I also loved the line about Mr. Brooke's pen getting away from him. I sort of love his character, good natured, head in the clouds, believes in women's agency for the most part.
I’m also having text-to-text connections (Haley, adored the Knives Out connection!) and one of mine is Middlemarch as a kind of Cabinet of Curiosities, a collection of lives. We have a large, diverse cast (specimens) assembled and studied in depth, under a kind of microscope. Eliot, narrator, Haley, and book club participants are all curators guiding us through the collection drawing attention to small details. It’s been fun considering what type of specimen/object might symbolize each character, as well as the novel as a whole (outside of a literal book that is). For instance, items might include a religious relic, an intellectual artifact, scientific specimen, vanity object, romantic relic, etc. Also, midnight confessions and multiple wills = so very gothic! :)
So gothic! Also that whole chapter when Dorothea first comes home to Lowick. There’s a ton of vivid imagery and repetition there driving it all home - ghosts, uniformity, dullness, white, shrinking - and then poor gem-like Dorothea glowing in the midst of it all, trying not to be smothered.
Also love the idea of the curiosity cabinet. Lydgate is definitely that “ancephalous monster” in a jar he takes from Farebrother.
This is the first section we read that really felt juicy and I didn’t want to put it down. Maybe because the characters started to interweave a bit more, and the stakes were a bit higher with the will drama? I hope it continues.
My single favorite quote was “Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife’s husband!” 😂😂
This!! Even though it’s written over 100 years ago I am seeing the parallels in modern marriage and all the studies that say single women are the most happy group 😂
I can't help but pull for Fred, "good-for-nothing blackguard" that he is. As Mr Garth says, "he means better than he acts," and now that he's felt "for the first time something like the tooth of remorse," I'm hopeful he'll do some quick maturing (or matura-tion, to fit your theme of the week). It's pretty obvious he has no chance with Mary otherwise, and she would most likely be a really good influence on him.
And speaking of Plymdale's chin (or lack thereof), this was one of my favorite lines just for sheer cleverness: "young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards the cheerless side of change." What a great metaphor!
I'm the opposite, I was rooting for Fred until his appalling behavior with Mary and her family! Unfortunately this is still a *romantic* novel and I fear hell get the girl in the end. I'm team #marydeservesbetter
1. Mr. Borthrop Trumbull appears to have wandered in from a Dickens novel.
2. Fred starts to mature in Chapter 24: "his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonourable, and sink in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them". (This reminds me of the distinction that cultural anthropologists draw between "shame culture" and "guilt culture"). But it's just the first step - he spends most of the remaining chapter feeling guilty and letting the Garths know how guilty he feels, rather than trying to repair the damage.
3. I'm thinking again about the title of the Book, "Waiting for Death." Obviously this refers to Featherstone's relatives hanging around the house like vultures, but it could also refer to the change in Casaubon and Dorothea's circumstances. Lydgate has told Dorothea (and us) that Casaubon has a serious heart condition - he might die tomorrow, he might survive fifteen years, but those years will be "waiting for Death." It might also describe a sort of "spiritual death" for Dorothea, the death of her hopes of fulfilling herself by helping her husband achieve scholastic eminence.
Yes, Trumbull is very Dickensian (and hilariously drawn), as is the page-turning twist of the two wills and all the setup for how long that will take to untangle (see Bleak House).
Bothrop Trumbull is maybe the best name a character has ever had in the history of literature!
I wholeheartedly disagree re: Fred showing signs of maturity, his reaction to personal shame was to dramatically fish around for sympathy and forgiveness instead of taking a modicum of responsability.
I'm really becoming fascinated in the ways our couples overlap and where they differ. My favorite scene this week was in the culminating pages of the Lydgate/Rosamond engagement. Because we see Rosamond go from talking about her relationship with Lydgate (and trying not to give away that it isn't anything official yet) with this line:
"'If I loved, I should love at once and without change,' said Rosamond, with a great sense of being a romantic heroine, and playing the part prettily."
