These categories can be extended to other women characters in novels written during the 19th century. Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss is, within the context of the novel, an elevated woman. She is markedly odd and different, a notable outcast from the rest of her family; she is intelligent, dark-haired and dark-skinned, and desires the same freedom to do as she wishes as her brother Tom has. Her desire to break gender norms are what lead to her fall in the end; Maggie falls in love with her cousin’s beau, and he is taken with her for the very things that made her an outcast as a child. When Stephen and Maggie meet, she tells him bluntly to not give her any compliments; she makes no attempt to be coquettish or charming. Indeed, the
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Elinor and Lucy have a rivalry throughout the novel, as they desire the same man: Edward Ferrars, who engaged himself to Lucy at a young age, before he met Elinor. Lucy Steele can be compared to Arabella from Jude the Obscure in that she has no qualms with manipulating a person to get what she desires. She is infatuated with Edward because marrying him would give her a chance to rise socially, as she was raised without much money and therefore is of a lesser social rank. Lucy manipulates Elinor by telling her about her four year engagement to Edward Ferrars, which must remain a secret. Elinor later wonders, “Could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like her—illiterate, artful, and selfish?” (Austen 80). In the end, Lucy does not marry Edward; when she learns he has lost all of his money, she decides to marry his younger brother and heir, Robert. She is deliberately deceptive when sending the message to Elinor, though, and implies that she has married Edward after all—“That Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of malice against him in her message by Thomas, was perfectly clear to Elinor, and Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton
Elinor and Lucy have a rivalry throughout the novel, as they desire the same man: Edward Ferrars, who engaged himself to Lucy at a young age, before he met Elinor. Lucy Steele can be compared to Arabella from Jude the Obscure in that she has no qualms with manipulating a person to get what she desires. She is infatuated with Edward because marrying him would give her a chance to rise socially, as she was raised without much money and therefore is of a lesser social rank. Lucy manipulates Elinor by telling her about her four year engagement to Edward Ferrars, which must remain a secret. Elinor later wonders, “Could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like her—illiterate, artful, and selfish?” (Austen 80). In the end, Lucy does not marry Edward; when she learns he has lost all of his money, she decides to marry his younger brother and heir, Robert. She is deliberately deceptive when sending the message to Elinor, though, and implies that she has married Edward after all—“That Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of malice against him in her message by Thomas, was perfectly clear to Elinor, and Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton