Maggie Tulliver is a deep-feeling woman of painful sincerity, and here words are wrung from her, with a wrenching simile.

‘These words were rung forth from Maggie’s deepest soul, with an effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man.’ 

Source: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 544

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