the girl's vision of a possible future for herself to which she looked forward with trembling hope...

Week 3 | analyzing week two 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—and you’re welcome to join us any time.

a love triangle — or perhaps a polygon?

After the density of the prelude, I was expecting a much “heavier” reading experience, but I’m finding myself totally swept up in the story at this point (and even I am struggling to slow down!)

This week, we read chapters 2-10 of the novel, in which a rather complicated love polygon unfolded — it was so much more than the initial love triangle of Sir James, Celia, and Dorothea that unfolded in chapter 1.

There are many players on this field, and wow are there a lot of feelings circulating amongst them:

• Mr. Casaubon, the wizened older man whom Dorothea falls for immediately because she believes he will help her access deeper knowledge of, um, literally everything but especially those high minded ideals they’re both so in love with…

• Sir James Chettam, the younger suitor who was selected for Dorothea by the neighborhood busybody, but whom she finds boring and only likes for his attention to building cottages.

• Young Ladislaw, Casaubon’s nephew, the bored and unmotivated young man without much drawing skill, who is intrigued by Dorothea.

• Celia, who is becoming Sir James’s confident second choice after being rejected by Dorothea (and who does not get that sweet little dog! How unfair was that?!)

• Dorothea, of course, who is the keystone in this messy evolving many-sided shape of emotional entanglements.

In the chapters we read over the last week, Dorothea sets her sights — and her imagination — upon Mr. Casaubon and is delighted to find he wants to marry her. Everyone else is stunned at the match (which perhaps further endears Dorothea to the idea) and yet Mr. Brooks, that independent mind, insists that Dorothea’s choice of husband is her choice.

(Hilariously, he hedges this multiple times by saying it’s her choice to a certain point, but Casaubon is not too far-fetched to demand intervention — despite Sir James’s bruised ego desiring otherwise.)

As I read, I wondered what you all were thinking.

• What do you think of Casaubon’s feelings for Dorothea? Do you like him for her? Do you trust him?

• What did you think of Sir James’s attitude toward being rejected? (I wrote so many “haha’s” in my margins, I figured I should just put a giant one at the top of the page)

• What do we make of Ladislaw — the young cousin of Casaubon — who sizes up Dorothea and thinks: “there could be no sort of passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon.”

So far, I’m reading this whole mess as unfolding way too quickly to be anything that’ll stay put in the novel.

Eliot is bringing us along on the establishment of these relationships — and I imagine we’ll see them get messier and more entangled and more confusing as the novel unfolds.

My answers to the above questions are:

• I think Casaubon sees Dorothea as a kind of prosthetic — an object with better eyesight and energy than himself, who will enable him to complete more of his ambitious “Keys to the Mysteries of the Universe” project he’s so hellbent on finishing. I thought I didn’t like him very much…but then I realized it’s actually that I do not like Dorothea’s easy and eager total submission to him.

  • I feel Dorothea is quite bought-in on the concept of patriarchy and she has taught herself to love it. She thinks submitting to Casaubon’s dreams and ideas will elevate her own self, but has not yet asked if this will actually make her happy.

  • I am certain that Dorothea has no concept of what love really is, and I am scared and a bit sad for what she may come to think love is based on her relationship with Casaubon.

• Sir James feels like a bullet dodged for Dorothea, and I’m worried Celia will end up with him. He’s so egotistical! And selfishly motivated.

  • My parents told me to only marry someone after I’d seen them in all seasons — literally and emotionally. I feel that we saw the true Sir James after Dorothea’s rejection and whewwwww is he petulant.

  • I loved the way Eliot’s narration made it clear that the only reason he wanted to stall Dorothea’s marriage to Casaubon until she was “of age” was to ensure he had a longer window to convince her to choose him instead. His ego is bigger than all of Middlemarch and I really don’t trust him!

• I am down bad for Ladislaw. I absolutely gagged over the scene where he meets Dorothea with Casaubon, she dismisses his unstudied sketches, and then he throws his head back laughing as soon as he’s alone again. I found that to be such a delightful portrait of someone who—unlike most of the characters we’ve met so far—doesn’t take life over-seriously. I’m curious how his time abroad might change him…Is he a heart throb?

The chapters we read for this week ended with a rather anticlimactic single sentence in which we learn Dorothea does indeed marry Casaubon and they are off to Rome on their honeymoon.

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a tricky narrator

Throughout this weeks’ chapters, the narrator interjects herself constantly. I absolutely lived for these interjections: they were, at turns, deeply funny and deeply self aware.

In chapter 10, she makes the most overt interjection yet and essentially warns us readers to hold off on our judgements of these characters, and especially of Casaubon. (I was like, oh good, because I don’t like him and you probably knew how I was feeling and you’re giving me fair warning here — thanks narrator!)

There’s a level of managing us here, and I’m curious how different readers will experience it.

• Do you like the narrator? Do you trust her? Why or why not?

We’ve really only known Casaubon through the lens of other people — via those “small mirrors” of others’ experiences and judgements of him. The narrator essentially lists all of these judgements and from whence they came:

“Mrs. Cadwallader’s contempt for a neighbouring clergyman’s alleged greatness of soul, of Sir James Chettam’s poor opinion of his rival’s legs,—from Mr. Brooke’s failure to elicit a companion’s ideas, or from Celia’s criticism of a middle-aged scholar’s personal appearance.”