She's playing a role and is proud of how she is playing it! This ties in again to that chasing of the ideal - she has a concept of what kind of man she wants to marry, and of what kind of heroine she wants to be, and is acting that out. In fact, she has thought that she and Lydgate are acting that out together, and is now beginning to fear that's not so, but she's unable to give up the performance. This whole conversation, she doesn't lie outright but she's trying to obscure how little Lydgate has actually promised her in order to preserve her pride. But, a mere few pages later, it's not pride or acting which wins him in the end. It's a moment of genuine emotion:
"At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would.
That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love. Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted and rash."
But this moment really brought home to me how much Rosamond and Dorothea have in common going into these romances. They each had a concept of an idealized relationship involving their ambitious husbands(-to-be), without truly knowing who they are as people at all. Meanwhile, both men are very ambitious, but Lydgate *does* get swept up by passion where Casaubon is very cold even beyond what he himself anticipated. I suspect things might get difficult between him and Rosamond down the line due to him neglecting his work for her, which would be almost the opposite of Casaubon and Dorothea. She wants to be involved in his work and with him, and he isn't going for it (at least in part due to insecurity about his work). Rosamond won't want that, and I think his more passionate nature might lead Lydgate to neglect his ambitions without her having to outright ask at first... which sounds like a possible recipe for resentment down the line.
Of course, Casaubon is having to neglect his work too because he's ill, and that reminds me of our third 'couple'. Mary and Fred are kind of the opposite of these prior two: she sees him very clearly, much more clearly than he sees himself. And despite mutual affection, she doesn't want to get married to him because he isn't interested in really ANY kind of work and is just slipping into bad habits. (There are other reasons against it too on both their ends but still.) Fred needs no enticement to neglect his work, and has no ambitions of his own. Like the other men, he didn't want to get married right away to anyone (Casaubon's ahead of the race on this one so to speak, having already spent his more youthful years engrossed in his work as Lydgate meant to before this moment) but it's more for fun and to wait for an expected inheritance than any ambition of his own. I wonder if they will get married to each other anyway. Mary refusing to burn one of the wills out of self-preservation may affect that pretty strongly, depending on how the ensuing debate goes down. And if they do marry, will he have learned his lesson about getting in over his head and hurting others for the sake of his own pride more than anything else?
Vicky, I really like the way you draw parallels and contrasts with the three couples - I do think Dorothea and Rosamund are meant to mirror each other, but they are internally very different - Dorothea wants to be the equivalent of St. Theresa - Rosamund, if she were contemporary, would be an influencer with a podcast about fashion and the best conversational topics when dating a man who might tie the knot with a well-timed nudge😉
Very well put, Vicky! At the end of the day I think the parallels bring home how disadvantageous marriage is for all women involved, even if the alternative, remaining single, might potentially be worse. Rosamund is apparently the luckiest of the bunch because our good doctor isn't a total scumbag and there's at least a veneer of passion and romance in the engagement, but even she is jumping into marriage naively, blind and with no safety net. There is no divorce, no possibility of escaping a potentially abusive husband. Mary at least is fully aware of it and is fighting back any romantic inclination she might have for Fred, which means she'd rather fend for herself as a single working woman in the 1830s, how bleak is that?
I also found that scene of Dorothea looking at the miniature of Casaubon's aunt to be so tragic! And this brief line from the narrator, when D is talking to Celia and Celia asks if she would recommend a honeymoon to Rome, shattered my heart --
"No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome."
It's so, so heartbreaking to think that D will carry the weight of her secret shame, sadness, and other confusing feelings from that trip to Rome with her for the rest of her life and never confide in anyone about it, not even Celia. These two points (Casaubon's aunt + this line) together also reminded me of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca -- a young, idealistic woman getting trapped in a marriage that is so much different than what she thought it would be in. I need her to meet up with Ladislaw again, ASAP!
Yes! I really resonate with Dorothea’s secret shame and how very unjust it is - a personal weight she’ll bear always but also learn from, I think. And the Rebecca connection is great.
"To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.”
“ Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged."
But the jokes's on him. He underestimates the interconnectedness of Middlemarch society and suddenly finds himself engaged. Our narrator telegraphs trouble ahead in this union as Rosamond "never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide."
What a contrast to the Garths, who "were poor, and “lived in a small way.” However, they did not mind it.” I loved Mrs. Garth and watching her multi-tasking in her kitchen almost seemed slapstick comedy.
