If you’ve somehow missed being hounded by me to read (first) Middlemarch and (in the New Year) My Life in Middlemarch, you can catch up here.
I thought our last discussion was delightfully engaging and sprightly, and I really appreciate how many of you have dived into a seemingly-staid task with such vim. The book only gets better (at least, I feel that way), and I hope that you’re beginning to pick up speed.
Like last time, I don’t want to blather on too much about Middlemarch myself before we get to the important business of communally enjoying/being frustrated by it, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how funny it can be, even (especially?) in moments of gravity. While we’re wincing at Fred’s attempt to placate Mr. Bulstrode, the absurdity of the scene can’t be mistaken, and the early comedy that is Lydgate and Rosamond talking and thinking past each other makes the solemnity and finality of a bad 19th century marriage all the more grim.
This segment of the novel, I feel, is so rich in its character studies. When we re-encounter our Miss Brooke (now Mrs. Casaubon) in Rome, I think we understand her a little better for having gotten to know her contemporaries and neighbors in her absence. We’re also beginning to see, as with Lydgate and Rosamond, that Eliot’s characters’ playful insistence on creating imaginary friends and lovers and confidantes for themselves instead of accepting their realities and true motivations is swiftly curdling into unhappiness and harm.
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite excerpts from this segment of the novel:
Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
On a mostly unrelated note, an excellent poetical pairing for Dorothea’s discomfiting Roman holiday can be found in Ted Hughes’ account of his own honeymoon with Sylvia Plath, “You Hated Spain,” which you can read online in various purloined forms, or purchase via Birthday Letters.
Rebecca Mead (who will be doing this cool event at the NYPL at the end of January, in addition to our Strand Toast Encounters of the Third Kind in March) wanted me to mention, as well, that as these two volumes were being published in early 1872, Eliot had only completed about half of Middlemarch, which must have provided what actors like to call “motivation.” Can you imagine? It’s interesting, too, to wonder how reader reactions to the earlier volumes might have shaped Eliot’s choices (if at all! She doesn’t seem the type, but publishers have changed very little in the last few hundred years, I expect.)
(For our next conversation, we’ll meet on Jan. 6th and read through the end of Vol. 7, while “Eye of the Tiger” plays.)
Tags: george eliot, middlemarch, middlemarch book club, my life in middlemarch, rebecca mead
This is my third time reading Middlemarch, and I have to admit I skimmed over some of the Lydgate/Rosamund bits. It’s hard for me to care much about them. They’re the C-story, I think.
Ughhh Lydgate.
I actually find them the most compelling on re-read, because everyone else more or less ekes out a happy ending, and those 2 don’t. Their fuckups and fights seem the silliest at the time but end up wrecking his life whereas Dorothea, Ladislaw, Fred and Mary manage to pull it together.
Huh, I don’t know, I’m not sure there’s quite that much difference in the outcomes. To be discussed when we get to the end, maybe.
I … don’t know how far I’m supposed to have gotten by now. And I don’t even know where I actually am. But I DO know that I want to knock Fred Vincy upside the head and also give poor Dodo a hug.
And maybe hang out with crazy German artists in Italy, because that could possibly be a very fun time.
Me either! I stopped after the first section we were assigned because I finished early and wanted to cram another book in in the meantime and now I don’t know where I am!
Oh Nicole, that passage about the roar on the other side of silence is one of my favorite parts of this or any novel. It feels more important every time I come back to it.
I was surprised at all the anti-Lydgate sentiment in the last discussion! I know he’s a bit insufferable (I guess I make allowances for 19th century misogyny), but I really like the approach Eliot takes towards his intellectual calling. I love the back story at the beginning of chapter 15 about how he was always a bright kid but never interested in anything in particular until one day he was bored enough to poke through dusty books on high shelves in his library and idly opened an anatomy book:
“But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from his chair, the world was made new to him by a presentiment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour Lydgate felt the growth of an intellectual passion.”
And then in the next paragraph, the discussion of how we are always telling love stories about couples but not love stories about people finding their life’s work:
“We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman’s “makdom and her fairnesse,” never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of “makdom and fairnesse” which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting.”
This book is so much about young people trying to figure out what to do with their lives, and I love how seriously Eliot takes intellectual engagement as one of the factors that could play into that decision.
I do like that aspect of Lydgate, and I like the way Eliot approaches it. However, the way he ignores Mary Garth was a tip-off to me that he wasn’t totally sympathetic [to me, anyway]. He proves to be discreet and sensitive in matters concerning his patients, but as far as women go I think he’s kind of a dick.
Yes! Exactly! It doesn’t mean Lydgate is A Good Person just because of that, or that I personally find him appealing, but I think Eliot’s true genius is creating an understanding for a character – even if someone’s a maritally inept twit, we know why that is.
And as someone’s who feels very UGH about her university experience, Lydgate, honey, I feel you.
I *loved* that whole section about falling in love with a life’s work. So well-put, and true!
That’s one of my very favorite parts of the novel too. At one point the narrator says about Lydgate that ‘character too is a process and an unfolding’ – like Dorothea, he has so much to learn (including what kind of woman to appreciate).
