In a particularly flowery passage, Eliot uses imagery to capture the relationship between an imaginative child and their environment, as seen in the following passage:
What grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows — such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them.
Here the narrator, giving into nostalgia, pays close attention to the natural world in their environment, remembering what it was like to be a child noticing the world around them. Language like “familiar flowers” and “capricious hedgerows” shows that this is not a literal description of the scene, but one viewed through the eyes of a child.
By referring to the “subtle inextricable associations” they feel in their home environment, the narrator suggests that it is impossible to move on from childhood—memories will always be with them, returning them to that childlike state of wonder. In this way, the narrator aligns themself with Maggie and Tom, whose sentimentality keeps them connected to the Dorlcote Mill and the land on which they grew up.
After Mr. Tulliver passes away, the narrator takes a moment to reflect on the different battles that Maggie and Tom are engaged in, using imagery in the process:
While Maggie’s life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows for ever rising again, Tom was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests.
Maggie’s challenges in life appearing as “one shadowy army fighting another” with “slain shadows for ever rising again” is certainly evocative imagery, and captures something important about her particular gendered experience—as a woman, she has been pressured to suppress all of her unique desires and dreams and passively accept what the men in her life do or want. In particular, with her father dead, she wants to help provide for the family but is not allowed to because of her gender.
Tom’s struggles, on the other hand, are particular to the burden he carries as the new man of the house—his “dustier, noisier warfare” with “substantial obstacles” and “definite conquests” are references to the fact that he has to start making more money and providing for his family, examples of more practical external challenges.
In between scenes in which Maggie spends time with her love interests, the narrator takes a moment to combine imagery with social commentary, as seen in the following passage:
And if people happen to be lovers, what can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning? English sunshine is dubious; bonnets are never quite secure; and if you sit down on the grass, it may lead to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the seat you like best — a little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there will be no lady-callers.
After describing a hypothetical scene of a man running around in his mackintosh (or raincoat) to visit the woman he desires, the narrator imagines the woman as a “goddess,” metaphysically sitting “a little above or a little below” the man—a subtle yet powerful example of imagery.
This imagery is compounded by the narrator’s insightful commentary that, like the goddess who exists in either position, “women are at once worshipped and looked down upon." This proves to be true in the novel as Maggie is worshipped and desired by Philip and Stephen for her unusual character and simultaneously chastised for it by most other people in her life.
Eliot captures the drama and tragedy of the Tulliver siblings’ drowning with evocative imagery, as seen in the following passage:
The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water — and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph. But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden water. The boat reappeared — but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted: living through again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.
Figurative language like “hideous triumph” and “supreme moment” along with descriptive imagery like “black speck on the golden water” and “clasped their little hands in love” in the “daisied fields” combine to communicate Maggie and Tom’s tragic end. They die just as they have the opportunity to forgive and love each other again.
This moment is both mournful and also hopeful—the siblings had been parted for so long and, in their final moments, come back together. The final image of the two of them holding hands and roaming in fields full of daisies highlights one of Eliot’s intentions with this novel—to capture the comforts and beauties of childhood, as well as the pain of losing that experience as one becomes an adult.
The Conclusion of the novel—after Maggie and Tom drown in the flood—opens with a personification and evocative imagery, as seen in the following passage:
Nature repairs her ravages — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labour. The desolation wrought by that flood, had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden corn-stacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.
Here Eliot personifies nature (turning it into a woman who “repairs her ravages”) and uses imagery to capture how the land has healed in the five years since the flood (such that it was “rich in golden corn-stacks” and filled with “echoes of eager voices”).
This figurative language combines to paint a hopeful picture—though Maggie and Tom died, the earth is now healing and life is moving forward (such as Lucy and Stephen eventually getting married and settling down). The descriptions of the land here echo the descriptions early in the novel, when Maggie and Tom were carefree children and felt more connected to the earth.
