i know no speck so troublesome as self
Week 8 | analyzing week seven 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!
let’s talk chapters 40-48
I thought I was in for another weeklong nap with these chapters this week, but no! I found this week’s chapters a lot more engaging than the previous couple of weeks, and especially loved the chapters about Casaubon and Dorothea, as we saw their marriage dynamic develop even more deeply.
This week, we had:
The narrator playing camera operator, as in the opening of chapter 40:
“In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in was set up. The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth’s breakfast-table…”
Isn’t this a brilliant aperture movement? Our narrator zooms us out (as she did in the Prelude) and then zooms us into the breakfast table (as she does in chapter 1, about Dorothea). She calls attention to herself in the act of choosing how to “change our place” of examination; she overtly points us at the “movement” we should be interested in.
The schemes of Rigg and Raffles: two men who feel straight out of a Dickensian novel. Raffles seems to desire scheming and investing and making good on Riggs’ inheritance. The mysterious Rigg has no time for him and makes him leave. Raffles leaves…with a letter from Bulstrode in his unwitting possession. This felt like overt foreshadowing. That letter is definitely coming back at some point, right?
Casaubon’s panic and realization at his lack of achievement, and his ever-deepening anxiety that Dorothea prefers Will Ladislaw to himself. He worries that upon his death, she will marry Will and his jealousy starts to eat at him day and night.
“a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing.”
Lydgate’s diagnosis that death could come for Casaubon at any moment; he may live 5 minutes, he may live 15 years. Dorothea hunts him down — intersecting with our other leading lady Rosamond for the first time — to get the information she needs, because she can’t get it from Cas himself.
Dorothea agrees to help fund Lydgate’s hospital; putting herself on the side of “reform,” which all the other town doctors (and quacks) are discussing with heated uncertainty and rising anger. Lydgate doesn’t sell drugs; other doctors make a living doing so.
Rosamond calls Lydate “Doctor Grave-face” and I laughed out loud.
The “Reform Bill” is starting to make political rounds, and is rousing discussions of reform in Middlemarch that reach much deeper and farther than the basic hospital reforms personified by Lydate’s presence. There are also questions of voting, representation in the House of Commons, and who has the right to be heard politically.
Will Ladislaw lounging on people’s rugs (what the heck?) and being funny and sweet to the children in town. He also makes a fateful trip to church…where Dorothea looks at him with “agitation” and Casaubon pretends not to even see him at all.
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!
I had so many this week, it’s hard to choose!
Here are a few:
“‘Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing?”
Our narrator ponders some truly wonderful questions, don’t they?
“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”
I loved this moment so much. Our narrator seems preoccupied with optical metaphors in these chapters — from the camera’s aperture to this moment of wondering about how a tiny speck can cloud and cover one’s entire field of vision. I loved this metaphor for Casaubon’s increasing paranoia and jealousy; he is holding Will’s love for Dorothea so closely that he cannot see around it, to the wider fact of Dorothea’s clear devotion to Casaubon or to the wider world of Middlemarch where there is much lively and intellectually stimulating company to be had. Even still, to zoom out even farther, Casaubon has lost a vision of the “glory of the world” because he’s become so myopic in his personal project to identify the “Keys.”
We have a man with deeply flawed perspective who, as the final chapter this week showed us, refuses to see what’s right in front of him.
I’ve already started reading into chapters 48 and 49, and I truly cannot wait to discuss those with you next week!
what we are reading this week (week 8)
Here we go into week 4! Here’s your assignment
Week 8: Monday, July 14
Read chapters 48-55 this week
You can view the full reading schedule here.
You can pose your questions here (or in the comments of today’s post!) The FAQ will be updated later this week.
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?
What surprised you? What elements, character developments, or plot happenings surprised you this week?
What was your most annotated page? Why so?
thank you!
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Haley, I also love these chapters in Middlemarch. With the deepening divide between Dorothea (she finally realizes she's angry!) and Casaubon, our narrator so acutely observes their inner turmoil. That "tiny speck" of self that blots out everything else — oh, yes. And as Chris notes, the scene of them walking together, which closes Book IV, is so relatable and wrenching, with Casaubon saying:
"'Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life by watching.'
"When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears, she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand into her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together."
Wow. This is so full of layers, it took my breath away. I also like the following sentence from Chapter 40 in reference to why Mary Garth is so compelling despite her "plainness":
"A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences; and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one loved."
There I hear the author herself — Mary Ann Evans writing as George Eliot — who was herself plain but quite compelling and fired up with intellect and sympathy for others. What I love about Eliot's work, discursive as it can get when talking about politics of the time or science, is that she does wind those social details into the lives of all these characters in a provincial town. The discussion of medical prejudices, for instance, was not unlike all the anti-science attitudes expressed now. We still get mired down with small thinking, our tiny-speck selves made to seem bigger when amplified on social media. I doubt George Eliot would have been surprised.
The description of Mr. Trumbull's delight and self-importance at having his vital signs recorded for science was comical - "...by learning many new words which seemed suited to the dignity of his secretions" was by far my favorite example.
The description of Casaubon's awareness of his illness and its impact on him was thought-provoking, especially the section containing the following line: "When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself suddenly into the 'I must die-and soon'..." Again, George Eliot is presenting this bitter, selfish man and his underlying motives for my empathetic consideration when I just want to completely dislike him - I'm wondering if that was her goal or if she was just so skilled at developing complex characters.
The whole of Chapter 42 felt like a huge shift in Dorothea's marriage - from (still) striving to earn her husband's love and respect; to despising him; to some sort of caring that is not pity, but not romantic love either. The way Eliot describes the small things that are not small at all is incredible - she must have been such a keen observer of human nature. The description of Casaubon refusing to soften into Dorothea as they walked together and its impact on her feelings felt so relatable to me: "...it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are ever wasted..." I'm finding that I really enjoy getting the dual perspective of the narrator and the characters - it makes their behaviors and missteps so much more poignant and heart-warming.