George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss - Mr Tulliver of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Tom (extrait)
I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael,
with the blond faces and somewhat
stupid expression,
kept their placidity undisturbed
when their strong-limbed strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without
clothing.
I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance,
getting more and more peevish as it became more and more
ineffectual.
The Mill on the Floss - Mr Riley Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Tom (extrait)
'Come, come and tell me something about this book;
here are some pictures
- I want to know what they mean.'
Maggie with deepening colour went without hesitation to Mr Riley's elbow and looked over the book,
eagerly seizing one corner and
tossing back her mane,
while she said,
'O, I'll tell you what that means.
It's a dreadful picture,
isn't it? But I can't help looking at it.
That old woman in the water's a witch -
they've put her in, to find out whether she's a witch or no,
and if she swims she's a witch,
and if she's drowned - and killed,
you
know, - she's innocent, and not a witch,
but only a poor silly old woman.
But what good would it do her then,
you know, when she
was drowned?
Only, I suppose she'd go to heaven, and God would make.
The Mill on the Floss - Tom 's First Half (extrait)
'Mr Stelling,' she said, that same evening, when they were in the drawing-room, 'couldn't I do Euclid, and all Tom's lessons, if
you were to teach me instead of him?'
'No; you couldn't,' said Tom, indignantly. 'Girls can't do Euclid: can they, sir?'
'They can pick up a little of everything, I daresay,' said Mr Stelling. 'They've a great deal of superficial cleverness:
but they couldn't go far into anything. They're quick and shallow.'
Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by wagging his head at Maggie behind Mr Stelling's chair. As for
Maggie, she had hardly ever been so mortified: she had been so proud to be called 'quick' all her little life, and now it appeared
that this quickness was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow, like Tom.
'Ha, ha! Miss Maggie!' said Tom, when they were alone, 'you see it's not such a fine thing to be quick. You'll never go far into
anything, you know.'
And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that she had no spirit for a retort.
It is astonishing what a
different result one gets by changing the metaphor!
Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenious conception
of the classics and geometry as ploughs and harrows seems to
settle nothing. But then, it is open to some one else to follow great authorities and call the mind a sheet of white paper or a
mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to
call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O Aristotle! if you had had the
advantage of being 'the freshest modern' instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of
metaphorical speech as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without
metaphor, - that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else?
The Mill on the Floss - 'The Young Idea' (extrait)
Tom looking well and enjoying his dinner: -
not a man of refined conscience or with any deep sense of the infinite issues belonging to everyday duties; not quite competent
to his high offices; but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without private fortune, it is difficult to see how they could all live
genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or government.
It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there
were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly
cease for want of a 'public.'