I, too, am a huge fan of the way Eliot goes about talking about how people choose and engage with work/career in these books, and how it’s an important part of grown-up life choices. Especially since I feel like, with so many books of this era, there’s usually just a bunch of folks living off their money and spending all their time wife- and husband-hunting. It’s refreshing to see intellectual/vocational pursuits given a more equal hand to the romantic.
Yes!!! I loved that second passage so much. And it’s still true–if we could trade half the romantic comedies that come out a year for movies about falling in love with your profession…we would have some good movies.
This is extremely unfair, and I know that it is unfair buuuuttt …
I can’t let go of the fact that as a physician in the 1830s, Lydgate is not actually making anyone better. In fact, he’s probably actively contributing to the deaths of more than a few of his patients. So all of the high-flown language about his vocation and his intellect and whatnot keeps getting mixed up with ‘yeah but how often does Smarty McKnowledgeface wash his hands?’
Lydgate is the real tragic hero of this novel, y’all. Tragic in the classical sense.
His fatal flaw, his hamartia, lies in his inability to see women as anything but decorative. We can see that he would have grown out of this — that he should have grown out of it. There are signs that he was beginning to grow out of it. Look how he reacts to Dorothea in the scenes where he is with her. “Women just like Dorothea had not entered into his tradition.” And he has a similar reaction to Mary Garth.
He has only known women like Rosalind Vincy and his actress in France — women who play games for him, who dance and pose. He thinks women are that, because that is all he has ever seen, or had a chance to seen. Women as puppets. Women as a leisure-time activity. Women as toys.
That’s his tragedy, because — as Eliot is showing us in this novel — a good marriage makes both the man and the woman better. We see that really well with Caleb and Susan Garth; but we’ll see it with a number of the others too (not to give spoilers, but specifically with Fred and Mary, and Sir James and Celia).
We *should* have seen it with Lydgate and Dorothea, in my opinion. I think that is the tragedy that lies behind this novel — that Dorothea married Casaubon in haste; and that Lydgate would never look at her anyway, as he was then; and so that relationship, which would have made each of them so much, never has a chance.
Yes, very well put. I started writing something along these lines in response to prost’s also-very-put comment above, but flailed and deleted it. Yours got at exactly what I wanted to say.
If I remember from my previous reading–I’m not at this point in the re-read–I believe Eliot makes that association between Lydgate and Dorothea pretty explicit as he comes to admire her and regret his marriage. Or, rather, I don’t know that I agree that they would have done each other much good as a couple (given the very flaws that led each into bad marriages), but I think the book is clear that we ought to read their characters in a similar way. Characters with lofty ambitions who sin in haste and repent at leisure; characters who long to serve humankind but misunderstand human character, including their own. And I think we’re meant to forgive the them both.
Yes. I get the sense, less that Lydgate and Dorothea belong together, than that they’re foils and parallels to each other. The first time I read Middlemarch, the word “ardor” (and “ardent”/”ardently”/etc.) kept jumping out at me; this time — thank you, readily available e-texts, and thank you, Ctrl-F! — I actually counted the occurrences. The lion’s share of the uses of “ardor” or “ardent” apply to Dorothea, but there’s a whole subgroup of them that are used to describe Lydgate. He’s a different type of character, but I think we’re meant to compare them to each other.
(Rosamond’s characteristic adjective, on the other hand? “Infantine.” Heh.)
I sometimes think the whole novel can be read as a contest between the words ‘ardent’ and ‘petty.’
Wait, are you saying Lydgate should have wound up with Dorothea?
I think so, yes. Keep an eye on the relationship between Lydgate and Dorothea as it develops through the book. I think Eliot gives us just enough to hint at this. Neither of them — in the end — reach their full potential. Lydgate, especially, is a tragic figure at the end.
When I first read this book, I was very fond of Will Ladislaw, who is (after all) adorable and charming, a lovely Romantic boy. But there is no denying that he brings nothing to Dorothea *but* charm and sexytimes. He is not her intellectual equal; he has no ambition; he’s kind, clearly, and he loves her, but that’s it.
Compare this with what Mary Garth brings to Fred Vincy, or what Lydgate might have given Dorothea.
And compare what Dorothea might have given him to what Rosalind does give him. Ack.
Boy, oh boy. I totally disagree! Dorotha might be a sort of foil to Roasamund, but I don’t think she and Lydgate would work as well. I think Will brings a lot more to the table than charm and sexytimes, and I think he is every bit her equal intellectually. He’s just not as serious, maybe, which I think Dorothea needs
I would like to defend my position more concretely, but I absolutely must finish grading these finals because I have to hand them back at 7AM tomorrow! Gah!
Yeah, I think that Lydgate would have been bad for Dorothea in many of the same ways that Casaubon was. Eliot seems very critical of singlemindedness/obsession, and less invested in people realizing their full potentials than being…what’s the best way to put it? Engaged with the world. Well-rounded, maybe.
Well, but Casaubon is not actually an intellectual. He’s a fiddler, a poseur. Lydgate is the real thing; or at least could have been. (Spoilers: he gets destroyed by the choices he is making.)
