to undergo hard training and experience);

that was the right thing to say, an attractive little thing, a nasty thing to say, to pick one’s things, things seem to be getting worse, to have things one’s own way, this will be just the thing for you, I’ll do this first thing in the morning, it was a near thing, to be quite the thing, for one thing . . . for another