Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot's 'Mill on the Floss'. She has always been one of my favourite characters. She rebelled against the restraints of the society she lived in. It is supposed to be one of Eliot's most autobiographical novels
As a girl, Maggie would not have generally had access to many books, but her father indulged her by giving her some. I always wonder what Maggie would have made of modern society, with our easy access to books.
"...everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie: there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one Maggie felt. If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie?"