I had started reading this book in Turkish first but I didn’t finish. Years later, I picked up the same book in English and finished reading it this time. That’s the reason why I have highlighted bits and pieces below from both versions. I even wrote about it in my writer blog. Here’s the link if you’re interested.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach, -impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.
People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls the “blameless”.
Their religion was of a simple, semi-pagan kind, but there was no heresy in it, -if heresy properly means choice- for they didn’t know there was any other religion, except that of chapel-goers, which appeared to run in families, like asthma. How should they know?
“Because you are a man, Tom, and have the power, and can do something in the world.”
“Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can.”
“If you like to swallow him for his sister’s sake, you may; but I’ve no sauce that will make him go down.”
Her brother was the human being of whom she had been most afraid from her childhood upward; afriad with that fear which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending, unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.
In their death they were not divided.
Kıyıdaki Değirmen, George Eliot
“Gördüğünüz gibi Mrs Tulliver kocasının üzerinde etkisi olmayan bir kadın sayılmazdı. Hiç bir kadının kocasını etkilemediği söylenemez zaten. Bir kadın kocasına istediğini ya da bunun tamamıyla aksini yaptırabilir. Mr. Tulliver’i hızla dava açamaya sürükleyen bir sürü etken arasında muhakkak ki Mrs Tulliver’in bu tekdüze yalvarışlarının da rolü olacaktı. Hatta bu bardağı taşıran damla olarak da nitelendirilebilirdi. Fakat duruma tarafsızca bakıldığı zaman asıl kabahatin bardağı o kadar doldurmuş olan suda olduğu anlaşılır.”
Ayshim's BookJournal 