Conflicts in Mill on the Floss Conflict is defined as the‘‘clash of opposing or incompatible emotional or motivational forces such as drives, impulses, or wishes”.In psychoanalytic terms, conflict is a“struggle taking place between conscious and unconscious forces especially, id, ego and superego” (170).In literature and in real life humans encounter many kinds of internal and external conflicts. Conflict is considered to be the essence of a drama, as it gives depth and intensity to the plot, whichaccording to Aristotle, is the soul of the drama. It may beinternal, within the heart of a person, as inHamlet, (“to be or not to be”) or external, between people –emotional, physical or ideological conflict. An internal conflict is a good test of a character’s values. The internal conflicts of a character and how they are resolved are good clues to the character’s inner strength. Internal conflict adds meaning and complexity to the external conflict, but it'sthe external conflictthat forces a character to make internal choices and changes. Moral conflict involves, as the ‘‘moral philosophy which is concerned with what is morally good and bad, right and wrong ….The ethics or morality of a person or group, consists not only in what they habitually or customarily do but in what they think it is fitting, right, or obligatory to do’’ (“Ethics”,578). This type of conflict concernsegocentric impulses,good or bad, with anopposing environment and the antagonistic forcestake many forms. The Mill on the Floss narrates the struggles of a girl and her family in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign over England.At that time, women’s roles were strictly limited to housework and child rearing, and so girls—especially girls of Maggie’s social class—were given only rudimentary education. Maggie’s story constitutes a protest against this kind of restriction; the reader is shown from the start that Maggie possesses a rich imagination and a keen mind but is supplied with no challenges or outlets for them. As a girl, she changes constantly against the restrictions that are imposed upon her, preferring to read any books she can get her hands on to sewing her sampler, and always dirtying her clothes and disarranging her hair in her efforts to keep up with Tom. Worse, her sensitive and affectionate nature makes extremely painful to her the disapproval of her extravagant flights of imagination, impatient desires, and“wild” behavior drawn upon her from her mother,and especially from Tom, whom she adores.As a young woman, she achieves a certain serenity, despite her limiting occupation as a sewing teacher in a girls’ school, but her desire for a wider
life erupts into love for Stephen Guest, andthe old conflict between passion and duty becomes very serious.
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