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Quote 13. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the seat you like best—a little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there will be no lady-callers. Explanation and Analysis. The narrator observes that lovers tend to welcome the rain, because it keeps ladies indoors. Thus, a rainy morning is an excellent time for a man to visit a woman he is courting (without any “lady-callers” or other female friends interrupting). However, this seemingly light-hearted observation soon becomes a bitingly satirical commentary on women’s roles in nineteenth-century England. The narrator jokes that men like to sit either “a little above or a little below” women, since women are “at once worshipped and looked down on.” The lives of the women in The Mill on the Floss tend to support this observation. Women who adhere to traditional gender roles—like the sweet and feminine Lucy Deane—are worshipped and treated as idealized “goddesses” whom everyone should seek to emulate. By contrast, women who transgress those norms—like Maggie after her botched elopement—are treated as dangerous and contemptible. In neither of these cases are women treated as men’s equals.