"There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only, but the essential ti megethos which was present in the passion, was wanting to the action; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)


Place of Publication
Edinburgh and London
Publisher
William Blackwood and Sons
Date
1860
Metaphor
"There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only, but the essential ti megethos which was present in the passion, was wanting to the action; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud."
Metaphor in Context
There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only, but the essential ti megethos which was present in the passion, was wanting to the action; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud. (p. 108)
Categories
War
Provenance
Reading A.S. Byatt's edition for Penguin Classics and searching at <http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/eliot/mill/>
Citation
See The Mill on the Floss (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1860). <Vol. I in Google Books><Vol. II><Vol. III>
Date of Entry
06/21/2007

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.