Basically, the critics I've been reading think it makes perfect sense for Tom and Maggie not to reconcile. They've followed out the characters and the patterns Eliot has set up for them, and it's essentially a tragic story. It would make sense for Maggie to die without being forgiven; as the book I'm reading about The Mill on the Floss right now puts it, it would be unbearable, but it would make sense.

Instead, Eliot forces a reconciliation through the flood. Tom and Maggie admit they love each other and then drown together. It's seen as a clumsily done plot move. And if she really did want a tragic end for Maggie, then yes, the fall should have been earlier, and Stephen should have been better developed as a tragic hero; instead, the closest match for a tragic hero is Maggie's brother. So the patterns Eliot was using go all out of whack, and a lot of people haven't been happy with the ending for nearly 150 years.

English literary criticism: the wank that keeps on going.

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Ah, that makes sense.

Heh, so essentially a characterization problem. Yeah, I think as it was, I wasn't bothered with the forgiving, just with the flood.

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Yeah. I really like the depiction of the flood as a piece of nature writing, but plot-wise it seems so random. And Eliot was doing research on floods before the book was written, so it wasn't meant to be. She meant it as this grand tragic ending; instead, a lot of people have taken the ending to be about the arbitrary unfairness of life. Which is about 180 degrees from Eliot's philosophy, and indicates problems rooted in the characters.

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