# The Mill on the Floss — Character guide

> Key figures in The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.

- [Maggie Tulliver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/maggie_tulliver.md): Maggie Tulliver grows up clever, impulsive, and starved for approval in a family that prizes her brother's plodding respectability over her restless mind. At the charity bazaar she knits and sells with downcast grace whi
- [Tom Tulliver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/tom_tulliver.md): Sent to King's Lorton to be made a gentleman, Tom finds Latin, elocution, and bashfulness a misery after the easy triumphs of Mr. Jacobs's academy. He clings to a boy's dream of becoming a substantial man like his father
- [Mr. Tulliver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mr_tulliver.md): Mr. Tulliver is a man of active Hotspur temper, sober but quick to boil, who farms by instinct and litigates by stubbornness. His long lawsuit against Wakem drains the mill and darkens his household, yet he dreams of Tom
- [Philip Wakem](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/philip_wakem.md): Philip Wakem is the lawyer's son, physically deformed and inwardly refined, drawn to Maggie's mind and warmth from childhood. He moves quietly through St. Ogg's, avoiding crowds, buying up what others reject, and nursing
- [Stephen Guest](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/stephen_guest.md): Stephen Guest is a privileged young man in St. Ogg's, admired for his looks, his fortune, and his easy way with everyone. At the bazaar he flirts with Lucy, buys nothing from Maggie, and wears a scarlet fez with the conf
- [Mrs. Tulliver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mrs_tulliver.md): Mrs. Tulliver is a soft, fussing woman who measures love in household order and dreads the disgrace of debt almost as much as the loss of her possessions. As the mill's fortunes sink, she is scolded by her own servant an
- [Bob Jakin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/bob_jakin.md): Bob Jakin scrambles up from muddy scuffles with Tom to become a wandering trader whose loyalty outlasts the shame Tom feels at the old intimacy. He measures the world by a rough ledger of good turns and black eyes, and h
- [Lucy Deane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/lucy_deane.md): Lucy Deane is the small, gentle cousin everyone calls the bell of St. Ogg's, and she moves through the Tulliver circle with an unjealous generosity that makes her the natural center of its social hopes. She believes she 
- [Mrs. Glegg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mrs_glegg.md): Mrs. Glegg is the eldest and most formidable of the Dodson sisters, a woman who regards herself as the family's constituted check on weakness and extravagance. She clashes openly with Mr. Tulliver over money and pride, y
- [Mr. Glegg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mr_glegg.md): Mr. Glegg has retired from trade expecting ease and instead spends his days among flowers and vegetables, doing the work of two gardeners while his wife counts the wages saved. Mild, uxorious, and quietly content, he emb
- [Mrs. Pullet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mrs_pullet.md): Mrs. Pullet lives at Garum Firs and descends on St. Ogg's in a cloud of ailments, remedies, and unsolicited advice about dress and complexion. She pities Bessy's bad luck with her children and half-proposes sending Maggi
- [Mr. Deane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mr_deane.md): Mr. Deane is Lucy's father and a man of business who has risen by his own wits, believing firmly that any young man who fails to rise has only himself to blame. He takes Tom on as a clerk, watches him for seven years, an
- [Mrs. Moss](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mrs_moss.md): Mr. Tulliver's kind but impoverished sister with many children.
- [Dr. Kenn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/dr_kenn.md): Dr. Kenn is the one clergyman in St. Ogg's willing to stand by Maggie when gossip turns her into a scandal, resisting a parishioner's demand that he withdraw his countenance. But his conscience cuts both ways: he cannot 
- [Mr. Riley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/riley.md): Auctioneer and advisor who recommends a school for Tom.
- [Luke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/luke.md): Loyal mill hand who works for the Tulliver family.
- [Lawyer Wakem](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/lawyer_wakem.md): Wakem is the shrewd lawyer Tulliver blames for every legal entanglement, and the enmity runs deep enough that the miller reads malice into chance itself. Yet the novel lets us see him plainly: a punctual, aquiline-nosed 
- [Mr. Stelling](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters/mr_stelling.md): Tom's schoolmaster who also tutors Philip Wakem.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mill_on_the_floss_se/characters