On finishing The Mill on the Floss, I thought Maggie and Tom entwined in death a romantic but feeble ending to an otherwise great novel. Although a few pages earlier, I was blown away with the astonishing acceptance of Maggie by austere Aunt Glegg. Nevertheless, death coming to Maggie's rescue in situation impossible seemed decidedly too glib.
On reflecting - and I find reflection is always prudent on finishing literature - I feel that this interpretation of the ending is superficial. Maggie is locked in a seemingly insoluble ethical dilemma throughout the second half of the novel, a dilemma which, if anything, worsens with time. Borne with brother Tom on the raging torrent of flood-waters, death provides her a convenient release? Surely the reader expects Maggie to endure heroically to a sad end decades in the future.
In the flood she thinks only of Tom, trapped in the low-lying mill. From a young girl, Maggie has been motivated by a love that withstands repeated cold-shoulders from her intolerant brother. He has disowned her. But stranded by rising flood-waters, a hitherto recalcitrant Tom has a convenient change of heart and welcomes his rescuer in the row-boat. With the threat of drowning imminent, his rigid moral code becomes more accommodating, at least in the short term. Consider what is happening in the mind of this son of the late Mr. Tulliver?
Why does the headstrong Tom venture recklessly into the perilous current, with his sister on-board, when he surely knows that Lucy’s home is situated on higher ground? Lucy is unlikely to be in mortal danger from the flood. Remember that Tom has just suffered the embarrassment of being rescued by his little sister, his fallen sister. So what does he do? He shows himself as reckless as his father, Mr Tulliver, who gambled everything on a frivolous lawsuit at the expense of his family. Tom gambles with his sister’s life, and in death they are entwined, just as the family had once been entangled in bankruptcy. Is this romance? I'm not so sure.
The death of brother and sister in the flood-waters is hardly a happy ending from any angle. Maggie’s perennial struggle with passion for Stephen Guest and boundless sympathy for Philip Wakem is unresolvable. Had the two siblings survived, Tom would have continued to oppose Philip, and her sad obsession with the rather shallow Stephen Guest - and Lucy's loss - would have continued to haunt the clever Maggie. Tellingly, Stephen is such an unsympathetic character, with little moral sensibility as he continues to stalk Maggie like a spider its prey.
I think the high drama of the ending makes little difference. Notwithstanding her epitaph, "In their death they were not divided," Maggie is a supremely tragic figure, dead or alive.