(IV) Implications of Natural Forces: The History of Future

In re-considering the boundaries that exist between man and the natural world, one might find Nichols’s idea particularly useful: Nichols proposes “urbanature roosting,” a new word to describe a new idea. The term “urbanature roost” refers to the idea that “nature and urban life are not as distinct as human beings have long supposed” (1). The word “roost” is used to “describe a home that affects, and is affected by, its inhabitants and their wider surroundings” (Prologue, 5). This does not fall far from Bewell’s statement that “Natures have changed in response to the positions that human beings have taken in relation to them, and human being and their histories have, in turn, been changed by those natures” (13). In a sense, Bewell and Nichols’s idea indirectly refer to the common history shared by man and the natural world; a history that is continuously formed by the dynamic interdependence of the two. Humans and the forces of nature are both contributing to the processes that alter landscapes. The Rhine castles represent “the grand historic life of humanity” while the Round Pool is a remnant of the floods that occurred in St Ogg (IV, I).

In order to define either forces (that of nature or man), it must be acknowledged that the essence of everything is as much made of history as it is characteristics. This is what we are called to recognize in Maggie; the narrator asserts that although we “have known Maggie a long while,” we “need to be told not her characteristics, but her history”.  This is based on the claim that “the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within” (VI, VI). This may reveal some insight into the discord that exists at the heart of the issue of “a population out of keeping with the earth on which they live” (IV, I). Perhaps this is as much a result of an ignorance of the history of nature as it is that of its characteristics. It does not suffice, as the narrator points out, to know only the characteristics of a person or thing for this is not enough to "predict its history" (VI, VI). The idea of “predicting history” is oxymoronic but insightful when put into context, particularly as it relates to natural history. Consider that the mind (or rather minds) of St Ogg “did not look extensively before or after” (I, XII). It is because of this incompetence that the residents of St Ogg think that “the giant forces that used to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep” (I, XII). However, this imperceptive tendency may relate to human nature’s limited capacity for a state of mind extending into the future or even far back into the past. This is evident in the following passage that reveals the subsequent change in Tom’s mindset after his visit with Mr. Deane:

“Two hours ago, as Tom was walking to St Ogg’s, he saw the distant future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.” (III, V)

It is worth considering that the change in perspective here is as much a consequent of a shift in Tom’s spirit as it is a change in the scenery. Thus the inner and outer circumstances of existence serve to either constrict or expand the range of vision (into future or into past) that the mind wields. Nature and natural history are subject to this same perception.

The history of St Ogg and its potential fate is summed up in a handful of words: it is a town that “inherited a long past without thinking of it”; the long inherited past referred to here may relate to the visible traces that natural forces have left “on the face of the earth” (I, XII; VII, end). If we take the people of St Ogg as representatives of humankind, it becomes that much more plausible to objectively consider the misapprehension surrounding our plight in the Anthropocene age. The “oppressive narrowness” that we are prompted to criticize in The Mill on the Floss is a trait that relates more to the constricted minds of the residents of St Ogg than it does their “hereditary custom” or circumstance (IV, I). It is “narrowness” that afflicts our vision, mind, and extensively the world we inhabit – this is the great discord. Eliot has, quite subtly, alluded to a solution to our pressing issue: it is only the eyes that look to the past, even as they take in the present, that comprehend the full implications of the “varied and variable” forces of nature and in so doing predict the (natural) history of future.