Maggie Tulliver's quick imagination is stifled by the claustrophobic contraints of family life in a provincial town.

Her parents suppress her natural intelligence and instead focus their hopes and ambitions on her brother Tom.

Disapproved of by all her relatives, Maggie yearns to be loved and admired as unconditionally as she loves and admires her morally unbending brother.

But when Maggie does find love it compromises her irretrievably, and she has to face the bleak consequences of not conforming