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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Mrs. Cadwallader’s Lens:
Before describing Mrs. Cadwallader’s matchmaking tendencies, the narrator uses a metaphor to explain how they are turning their attention to Mrs. Cadwallader the way a scientist turns attention to a specimen under a microscopic lens:
Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed.
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Explanation and Analysis—Casaubon the Mummy:
In an early conversation between Sir James and Mrs. Cadwallader, both parties bemoan the fact that Dorothea has agreed to marry Casaubon, using metaphors to mock him for his age:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"Good God! It is horrible! He is no better than a mummy!" (The point of view has to be allowed for, as that of a blooming and disappointed rival.)
"She says, he is a great soul.—A great bladder for dried peas to rattle in!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?" said Sir James. "He has one foot in the grave."
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Book 2, Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—The Chain of Discovery:
When introducing Lydgate, Eliot describes his medical ambitions via a metaphor:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He meant to be a unit who would make a certain amount of difference towards that spreading change which would one day tell appreciably upon the averages, and in the mean time have the pleasure of making an advantageous difference to the viscera of his own patients. But he did not simply aim at a more genuine kind of practice than was common. He was ambitious of a wider effect: he was fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an anatomical conception and make a link in the chain of discovery.
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Book 2, Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—An Enclosed Basin:
The narrator comments on the confines of the institution of marriage at several points throughout the novel, including using a metaphor to compare marriage to a marine “voyage” that, in actuality, is a mere exploration of “an enclosed basin”:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight—that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
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Book 3, Chapter 29
Explanation and Analysis—Casaubon's Soul:
When describing Casaubon’s soul, the narrator uses a metaphor to compare it to a bird who is unable to fly:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying.
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Book 4, Chapter 40
Explanation and Analysis—The Story as a Battery:
In one of the moments when the narrator comments on the way in which they are telling the story of Middlemarch, they use a metaphor to compare the story to an electric battery in a scientific experiment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in was set up. The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth’s breakfast-table in the large parlour where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children.
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Book 5, Chapter 48
Explanation and Analysis—Dorothea's Tomb:
When Dorothea and Casaubon’s marriage is in a particularly stuck state—as Casaubon becomes increasingly focused on The Key to All Mythologies while Dorothea is aware that it will never be the great work he wants it to be—Eliot uses a metaphor to capture Dorothea’s experience of the marriage:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[Dorothea] longed for work which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the rain, and now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb, where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would never see the light. Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship—turning his face towards her as he went.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Sword of Death:
As Casaubon becomes sicker, the narrator uses a metaphor to capture his imminent death:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past - nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past the lonely labour, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him!
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Book 6, Chapter 54
Explanation and Analysis—Poverty as Leprosy:
Chapters before declaring their love for each other, Will and Dorothea have a tense conversation full of subtext, during which Will uses a metaphor when discussing poverty:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said. "But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most care for."
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