Nature in Eliot's The Mill on the Floss

The title of Eliot’s second novel, The Mill on the Floss , is indicative of the setting where the story takes place: Dorlcote Mill by the River Floss. What is particularly interesting about this site is that it serves as an intersection where the man-made meets the natural world. In fact, the narrator depicts the two as intertwined entities. This is apparent in the description she gives of Darlcote Mill, a comfortable “dwelling house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast” (I, I). From this, either of two things can be surmised (although these are not necessarily exclusive): 1.) the man-made and the natural world “sprung up together”, as Hakce puts it, in that so far as Human history and memory are concerned, the two materialized alongside each other (119) 2.) because the man-made object is itself a product of the natural world, the dwelling house is just “as old” as the trees that surround it. In any case, it is clear that the boun