I love Mrs. Garth and Mrs. Cadwallader for their blunt, but wise sayings. I find Mrs. Garth to be kinder and Mrs. Cadwallader to be gossipy but enjoy them both for their wit. In Chapter 24, when Fred is confessing the debt to the Garths and says he will repay them, ultimately, Mrs. Garth is described as having "...a special dislike to fine words on ugly occasions..." All I can think about is how that tendency to sugarcoat and talk around problems continues to persist.
Lydgate assuredly underestimates this interconnectedness of the Middlemarch “hive mind.” Eliot portrays Middlemarch mind in the closeness between Mrs. Bulstrode and Mrs. Plymdale, who “had nearly the same preferences in silks, patterns for underclothing…and clergymen” (294). They’re so close in thought and outlook that they know “very little of their own motives.”
Lydgate sees such uniformity as consisting of “blunderers and busybodies.”
Lydgate would have to have been mightily ambitious and self confident to not succumb. He didn't hold out long, and I fear his grand plans for discovering medical advances will not come to fruition. I hope this won't make him as bitter as Casaubon.
He certainly didn’t hold out very long. I wonder, too, if he’ll realize his ambitions; if he doesn’t, I don’t believe he’ll respond like Casaubon because Lydgate presents, to me at least, a sense of being that will continue to engage with the world. What I also wonder about is his relationship with Rosamond. She may seem to have a superficial personality, but she has a will to live as she intends to, I think. How will they relate to each other as their futures are now intertwined?
What an interesting character Mrs. Garth is! Much more ecudacated than the average woman, which is—alas—seen as a shame because she had to teach for a living. Doing housework like a champ while homeschooling her children, and deliberately putting more effort into teaching the boy, even though the girl is obviously smarter. Poor child has to learn early that her education will never be as important as her brother's.
In Chapter 29, I was struck by the balance in how George Eliot treats Casaubon. He is certainly dislikeable (to me), but I did feel sympathy for him in how he was described here. He required "either a strong bodily frame or enthusiastic soul" in order to experience joy, but his soul was described as "fluttering away in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying." How heartbreaking - I wonder if Dorothea can see the "small hungry shivering self" that her husband is? Again, the skill to create such a disagreeable character and then evoke some empathy or understanding for him is remarkable.
Chris, I am with you with Eliot’s sensitive and nuanced portrait of Casaubon - he behaves so passively aggressively with Dorothea and yet I think Eliot herself had an appreciation of even the most doomed and dry academic quests compared with all the banal Vincys, including appealing Fred’s lack of ambition or deep thought.
Okay, maybe I’m just saying this because Mary Garth is my girl, but I kinda get the hesitation with the will. She’s correct that she is the one who will live to suffer the consequences. What if they figured out a second will was burned and that she did it, and framed her for “manipulating” an old man? It’s likely people would not trust the word of a young woman without a lot of money or influence. Even though they should, because it’s Mary, my best girl! We love her so much we forget her compatriots don’t.
That quote about Milton not acting like an ass is SO good. Because I’m sure he totally did! I feel bad for Dorothea but she does test me at times and that line is a great example!
I frequently remember when, at the beginning of this close reading, Haley wrote some tips for "sticking with it (the book) even when the desire to throw it across the room looms large". Well, I've had this feeling, and fortunately, I am still here. Because just when I think I cannot do this anymore, Eliot comes with a brilliant description of somebody, a sarcastic and funny comment, or a heartbreaking description of a situation. I am enjoying more and more her "nosy" style, that comes suddenly without any warning, like at the begining of chapter 29: "One morning, some weeks her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea - but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible onewith regard to this marriage?" And then she has me back. I'm also delighted to have learned more about the Gareth family, people with a good heart! I hope everything goes well for them. I loved Eliot's sarcasm, and this is one of my favourite quotes of this part: " 'Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned" said Celia, regarding Mr Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a neighbouring body". Thanks Haley and the whole group for the inspiring comments! That is also a big motivation to keep going :-)
Others have observed many of the same things I felt when reading this engaging section, but two things struck me, at least one connected with what other commenters have said: (1) Mary Garth’s refusal to do Peter Featherstone’s bidding is just a flat-out great deathbed scene - and also a place where Eliot subverts the gothic trope of more than one will or “secret” codicils, already a well-worn plot device in novels of her time. Mary really stands out for me as a terrifically original female character. Eliot gives us some access to her internal sense of the situation too.
