The Mill on the Floss: Similes 6 key examples

Near the beginning of the novel, when Maggie and Tom are still children, the narrator uses a simile to capture Maggie’s loyalty to Tom, as seen in the following passage:

There were few sounds that roused Maggie when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom’s name served as well as the shrillest whistle: in an instant she was on the watch, with gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who threatened it towards Tom.

Cite this Quote

When Tom’s uncle Mr. Deane tells Tom about the state of Mr. Tulliver’s finances (after Mr. Tulliver loses his lawsuit and declares bankruptcy), the narrator uses a simile to describe Tom’s shock and displeasure, as seen in the following quote:

His father must not only be said to have “lost his property,” but to have “failed” — the word that carried the worst obloquy to Tom’s mind. For when the defendant’s claim for costs had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr Gore, and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts, which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion: “not more than ten or twelve shillings in the pound,” predicted Mr Deane, in a decided tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding liquid, leaving a continual smart.

Cite this Quote

After Mr. Tulliver agrees to work for Mr. Wakem—a choice he feels forced to make in order to both provide for his family and stay connected to Dorlcote Mill—the narrator uses a simile to describe Mr. Tulliver’s relationship to the mill, as seen in the following passage:

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans, — which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi, — can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned man like Tulliver felt for this spot, where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease.

Cite this Quote

In the months after Mr. Tulliver declares bankruptcy, the whole Tulliver family falls into a state of depression, Maggie included. When describing Maggie’s experience of her family in the midst of all the melancholy, the narrator uses a pair of similes:

She rebelled against her lot, she fainted under its loneliness, and fits even of anger and hatred towards her father and mother, who were so unlike what she would have them to be […] would flow out over her affections and conscience like a lava stream, and frighten her with a sense that it was not difficult for her to become a demon. Then her brain would be busy with wild romances of a flight from home in search of something less sordid and dreary […] But, in the middle of her vision, her father would perhaps enter the room for the evening, and, surprised that she sat still without noticing him, would say, complainingly, “Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself?” The voice pierced through Maggie like a sword: there was another sadness besides her own, and she had been thinking of turning her back on it and forsaking it.

Cite this Quote

In a conversation with Philip during one of their romantic clandestine meetings, Maggie uses a simile to mock people with only one interest or talent, as seen in the following passage:

“But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes — to enjoy so many beautiful things — when they are within your reach,” said Maggie, musingly. “It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent — almost like a carrier-pigeon.”

Cite this Quote

Rivers appear throughout The Mill on the Floss, forming a motif. For example, the “Floss” mentioned in the title is the River Floss, the body of water that runs through St. Ogg’s and beside which the Tulliver family mill is located. It is via this river that Stephen and Maggie run away (or, rather, row away) together when they are considering eloping. It is also the river that ultimately kills Maggie and Tom during the flooding.

In addition to the literal River Floss, river imagery appears in the novel as well, as seen in the following passage:

Maggie’s destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it to reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river: we only know that the river is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the same final home.

Cite this Quote