and other good things ending in "-tion"

Week 6 | analyzing week five and getting into our next chapters

Welcome to the Closely Reading book club, where we closely read classic literature together and discuss assigned chapters each week. Right now, we’re reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch. You’re welcome to join us any time!

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let’s talk chapters 24-33

Whoa, whoa talk about intersections! This week, the threads of the story started weaving together — with doctor Lydate at the center of some major illnesses, anxieties, and future romances…

• We saw poor Fred experiencing the consequences of his own actions and then getting a fever that seemed to be a Man Flu inspired by his inability to accept that fate didn’t swoop in to pay his debts for him (has he lost Mary forever?!)

• We learn that Sir James Chetham has finally got his bride: Celia! (We saw that coming, right?)

• We saw Rosamond fall for Lydgate…and almost lose him to unrequited love. Thank goodness her big tears turned his heart back her way? They end up engaged despite themselves.

• We saw Casaubon have some kind of “fit”— a minor heart attack that suggests a deeper “nervousness” disorder—and that sends Dorothea into her own panic spirals.

• We saw Dorothea anxiously wonder if Ladislaw’s letters were the cause of Casaubon’s fit; when she begs her uncle to keep Ladislaw from coming to Lowick, he decides to invite him next door instead (that scene had me rolling: “the end of Mr. Brooke’s pen was a thinking organ, evolving sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind could well overtake them.” George Eliot is so dang funny.)

• We got to know sweet Mary a little better (I love her!)

• Finally, we saw the death of Featherstone, midnight confessions (two wills!?) and Mary attempting to hold down the fort as encroaching relatives come out of the woodwork to claim stake in the estate…

I simply had to go back a few pages to re-read that moment about the chinless ugliness of Ned and it had me laughing out loud in the coffee shop.

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an unexpected connection

As I was reading the final chapters for this week’s assignment—those long, dreary and anxious scenes of Featherstone’s family gathering like hungry vultures at the end of his life—and unexpected image rose into my mind.

A still from the film Knives Out which sees a rich family fly into paranoia and hysterics when their rich father leaves his estate to his young nurse.

Have you seen the film Knives Out?

It’s a brilliant murder mystery ensemble film — and I could not help but picture the scene, above, when I was reading about Jonah, Cranch, Mrs Waule, and Solomon lurking about the Featherstone home, awaiting news of his final will and testament.

In the still from the film above, a dead man’s family suddenly all come together for the reading of his Final Will and Testament, and arrange themselves like an eager pack of hyenas (a word we saw in this week’s reading!) around the family’s lawyer as he reads out their patriarch’s final wishes and learn, hilariously, that none of them will be receiving anything.

Eliot brilliantly sets a similar stage of distant and cold family members who have only resurfaced at news of Featherstone’s final days—and who equip themselves with final arguments to convince him to leave his land to them and not outside the family.

The ham-loving Mr. Trumbull is something of an outsider: a figure who comes in with no real stake in the game (that we can tell, anyway) who speaks to the family plainly about their status with Featherstone, and waxes sarcastic about the apparent performance of all their sudden interest in their brother/uncle/cousin.

Mary even “has been mixing medicine in drops” for Featherstone—aligning her with the young nurse who stands to inherit some tens-of-millions from her beloved elderly patient in Knives Out, who is played by Christopher Plummer. (He would make an excellent Featherstone!)

My jaw was on the floor during that fiery, final scene between Mary and Featherstone as she refused to burn one of the two wills he had prepared…That chapter (and book) ending was a shock! I can’t wait to get into Book Four this week.

What is in those wills?! Will Mary confess that she was instructed to burn one?! What will dear Fred Vincy get in the end?!

another scene I loved

I absolutely loved that tragic little vignette of Dorothea gazing upon the miniature statue of Casaubon’s Aunt Julia: and it caused another unexpected connection for me. Of course, last week, we saw Dorothea having a profound connection (albeit in confusion and lack of understanding) with the art in Rome. Back in Lowick, in the study, she considers the art in the home and has a moment of recognition with the miniature of Aunt Julia.

As she did, I thought back to the Korl Woman in the Rebecca Harding Davis story we read earlier this year, “Life in the Iron-Mills.” In that short story, an affecting statue of a yearning woman leads to profound realizations on the part of the narrator, who recognizes a kind of universal struggle and ache in the Korl Woman’s reach.

In Middlemarch, this miniature statue of a woman “who had known some difficulty about marriage,” sparks profound (and heartbreaking) realizations for Dorothea, who never expected to so deeply understand what it would feel like to be unhappily married.

And yet…there she is. In a house that feels as though it is shrinking and filled with ghosts, living with a man who manipulates and gaslights her constantly…and who now is her unwilling patient. (Could you believe that moment Dorothea has so quickly transformed from a young wife to a nursemaid; her “duties” to Casaubon are becoming unbearably sad—especially given how indifferent he seems to be.

I really hope she and Ladislaw reunite during next week’s reading…!!!

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favorite quote

Each week, I share my favorite quote from our assigned pages. If you had one this week, please share it in the comments!

Here is my favorite from this week:

“Dorothea had thought that she could have been patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving in this way.”

This was just plain funny to me. John Milton famously had need for an amanuensis, or a scribe/secretary, to help him get Paradise Lost on the page because he went blind. He was insistent that his scribes not make any edits to his words, and those who added or omitted anything were fired.

Dorothea, here, relates Casaubon to Milton — she is the amanuensis, or helping hand, for the genius to get their critical works down.

And yet, she had once again fantasized that such work would be fulfilling for her and that she’d have an angel’s patience within the egotistical rigor of the genius’s work.

The reality is that Milton—like Casaubon—probably behaved rather wildly with their staff. Impatient, unkind, cold. Dorothea, it seems, is eager to help and to be needed, but she’d like a little kindness in return (who wouldn’t?!) and Casaubon is not living up to her (rather low) expectations for treatment.

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what we are reading this week (week 6)

Here we go into week 4! Here’s your assignment

Week 6: Monday, June 30
Read chapters 34-39 this week

You can view the full reading schedule here.

You can pose your questions here (or in the comments of today’s post!)

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let’s keep reading!

Head into the comments to share your thoughts on the reading.

And remember: be nice and do not spoil anything we haven’t read yet!

Some questions to guide you:

• What was your favorite sentence? Did you have moment that stood out to you in this week’s chapters? Maybe full scenes you enjoyed or that made an impression on you?

• How did you feel about the Featherstone situation? I was like, MARY GIRL OPEN THE BOX AND READ THE WILLS!!!! But she was so insistent that she would not make any changes for Peter without a lawyer or his brother present. WHY GIRL!? GET YOUR BAG!

• Are you cheering for anyone in the novel right now? Any favorite characters? Are any of your previous preferences starting to shift?

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