(2) I don’t like Rosamund anymore than I did the first time I read the novel - but it seems that other readers, including Haley, find her more sympathetic than I do. Maybe this is generational? (I’m an old 2.5-wave feminist.) I do think Rosamund is interesting on the page, and perhaps I should try to be less judgmental about her performativeness. As for Lydgate, I feel sorry for him, but his condescending attitudes annoy me, and I find much of the prose churning on about his medical and political concerns tedious.
These chapters were so good! A nice reward after the fairly dry setup. I tried this novel last year and gave up in earlier chapters (maybe that medical soliloquy?). Now it’s getting juicy! I hope Mary does not settle for spoiled Fred. And the Garth parents are so nice! And we are almost halfway there. 😉
Others have observed many of the same things I felt when reading this engaging section, but two things struck me, at least one connected with what other commenters have said: (1) Mary Garth’s refusal to do Peter Featherstone’s bidding is just a flat-out great deathbed scene - and also a place where Eliot subverts the gothic trope of more than one will or “secret” codicils, already a well-worn plot device in novels of her time. Mary really stands out for me as a terrifically original female character. Eliot gives us some access to her internal sense of the situation too.
(2) I don’t like Rosamund anymore than I did the first time I read the novel - but it seems that other readers, including Haley, find her more sympathetic than I do. Maybe this is generational? (I’m an old 2.5-wave feminist.) I do think Rosamund is interesting on the page, and perhaps I should try to be less judgmental about her performativeness. As for Lydgate, I feel sorry for him, but his condescending attitudes annoy me, and I find much of the prose churning on about his medical and political concerns tedious.
I never liked Rosamund as a person, but as a character she's shown to be a young woman of no particular talent, praised and rewarded for being pretty and well-behaved, playing the game she's been taught to play. Her job is to be ornamental, in exchange for material comfort, so that's what she does. She's not malicious, just very shallow and pampered and extremely conventional, even in her romantic fantasies.
Oh, yes - in another comment, I think I compared her to a contemporary influencer - not malicious, but what she presents assumes a transaction - I’ll satisfy you, audience, if you give me attention.
I 💯 agree with you about Rosamund — and when I’m reading about her I can’t help thinking of how her character, her set of characteristics, became such a stereotype in 19c. literature. Caroline Bingley and Helénè Kuragin (W&P) come immediately to mind.
Yes, and Rosamund is good at playing the game, so she gets rewarded for it. Celia to an extent is too, though she strikes me as less calculating (though quite knowledgeable about people and how they work, unlike Dorothea). I do find the line about how Rosamund only allows herself to be less than ladylike around Mary, who won’t judge her, to be moving. Patriarchy harms people of all genders.
I think Celia has more interpersonal insight than Dorothea, but is more genuine and less shallow than Rosamund, kind of a happy medium. She's not troubled by Dodo's idealism, she's happy to live a conventional life, but she's not really performing and doesn't have the same need for admiration as Rosamund. She's someone for whom the cultural norms for women are an easier, more natural fit.
My favorite line is from Mary in ch 25 when Fred is trying to gin up sympathy and she says, "I cannot deny that I shall think all of that of you, Fred, if you give me good reasons."
I'm rooting for Dorothea, and I'm hoping when Casaubon's "Magnum Opus" is completed and released, it will read like Jack Torrance's script in The Shining!
I also loved the line about Mr. Brooke's pen getting away from him. I sort of love his character, good natured, head in the clouds, believes in women's agency for the most part.
I’m also having text-to-text connections (Haley, adored the Knives Out connection!) and one of mine is Middlemarch as a kind of Cabinet of Curiosities, a collection of lives. We have a large, diverse cast (specimens) assembled and studied in depth, under a kind of microscope. Eliot, narrator, Haley, and book club participants are all curators guiding us through the collection drawing attention to small details. It’s been fun considering what type of specimen/object might symbolize each character, as well as the novel as a whole (outside of a literal book that is). For instance, items might include a religious relic, an intellectual artifact, scientific specimen, vanity object, romantic relic, etc. Also, midnight confessions and multiple wills = so very gothic! :)
So gothic! Also that whole chapter when Dorothea first comes home to Lowick. There’s a ton of vivid imagery and repetition there driving it all home - ghosts, uniformity, dullness, white, shrinking - and then poor gem-like Dorothea glowing in the midst of it all, trying not to be smothered.
