My apologies in advance for the lack of page numbers- my e-text doesn’t have any!<\/p>\n
Reading Chapter III of The Mill on the Floss<\/i>, I was struck by the use of the language of education to\u00a0convey credit, particularly that of Mr. Stelling. Mr. Tulliver wants his son Tom to go to a school where he can learn a skill set more appropriate for a middle-class career, and seeks the advice of his middle-class friend Mr. Riley. Mr. Riley realizes\u00a0the capability of\u00a0education to raise one\u2019s social credit, and recommends the Clergyman Mr. Stelling, recognizing\u00a0that an education from a person of this profession will add to Tom\u2019s social credit. The lower-class Mr. Tulliver seems to have\u00a0difficulty understanding this, and is concerned that a Parson would\u00a0\u201cbe almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o\u2019business\u201d such as Tom,\u00a0while expressing that Clergymen possess\u00a0\u201ca sort o\u2019 learning as lay mostly out of sight\u201d. While Mr. Tulliver recognizes that Clergymen have great learning, he is unable to identify this knowledge exactly and labels it as\u00a0\u201cout of sight\u201d, yet the Clergyman\u2019s educational credit leads Mr. Tulliver to assume it exists. However, Mr. Tulliver does not initially see this form of credit as being applicable to Tom\u2019s, who will be going into\u00a0\u2018business\u2019, which Mr. Riley refutes by stating:\u00a0\u201ca clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education\u00a0and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit\u201d, implying that educational credit is required in order to start a career that generates credit in itself.<\/span><\/p>\n Towards the end of the\u00a0chapter, we learn that Mr. Riley is also forming assumptions about Mr. Stelling\u2019s qualifications, as he does not actually know him. However, Mr. Riley is able to recommend him based on other people of credit, stating that “he believed Mr. Stelling to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said so, and Gadsby’s first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would have been, for though Mr. Riley had received a tincture of the classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of understanding Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready\u201d. Mr. Riley takes on a role similar to Roxana at this moment, whose own account is not reliable but is validated by other creditable sources, and can therefore be taken as truth.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Mr. Riley\u2019s assumption of Mr. Stelling\u2019s credit, though he knows it is not founded in personal experience, convinces him of Mr. Stelling\u2019s merits. By the end of the discussion, Mr. Riley has decided, “<\/span>that if Mr. Tulliver had in the end declined to send Tom to Stelling, Mr. Riley would have thought his ‘friend of the old school’ a thoroughly pig-headed fellow\u201d, expressing both his newfound conviction of Mr. Stelling\u2019s qualifications and of his own class-based credit\u00a0over Mr. Tulliver. It is also based in the credit of other people that Mr. Riley is able to make assumptions about Mr. Stelling\u2019s economic credit, including the amount Mr. Stelling would charge for his time and services, and about what Mr. Stelling is qualified to teach. Though “he knew very little of that [Stelling\u2019s] M.A. and his acquirements\u201d, Mr. Riley still feels confident enough to tell Mr. Tulliver that “when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he’s at no loss to take up any branch of instruction.\u201d This passage demonstrates a moment where education becomes synonymous with personal credit and economic credit in the text, which, if Tom goes on to be educated by Mr. Stelling, might be a continuing theme in the novel.<\/p>\n Any thoughts about the relation between education and credit, or anything to add about this passage?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My apologies in advance for the lack of page numbers- my e-text doesn’t have any! Reading Chapter III of The Mill on the Floss, I was struck by the use of the language of education to\u00a0convey credit, particularly that of Mr. Stelling. Mr. Tulliver wants his son Tom to go to a school where he … Continue reading