"A girl of no startling appearance, and who will never be a Sappho or a Madame Roland or anything else that the world takes wide note of, may still hold forces within her as the living plant-seed does, which will make a way for themselves, often in a shattering, violent manner."
— Eliot, George (1819-1880)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
Edinburgh and London
Publisher
William Blackwood and Sons
Date
1860
Metaphor
"A girl of no startling appearance, and who will never be a Sappho or a Madame Roland or anything else that the world takes wide note of, may still hold forces within her as the living plant-seed does, which will make a way for themselves, often in a shattering, violent manner."
Metaphor in Context
No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it. A girl of no startling appearance, and who will never be a Sappho or a Madame Roland or anything else that the world takes wide note of, may still hold forces within her as the living plant-seed does, which will make a way for themselves, often in a shattering, violent manner.
(p. 248)
Categories
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>
Theme
Cultivation
Date of Entry
06/21/2007