Also love the idea of the curiosity cabinet. Lydgate is definitely that “ancephalous monster” in a jar he takes from Farebrother.
I love how Eliot describes the color draining from her environment; she's becoming a ghost in her own life.
There's been a treasure trove of gothic goodies. "acephalous" = 5 point vocab word. Just looked it up.
This is the first section we read that really felt juicy and I didn’t want to put it down. Maybe because the characters started to interweave a bit more, and the stakes were a bit higher with the will drama? I hope it continues.
My single favorite quote was “Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife’s husband!” 😂😂
This is my pick if the week too 😉
This is a fantastic quote indeed !
And sadly, I fear "society" has not much changed.
This!! Even though it’s written over 100 years ago I am seeing the parallels in modern marriage and all the studies that say single women are the most happy group 😂
Eliot was positively dripping with sarcasm there!
I can't help but pull for Fred, "good-for-nothing blackguard" that he is. As Mr Garth says, "he means better than he acts," and now that he's felt "for the first time something like the tooth of remorse," I'm hopeful he'll do some quick maturing (or matura-tion, to fit your theme of the week). It's pretty obvious he has no chance with Mary otherwise, and she would most likely be a really good influence on him.
And speaking of Plymdale's chin (or lack thereof), this was one of my favorite lines just for sheer cleverness: "young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards the cheerless side of change." What a great metaphor!
I'm the opposite, I was rooting for Fred until his appalling behavior with Mary and her family! Unfortunately this is still a *romantic* novel and I fear hell get the girl in the end. I'm team #marydeservesbetter
Three thoughts:
1. Mr. Borthrop Trumbull appears to have wandered in from a Dickens novel.
2. Fred starts to mature in Chapter 24: "his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonourable, and sink in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them". (This reminds me of the distinction that cultural anthropologists draw between "shame culture" and "guilt culture"). But it's just the first step - he spends most of the remaining chapter feeling guilty and letting the Garths know how guilty he feels, rather than trying to repair the damage.
3. I'm thinking again about the title of the Book, "Waiting for Death." Obviously this refers to Featherstone's relatives hanging around the house like vultures, but it could also refer to the change in Casaubon and Dorothea's circumstances. Lydgate has told Dorothea (and us) that Casaubon has a serious heart condition - he might die tomorrow, he might survive fifteen years, but those years will be "waiting for Death." It might also describe a sort of "spiritual death" for Dorothea, the death of her hopes of fulfilling herself by helping her husband achieve scholastic eminence.
I sort of glossed over Mr Trumbull the first time. I just looked at that chapter again after reading your comment, and you are so right!
And Featherstone is Fagin hoarding and counting his treasure. So apt that he dies holding his gold coins.
Yes, Trumbull is very Dickensian (and hilariously drawn), as is the page-turning twist of the two wills and all the setup for how long that will take to untangle (see Bleak House).
Bothrop Trumbull is maybe the best name a character has ever had in the history of literature!
I wholeheartedly disagree re: Fred showing signs of maturity, his reaction to personal shame was to dramatically fish around for sympathy and forgiveness instead of taking a modicum of responsability.
I'm really becoming fascinated in the ways our couples overlap and where they differ. My favorite scene this week was in the culminating pages of the Lydgate/Rosamond engagement. Because we see Rosamond go from talking about her relationship with Lydgate (and trying not to give away that it isn't anything official yet) with this line:
"'If I loved, I should love at once and without change,' said Rosamond, with a great sense of being a romantic heroine, and playing the part prettily."
She's playing a role and is proud of how she is playing it! This ties in again to that chasing of the ideal - she has a concept of what kind of man she wants to marry, and of what kind of heroine she wants to be, and is acting that out. In fact, she has thought that she and Lydgate are acting that out together, and is now beginning to fear that's not so, but she's unable to give up the performance. This whole conversation, she doesn't lie outright but she's trying to obscure how little Lydgate has actually promised her in order to preserve her pride. But, a mere few pages later, it's not pride or acting which wins him in the end. It's a moment of genuine emotion:
"At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would.
