e Floss" that the plague of tedious conversation
reaches its height. Mrs. Tulliver is one of four married sisters, whose
maiden name had been Dodson, and in these sisters there is a studious
combination of family likeness with individual varieties of character.
Mrs. Tulliver herself--whose "blond" complexion is generally associated
by our authoress with imbecility of mind and character--belongs to that
class of minds of which Mrs. Quickly may be considered as the chief
intellectual type. Mrs. Pullet--the wife of a gentleman farmer, whose
great characteristic is a habit of sucking lozenges, and whom Tom
Tulliver most justly sets down as a "nincompoop"--is almost sillier than
Mrs. Tulliver. She has the gift of tears ever ready to flow, and sheds
them profusely on the anticipation of imaginary and ridiculous woes. Her
favourite vanity consists in drawing dismal pictures of the future and
in priding herself on the bodily sufferings of her neighbours; that one
had "been tapped no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha'
swum in it if you'd liked"; that another's "breath was short to that
degree as you could hear him two rooms off"; and her highest religion--
the loftiest exercise of her faith and self-denial--is the accumulation
of superfluous clothes and linen, in the hope that they may make a
creditable display after her death. Mrs. Deane is "a thin-lipped woman,
who made small well-considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating
them afterwards to her husband, and asking him if she had not spoken
very properly"; and of her we see but little. But of the eldest of the
four, Mrs. Glegg, we see so much that we are really made quite
uncomfortable by her; for she is a very formidable person indeed,--
utterly without kindness, bullying everybody within her reach (her
husband included), holding herself up as a model to everybody, and
shaming all other families--especially those into which she and her
sisters had married--by odious comparisons with the Dodsons. All this we
grant is very cleverly done. The grim Mrs. Glegg and the fatuous Mrs.
Tulliver and Mrs. Pullet talk admirably in their respective kinds; and
we can quite believe that there are people who are not unfairly
represented by the Dodsons--with, the narrow limitation of their
thoughts to their own little circle--the extravagantly high opinion of
their own vulgar family, with the corresponding depreciation of all in
and about their own rank who do not belo