Maggie Tulliver grows up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss, a passionate and intellectually hungry girl whose intelligence is wasted because she is female. Her father Mr. Tulliver loses a lawsuit against the lawyer Wakem, goes bankrupt, and the family is humiliated. Maggie's brother Tom, whom she adores, becomes cold and rigid as he works to restore the family honor. Maggie is torn between duty to Tom and her own desires — first toward the disabled intellectual Philip Wakem (son of her father's enemy) and then toward the charismatic Stephen Guest, who is engaged to her cousin Lucy. Maggie elopes briefly with Stephen but turns back, choosing duty over desire. The community condemns her anyway. Tom disowns her. When the Floss floods catastrophically, Maggie rows to the mill to save Tom. They reconcile in the boat — then a mass of debris strikes them and they drown together, locked in each other's arms.

Maggie Tulliver is the dark-haired, impetuous daughter of Mr. Tulliver, the owner of Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss in the midlands town of St. Ogg's. From childhood, Maggie is conspicuously intelligent — quicker than her brother Tom, more curious, more imaginative — but her family treats her clev...