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"Then -- the pity of it that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in!"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Author

The Mill on the Floss

Place of Publication

Edinburgh and London

Publisher

William Blackwood and Sons

Date

1860

Metaphor

"Then -- the pity of it that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in!"

Metaphor in Context

Maggie went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Philip went home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming him severely. He was four or five years older than Maggie, and had a full consciousness of his feeling towards her to aid him in foreseeing the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied without persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some happiness into Maggie's life -- seeking this even more than any direct ends [end page 319] for himself. He could give her sympathy -- he could give her help. There was not the slightest promise of love towards him in her manner; it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was twelve: perhaps, she would never love him -- perhaps no woman ever could love him: well, then, he would endure that - he should at least have the happiness of seeing her -- of feeling some nearness to her. And he clutched passionately the possibility, that she might love him: perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to associate him with that watchful tenderness, which her nature would be so keenly alive to. If any woman could love him -- surely Maggie was that woman: there was such wealth of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then -- the pity of it that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He would be her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear anything for her sake -- except not seeing her. (p. 319-20)