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Book 7, Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mill on the Floss, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory and Childhood
Knowledge and Ignorance
Women’s Roles and Social Pressures
Tolerance and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
Five years later, all traces of the destruction of the flood have vanished. Dorlcote Mill has been rebuilt, and the Tulliver family graveyard is quiet again. Philip, Stephen, and Lucy often visit the grave marking Tom and Maggie’s burial place. Philip always visits alone, whereas Stephen and Lucy visit together (they have since married). The inscription on the tomb reads: “In their death they were not divided.”
Maggie and Tom’s sibling relationship was difficult and riddled with grudges. However, the inscription on their tombstone provides a reminder that they were inextricably bonded together and could not be “divided” for long. Their death is presented as a reconciliation and forgiveness, and a final end to the divisions that kept them apart in life.
Themes
Literary Devices
