Mill on the Floss: Humour


Humour has a vital role to play in “The Mill on the Floss”. Eliot’s novels would have been heavy and didactic without her delightful humour due to her psychological and intellectual approach. It lightens the tragic atmosphere and balances the picture of life delineated by Eliot which is a fusion of the gay and the grave, and makes the picture more lifelike. But the humour is not ordinary rather it is a psychological and intellectual humour soaked into pathos. She fuses together comic irony and mild satire to create humour and her end is to moralize.

In “The Mill on the Floss” Eliot has employed various methods and devices to provoke comedy. Her characters don’t pass witty remarks neither they behave foolishly still they become a source of comedy. They seriously talk about their household linen, furniture, recipes and enter into rows involving family dignity and unconsciously become a source of comedy.

Eliot has created humour by giving ironic treatment to the family background of the Dodsons, their mentality and lifestyle. They were vain of their elevating values but narrow in outlook, sordid in their concern for modesty and they gave meaningless importance to appearances. To them, religion meant ‘revering what was customary and respectable’. The pride in family dignity prevented them from being dishonest and corrupt.

The Uncles and Aunts in the novel are also a delightful source of comedy. The skirmishes between Mr. and Mrs. Glegg produced hilarious humour. Mrs. Glegg is considered one of the best shrews in literature. When Mr. Glegg was busy talking to Bob, she cried out suspiciously:

“Mr. Glegg … are you going to stand talking with the packman till you get murdered in the open daylight.”


At another occasion, at the residence of Pullets, when Mr. Glegg offered her a seat near the fire, she burst out:

“You see I’ve seated myself here, Mr. Glegg; you can roast yourself if you like.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pullet form a funny couple and there exists a mutual fidelity between them. Mrs. Pullet is always ready to bawl over anyone’s calamities. Mr. Tulliver’s illness reminds her of several other ailments. She herself has been suffering from many imaginary diseases and for them she has many medicines.. Mr. Pullet’s chief aim is to look after his wife. He remembers all the medicines dosed to his wife and has collected all the used bottles which he plans to exhibit as a memorial on his wife’s death. Mr. Pullet has ‘natural faculty for ignorance’.

Inspite of being pathetic, the description of the Mosses has also been given a comic touch. Eliot has equated humour with pathos in the Mosses. Mrs. Moss has eight children; yet she felt sorry at the death of her twins. She did not believe in the equality of mankind and thought that the poor must be prepared to receive snubs.

Bob Jakin, too, is a source of titillating humour in the novel. He talks with ‘unembarrassed loquacity’. Mr. Glegg, in his first meeting with Bob, ‘stood open-mouthed in astonishment’.

“He looked at Bob first over his spectacles, then through them, then over them again.”

He became a packman because he had a ‘glib tongue’ and due to this he prevailed upon even Mrs. Glegg like woman to purchase some of his wares. The way he used to cheat his customers with his thumb is really delightful.

The married life of Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver is also comically and ironically treated by Eliot. Mr. Tulliver has the habit to point the inferiority of his wife. He once remarks that his wife is a sort of ‘soft woman’ who goes on breeding ‘stupid lads’ and ‘cute wenches’ to make the world topsy-turvy. All the advices of Mrs. Tulliver always make her husband act exactly ‘in the opposite direction. She was ‘a woman of sparse tears’ and it was a deficit which she miserably felt at funerals. She is more anxious with her China, linen, furniture, etc. then her husband’s illness. It is amusing to see her filled with worry about Tom that whether he will have enough to eat at school and whether the school will be near enough to allow her ‘wash and mend him’.

Eliot’s comic remarks in the novel also add to humour. Talking about Mr. Tulliver’s sister, she remarks that she ‘had quiet thrown herself away in marriage and had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby’. At another occasion, she ironically remarks, ‘Mr. Glegg paused, for speaking with much energy for the good of others is naturally exhausting’.

Humour is infact woven into the very texture of the novel and is not superimposed. Her humour is intellectual and not buffoonery rather based on reason and brings about dichotomy between the ideal and the real, appearances and truth. Her humour is psychological too. She does not create humour by apparent situations rather she penetrates deep into the hidden forces which govern human activities. Her humour is not just a foolish laughter rather it has a serious message behind it. She creates humour like a serious thinker. Her humour is deeply soaked into pathos as in the description of Mosses.

Such humour is hardly found either in Fielding or in Austen. It can only be detached and appreciated by a reader having a penetrating eye.

Posted in: E==Eliot