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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Book 2, Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—A Heated Argument:
On their honeymoon, Dorothea and Casaubon get into an argument and Eliot uses a simile to capture its intensity:
This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual with Mr. Casaubon. It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, but had taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the round grains from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it. Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which surrounds the appreciated or desponding author.
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Book 3, Chapter 31
Explanation and Analysis—Like Water on a Flower:
The first time Lydgate stops by the Vincy household after telling them he wouldn’t be visiting anymore (so as not to encourage Rosamond’s affection for him), he is greeted by Rosamond, who starts to cry. The narrator uses a simile to describe the way that the tears appear in Rosamond’s eyes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would. That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love.
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Book 4, Chapter 37
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Lunette:
While still married to Casaubon, Dorothea starts wanting to spend more time with Will. The narrator uses a simile to capture the effect Will’s presence has on Dorothea:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul. Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her husband might think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's guest.
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Finale
Explanation and Analysis—Like the River Gyndes:
In the final paragraph of the novel, Eliot uses a simile to compare Dorothea’s nature to the River Gyndes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.
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