That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love. Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted and rash."
But this moment really brought home to me how much Rosamond and Dorothea have in common going into these romances. They each had a concept of an idealized relationship involving their ambitious husbands(-to-be), without truly knowing who they are as people at all. Meanwhile, both men are very ambitious, but Lydgate *does* get swept up by passion where Casaubon is very cold even beyond what he himself anticipated. I suspect things might get difficult between him and Rosamond down the line due to him neglecting his work for her, which would be almost the opposite of Casaubon and Dorothea. She wants to be involved in his work and with him, and he isn't going for it (at least in part due to insecurity about his work). Rosamond won't want that, and I think his more passionate nature might lead Lydgate to neglect his ambitions without her having to outright ask at first... which sounds like a possible recipe for resentment down the line.
Of course, Casaubon is having to neglect his work too because he's ill, and that reminds me of our third 'couple'. Mary and Fred are kind of the opposite of these prior two: she sees him very clearly, much more clearly than he sees himself. And despite mutual affection, she doesn't want to get married to him because he isn't interested in really ANY kind of work and is just slipping into bad habits. (There are other reasons against it too on both their ends but still.) Fred needs no enticement to neglect his work, and has no ambitions of his own. Like the other men, he didn't want to get married right away to anyone (Casaubon's ahead of the race on this one so to speak, having already spent his more youthful years engrossed in his work as Lydgate meant to before this moment) but it's more for fun and to wait for an expected inheritance than any ambition of his own. I wonder if they will get married to each other anyway. Mary refusing to burn one of the wills out of self-preservation may affect that pretty strongly, depending on how the ensuing debate goes down. And if they do marry, will he have learned his lesson about getting in over his head and hurting others for the sake of his own pride more than anything else?
I love these couples comparisons. And then there is the wild card and odd one out, Ladislaw.
Vicky, I really like the way you draw parallels and contrasts with the three couples - I do think Dorothea and Rosamund are meant to mirror each other, but they are internally very different - Dorothea wants to be the equivalent of St. Theresa - Rosamund, if she were contemporary, would be an influencer with a podcast about fashion and the best conversational topics when dating a man who might tie the knot with a well-timed nudge😉
Even their names: "gift of God" and "rose of the world."
Yes, Mary Garth is the contrast--in class on a lower tier but eyes open to reality and not wishful romantic fantasy.
Very well put, Vicky! At the end of the day I think the parallels bring home how disadvantageous marriage is for all women involved, even if the alternative, remaining single, might potentially be worse. Rosamund is apparently the luckiest of the bunch because our good doctor isn't a total scumbag and there's at least a veneer of passion and romance in the engagement, but even she is jumping into marriage naively, blind and with no safety net. There is no divorce, no possibility of escaping a potentially abusive husband. Mary at least is fully aware of it and is fighting back any romantic inclination she might have for Fred, which means she'd rather fend for herself as a single working woman in the 1830s, how bleak is that?
I also found that scene of Dorothea looking at the miniature of Casaubon's aunt to be so tragic! And this brief line from the narrator, when D is talking to Celia and Celia asks if she would recommend a honeymoon to Rome, shattered my heart --
"No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome."
It's so, so heartbreaking to think that D will carry the weight of her secret shame, sadness, and other confusing feelings from that trip to Rome with her for the rest of her life and never confide in anyone about it, not even Celia. These two points (Casaubon's aunt + this line) together also reminded me of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca -- a young, idealistic woman getting trapped in a marriage that is so much different than what she thought it would be in. I need her to meet up with Ladislaw again, ASAP!
Yes! I really resonate with Dorothea’s secret shame and how very unjust it is - a personal weight she’ll bear always but also learn from, I think. And the Rebecca connection is great.
Oooooh that Rebecca connection is spot on!!! Thanks for making that connect.
I laughed as Rosamond and Lydgate flirt:
"To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.”
“ Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged."
