(I) Nature is, nature does...

Raymond Williams starts his essay “Ideas of Nature” with the intriguing question: “when we say nature, do we mean to include ourselves?” (67). This question calls for the re-assessment of what the term “nature” actually means. If we re-frame this in the context of the novel, nature takes on a multi-faceted role – one that is dependent on the varying conditions and even characteristics of the very people who perceive it. Maggie’s view of nature is personified and animated, her imagination and passion fuels this image such that for her “the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whisperings also.” (I, V). On the other hand, Tom’s appreciation does not go so far as to extend past “dogs and donkeys” and when put to the task of drawing nature, we find that his “feeling for the picturesque in landscape was at present quite latent” (II, IV). The words “at present” and “latent” seem to imply that Tom carries the same potential as Maggie to cultivate an “animated” view of nature, albeit an unrealized potential. This reflects Wordsworth’s view on nature and the mind: he didn’t “believe that there was a pre-established or fixed relationship between the mind and nature, but instead that both were the products of a dynamic interaction that changed over time” (234).

 

Nature, then, is a dynamic and evolving entity, a “varied and variable nature” and must be viewed “as the changing conditions of a human world” (85). It is formed and re-formed continually; the remnants of this continuous transformation are made evident by the narrator as she describes the Round Pool, a “wonderful pool, which the floods had made a long while ago” (I, V). Even the mill undergoes a renewal every four generation or so, such that “the mill is not one mill but several”: Mr Tulliver’s grandfather “pulled it down” after “the last great floods which damaged it” and as we come to know, “Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt” after the flood that took the lives of Tom and Maggie (III, IX; VII) (Smith, 438). Although this force leaves a visible, and for some time memorable, mark on the St Ogg, the flood “had left little visible trace on the face of the earth” and as such it is only the eyes that have witnessed the past that may take note of the “marks of the past rendering” (VII, end). It is clear that nature is anything but a “static backdrop” in The Mill. On the contrary it is an active force that exerts itself on the lives of the people of St Ogg and yet, despite this, we find that men have lost “their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, thinking tomorrow will be as yesterday” (Bewell, 9) (I, XII). It is not that people forget– a brief conversation between Bob and Tom along the River Floss reveals that even the children in St Ogg are aware of past floods as Tom states boldly and surely to Bob that “there was a big flood once” (I, VI). Interestingly, Bob’s response to the dreadful descriptions of drowned sheep and cows was a very simple “I don’t care about a flood comin’” (I, VI). Bob claims that his means of survival would be his pronounced ability to swim and to this Tom retorts that he wouldn’t survive without food for long, thus proposing a refined plan that would include a “boat with a wooden house on the top of it” where he would store an abundant supply of “rabbits and things” to eat (I, VI). This may seem like a casual exchange between two young boys, however, upon analysis, this conversation reveals the probable subconscious state of mind of the people of St Ogg. Both Bob and Tom reveal some level of mastery of either themselves or objects that they believe would equip them against a flood. It is as Bewell states: “as human beings control more and more of the natural world, nature, when we recognize it as such, appears on the margins of our concerns” (4). These forces of nature remain only on the margins of the minds of St Ogg. This may be because “the town knew worse troubles even than the floods,” (after all, “the Catholics, bad harvest, and the mysterious fluctuations of trade were the three evils mankind had to fear”) or it may be that the people of St Ogg are not unlike Bob and Tom in thinking themselves fully capable of combatting the unperceivable disasters nature incurs (I, XII).