George Eliot finished writing "The Mill on the Floss" on this day in 1860. From the novel's closing paragraphs, looking back on the death and destruction brought by the flooding of the Floss:
"Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after….
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair."
--from "The Mill on the Floss" (1860) by George EliotNature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair."
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot : chapter59
In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot re-creates her own childhood through the story of the wild, gifted Maggie Tulliver and her spoiled, selfish brother. Though tragic in its outcome, this tenderly comic novel combines vivid vignettes of family life with a magnificent portrait of the heroine and an acute critique of Victorian sexual politics. Eliot had no peer when it came to finding the drama at the heart of normal lives lived in tandem with the gigantic rhythms of nature itself, and in The Mill on the Floss she shows us once again how thoroughly the art of fiction can satisfy our deepest mental and emotional cravings.