But the jokes's on him. He underestimates the interconnectedness of Middlemarch society and suddenly finds himself engaged. Our narrator telegraphs trouble ahead in this union as Rosamond "never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide."
What a contrast to the Garths, who "were poor, and “lived in a small way.” However, they did not mind it.” I loved Mrs. Garth and watching her multi-tasking in her kitchen almost seemed slapstick comedy.
I love Mrs. Garth and Mrs. Cadwallader for their blunt, but wise sayings. I find Mrs. Garth to be kinder and Mrs. Cadwallader to be gossipy but enjoy them both for their wit. In Chapter 24, when Fred is confessing the debt to the Garths and says he will repay them, ultimately, Mrs. Garth is described as having "...a special dislike to fine words on ugly occasions..." All I can think about is how that tendency to sugarcoat and talk around problems continues to persist.
Lydgate assuredly underestimates this interconnectedness of the Middlemarch “hive mind.” Eliot portrays Middlemarch mind in the closeness between Mrs. Bulstrode and Mrs. Plymdale, who “had nearly the same preferences in silks, patterns for underclothing…and clergymen” (294). They’re so close in thought and outlook that they know “very little of their own motives.”
Lydgate sees such uniformity as consisting of “blunderers and busybodies.”
Lydgate would have to have been mightily ambitious and self confident to not succumb. He didn't hold out long, and I fear his grand plans for discovering medical advances will not come to fruition. I hope this won't make him as bitter as Casaubon.
He certainly didn’t hold out very long. I wonder, too, if he’ll realize his ambitions; if he doesn’t, I don’t believe he’ll respond like Casaubon because Lydgate presents, to me at least, a sense of being that will continue to engage with the world. What I also wonder about is his relationship with Rosamond. She may seem to have a superficial personality, but she has a will to live as she intends to, I think. How will they relate to each other as their futures are now intertwined?
What an interesting character Mrs. Garth is! Much more ecudacated than the average woman, which is—alas—seen as a shame because she had to teach for a living. Doing housework like a champ while homeschooling her children, and deliberately putting more effort into teaching the boy, even though the girl is obviously smarter. Poor child has to learn early that her education will never be as important as her brother's.
In Chapter 29, I was struck by the balance in how George Eliot treats Casaubon. He is certainly dislikeable (to me), but I did feel sympathy for him in how he was described here. He required "either a strong bodily frame or enthusiastic soul" in order to experience joy, but his soul was described as "fluttering away in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying." How heartbreaking - I wonder if Dorothea can see the "small hungry shivering self" that her husband is? Again, the skill to create such a disagreeable character and then evoke some empathy or understanding for him is remarkable.
Dorothea is certainly willing to see him and love him, but she's still too young and inexperienced to understand fully. Maybe, if she had more time...
Chris, I am with you with Eliot’s sensitive and nuanced portrait of Casaubon - he behaves so passively aggressively with Dorothea and yet I think Eliot herself had an appreciation of even the most doomed and dry academic quests compared with all the banal Vincys, including appealing Fred’s lack of ambition or deep thought.
Yes, Casabaun was doomed from the start, there's certainly a lot to be pitied there.
Okay, maybe I’m just saying this because Mary Garth is my girl, but I kinda get the hesitation with the will. She’s correct that she is the one who will live to suffer the consequences. What if they figured out a second will was burned and that she did it, and framed her for “manipulating” an old man? It’s likely people would not trust the word of a young woman without a lot of money or influence. Even though they should, because it’s Mary, my best girl! We love her so much we forget her compatriots don’t.
That quote about Milton not acting like an ass is SO good. Because I’m sure he totally did! I feel bad for Dorothea but she does test me at times and that line is a great example!
I frequently remember when, at the beginning of this close reading, Haley wrote some tips for "sticking with it (the book) even when the desire to throw it across the room looms large". Well, I've had this feeling, and fortunately, I am still here. Because just when I think I cannot do this anymore, Eliot comes with a brilliant description of somebody, a sarcastic and funny comment, or a heartbreaking description of a situation. I am enjoying more and more her "nosy" style, that comes suddenly without any warning, like at the begining of chapter 29: "One morning, some weeks her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea - but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible onewith regard to this marriage?" And then she has me back. I'm also delighted to have learned more about the Gareth family, people with a good heart! I hope everything goes well for them. I loved Eliot's sarcasm, and this is one of my favourite quotes of this part: " 'Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned" said Celia, regarding Mr Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a neighbouring body". Thanks Haley and the whole group for the inspiring comments! That is also a big motivation to keep going :-)
I loved her little quip about Dorothea too, she was pretty much saying, are you sick of her yet? Too bad! This is my book and I know what I'm doing!