And she warns us not to be deceived by these hastily formed opinions, or by the egos such judgements serve:

“I am not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavourable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin.”

In this week’s comments: tell me about your experience of the narrator so far.

I truly feel “tugged-in” by the narrator. As soon as I might start to roll my eyes at a character’s choice or feel myself wincing at a remark…the narrator anticipates my own judgments and my own misgivings, and invites me back in.

There’s something really cool and self-aware about that.

And yet…I also have to wonder why she’s setting me up for these little roller coaster dips and shifts.

When it comes to our narrator: what do you feel? What do you notice?

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only individuals exist

Eliot threads a great deal of science into her writing. (At least one of you wrote last week to let me know you were noticing and tracking her use of science in the novel!) So I did a little background reading, careful of spoilers, to see what scholars say about Eliot and science.

Patrick Brantlinger, in A Companion to The Victorian Novel¹ writes:

“Of all the great Victorian realists, Eliot was, perhaps, the most sophisticated about science. Middlemarch may not be science fiction, but it is, by Victorian standards, scientific fiction. The narrative persona that Eliot adopts often assumes the guise of scientific experimenter, and the novel itself is a web of biological, optical, and other scientific metaphors.”

Last week, I asked you about “types”:

• What are character types? What “types” seem to be at work in this novel?

• Why would an author introduce a character’s form or mold, before the character herself?

This week, the question has evolved — slightly. We still have “types,” especially as we’ve gotten to know the different men who, thus far, represent different ideological and political perspectives within Middlemarch.

In 1862, George Henry Lewes—a contemporary of Eliot’s and a scholar of Darwinism — wrote this:

“Let us never forget that Species have no existence. Only individuals exist, and these all vary more or less from each other.”

This quote feels very relevant to Middlemarch, doesn’t it? In a novel exploring the types and the “mysterious mixture” of humankind, we’ve got front row seats to individual decisions.

How strange Dorothea’s decision to marry Casaubon. How funny Sir James Chettam’s reaction. How confused Mr Brooke’s and Mrs Cadawaller are by the choices of these young lades; how delighted is Ladislaw by the absurdity of it all.

As Eliot puts a scientific lens over these “types,” we cannot help but experience them as individuals.

Lewes is right: a species is nothing more than a taxonomical name — a concept invented by humans to make sense of human behavior. Individuals, though. What a puzzling fact of existence: there may be patterns and types and groups into which we fit.

But “only individuals exist,” and there is so much variety in that category.

So — a new question perhaps.

• Where does type depart from character?

• How is Eliot giving us “types” and then showing us the deeper “individual” beneath the type?

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finding the key

Casaubon is on a dedicated intellectual search for the “key” to the mysteries of the world — he wants to find that single “key” that will unlock the “mysterious mixture” of how humankind behaves, exists, goes through time.

It’s ambitious work, yes, and yet we will know as his readers…it’s also an impossible task. One that he — and now Dorothea, as his reading eyes and eager student-wife — has devoted life to fulfilling.

His project is inherently scientific: he’s got an implied hypothesis that such a key exists. He uses his various “documents” and research to find that key so that he might know it and perhaps also author and disseminate it. And, now, he has a young bride who is entirely submissive to his task and asks nothing of him but to be involved in his “great work.”

Casaubon’s project is an effort to answer the unknowable; he strikes me as the kind of man who believes every mystery has an answer. He is without passion, energy, or even lust for Dorothea. And, as Ladislaw judges, “there could be no sort of passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon.”

Is that true?

Does Dorothea have passion?

How long will it take her to realize that Casaubon doesn’t?

Will anything spark Casaubon to shift his attention from Lofty Ideals to reality?

Will they be successful in unlocking the key(s) to the mysteries of humanity?

Will Casaubon decide upon an answer?

Will he ever be satisfied?

Will Dorothea?!

Let’s keep reading to find out.

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favorite quote

Each week, I share my favorite quote from our assigned pages. And you’re more than welcome to share your favorite quotes, too! Here was my favorite from this week:

“Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains.”

In chapter 8, this is Mrs Cadawaller’s unkind but quite apt description of Mr. Casaubon’s character. He is, as Sir James says, “all semicolons and parentheses.”

In a novel about the necessity of “Thought,” as Mr. Brooke’s puts it, it seems Dorothea has fallen in love with a concept of a man. A man so scholarly and driven by his academic pursuits that his failing body exists only to frame his expansive and driven mind.

In these weeks chapters, we also learned that Dorothea had, for the very first time, felt annoyed at Casaubon.

Is is because he’s not living up to the concept in her head? (Is it because he’s kinda just downright annoying sometimes?) Is their relationship going to withstand their shared desire to live in the world of Thought and high-minded ideals?

Because reality — especially that overgrown yard, dreary home decor, and uninspiring interior design — is quite real, and will (I assume) be quite felt.

….We shall see.

what we are reading this week (week 3!)

Here we go into week 3! Here’s your assignment

Week 3: Monday, June 9
Read chapters 11-16 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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thank you for reading with me!

Let’s get into the comments to share our thoughts on what we read last week.

All of our reader questions from the last week will come out in a separate post later this week (there are so many questions! I love seeing what you’re paying attention to!)

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1. I highly recommend A Companion to The Victorian Novel, from Blackwell Publishing, edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing. You can buy it via my bookshop.org page.