Others have observed many of the same things I felt when reading this engaging section, but two things struck me, at least one connected with what other commenters have said: (1) Mary Garth’s refusal to do Peter Featherstone’s bidding is just a flat-out great deathbed scene - and also a place where Eliot subverts the gothic trope of more than one will or “secret” codicils, already a well-worn plot device in novels of her time. Mary really stands out for me as a terrifically original female character. Eliot gives us some access to her internal sense of the situation too.
(2) I don’t like Rosamund anymore than I did the first time I read the novel - but it seems that other readers, including Haley, find her more sympathetic than I do. Maybe this is generational? (I’m an old 2.5-wave feminist.) I do think Rosamund is interesting on the page, and perhaps I should try to be less judgmental about her performativeness. As for Lydgate, I feel sorry for him, but his condescending attitudes annoy me, and I find much of the prose churning on about his medical and political concerns tedious.
These chapters were so good! A nice reward after the fairly dry setup. I tried this novel last year and gave up in earlier chapters (maybe that medical soliloquy?). Now it’s getting juicy! I hope Mary does not settle for spoiled Fred. And the Garth parents are so nice! And we are almost halfway there. 😉
Others have observed many of the same things I felt when reading this engaging section, but two things struck me, at least one connected with what other commenters have said: (1) Mary Garth’s refusal to do Peter Featherstone’s bidding is just a flat-out great deathbed scene - and also a place where Eliot subverts the gothic trope of more than one will or “secret” codicils, already a well-worn plot device in novels of her time. Mary really stands out for me as a terrifically original female character. Eliot gives us some access to her internal sense of the situation too.
(2) I don’t like Rosamund anymore than I did the first time I read the novel - but it seems that other readers, including Haley, find her more sympathetic than I do. Maybe this is generational? (I’m an old 2.5-wave feminist.) I do think Rosamund is interesting on the page, and perhaps I should try to be less judgmental about her performativeness. As for Lydgate, I feel sorry for him, but his condescending attitudes annoy me, and I find much of the prose churning on about his medical and political concerns tedious.
I never liked Rosamund as a person, but as a character she's shown to be a young woman of no particular talent, praised and rewarded for being pretty and well-behaved, playing the game she's been taught to play. Her job is to be ornamental, in exchange for material comfort, so that's what she does. She's not malicious, just very shallow and pampered and extremely conventional, even in her romantic fantasies.
Oh, yes - in another comment, I think I compared her to a contemporary influencer - not malicious, but what she presents assumes a transaction - I’ll satisfy you, audience, if you give me attention.
I 💯 agree with you about Rosamund — and when I’m reading about her I can’t help thinking of how her character, her set of characteristics, became such a stereotype in 19c. literature. Caroline Bingley and Helénè Kuragin (W&P) come immediately to mind.
Yes, and Rosamund is good at playing the game, so she gets rewarded for it. Celia to an extent is too, though she strikes me as less calculating (though quite knowledgeable about people and how they work, unlike Dorothea). I do find the line about how Rosamund only allows herself to be less than ladylike around Mary, who won’t judge her, to be moving. Patriarchy harms people of all genders.
I think Celia has more interpersonal insight than Dorothea, but is more genuine and less shallow than Rosamund, kind of a happy medium. She's not troubled by Dodo's idealism, she's happy to live a conventional life, but she's not really performing and doesn't have the same need for admiration as Rosamund. She's someone for whom the cultural norms for women are an easier, more natural fit.
My favorite line is from Mary in ch 25 when Fred is trying to gin up sympathy and she says, "I cannot deny that I shall think all of that of you, Fred, if you give me good reasons."
I'm rooting for Dorothea, and I'm hoping when Casaubon's "Magnum Opus" is completed and released, it will read like Jack Torrance's script in The Shining!