Will is also not an intellectual, sadly, as adorable as I find him. With Dorothea’s help, he becomes much more than he would have been. Without her, he would have remained nothing much — he would have been like Mr. Brooke, in fact, dabbling at this and that for the rest of his life. It’s her influence that allows him to accomplish as much as he does. (Which, frankly, isn’t that much.)
Lydgate, though, could have been a great scientist. Eliot lets us see that. He’s the cause Dorothea needed hitch her engine to.
I don’t think we know what Lydgate would have been. We know he had ambition and interest and some aptitude but we don’t really know if he would have done anything important if he’d stayed unmarried as planned (or married more wisely – which I don’t think would mean Dorothea). Conversely, I don’t think we know whether Casaubon could have been a real intellectual if he’d been less terrified about letting others in on his work at some point much earlier in the process.
We can’t know, but we are given some evidence in the novel: Casaubon’s impotence, for instance; and Lydgate’s competence.
There is also Lydgate’s willingness to learn from his errors, which Casuabon does not share.
I don’t think that Dorothea hitching her engine to a cause would have been the optimal outcome for her. Her desire to lose herself in some greater endeavor is portrayed as self-destructive (certainly in the specific instance of devoting herself to Mr. Casaubon, but also I think in general) and her big growth over the course of the story is learning to accept joy for herself and to find that valuable, while exercising the self-sacrifice she’s so capable of in smaller, isolated instances that do more good than an entire life of renunciation and self-abnegation.
I agree her desire to give her energy and strength to a cause is shown to be destructive when she devotes it to Casaubon; but that’s because he’s not what she thinks he is. She chooses unwisely.
I don’t agree that the novel shows us that devoting your strength and energy to accomplishing something great is a bad plan — that we should, instead, settle for quotidian joys.
Look at the opening headnote, the story of Saint Theresa. That’s going to keep coming back, that metaphor; and Eliot’s going to whack us with it at the very end, just when we think Dorothea’s story has ended happily. Yeah, not so much, she’s going to say. This looks like a happy ending, she’s going to say, but you don’t know what this woman *might* have been.
When I first read M I so hoped that Dorothea and Lydgate would end up happily ever after together. Clearly George Eliot was made of sterner stuff than I am.
DoDo and Lyndgate would have made a good match. I love that Celia calls her DoDo
Favourite parts? Favourite parts!
“It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self – never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.”
I can’t even with Casaubon. I was much less done with my dissertation the first time I read the book than now, but this time his fruitless scholarly flailing is just killing me.
Real talk, my “consciousness is rapturously transformed into . . . the ardour of a passion” when I drink a half bottle of red wine on my day off while scrolling through Tumblr.
Favorite parts!
I was totally on board with this reaction to Rome:
“Will … passed easily to a half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world’s ages as a set of box-like partitions without vital connection.”
Caleb Garth “would rather do other men’s work than find fault with their doing.” – the eternal conundrum of managing people.
Dorothea realizing that Causabon is a fraud:
“The clear heights where she expected to walk in full communion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; the delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken into uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment.”
And of course this passage about how everyone sees themselves at the center of the action (and I think the last sentence is hilarious):
“An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable.”
That dang “these things are a parable.” I wrote about Eliot’s Felix Holt in my college senior thesis, and there’s a paragraph in the introduction to that book that goes,
“The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human histories hidden in them; the power of unuttered cries dwells in the passionless-seeming branches, and the red warm blood is darkly feeding the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory that watches through all dreams. These things are a parable.”
What a weirdly teasing and grotesque way to introduce a story that’s largely about political reform.
I love how critical Eliot is of the men in this novel, even the ones we’re meant to like:
When Ladislaw is telling Dorothea that Casaubon’s life’s work is useless because he doesn’t read German writers:
“Ladislaw was not at all deep himself in German writers; but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man’s shortcomings.”
Loved this bit of Mallory-esque misandry from Mrs. Garth:
“I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben,” said Mrs. Garth, accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.
On Fred Vincy owing money to the Garths:
“…he had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them, for this exercise of the imagination on other people’s needs is not common with hopeful young gentleman.”
And this bit of feminist wisdom:
“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.”
The thing that startles me the most about Middlemarch is just how strongly I identify with Casaubon. I mean, really, of all the characters, Casaubon. And it’s not even that I think that’s what I’m like now; it’s just that whenever I read those chapters that get inside his head, I think “There but for the grace of God, if my life had gone just a little differently, go I.”
Eliot could have made Casaubon a completely ludicrous figure, but instead she makes us (well, me, at least) ache for him. And this is why I love this novel so very, very much.
Totally. I gather that he’s a bit of a bogeyman for academics, representing the nagging fear that one’s research may be pointless. But the part that scares me is more along the lines of being too worried about the judgment of others to ever let anyone know what you are truly thinking, and how emotionally withering that is
over time.
Ok guys, I’m not through our assigned reading for today, but wanted to share some of my favorite quotes thus far:
“[Mary showed] gratitude towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be content, did something to make her so.” (This is from last section but I included it because RIGHT?!)
“To point out other people’s errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from.” Don’t I know a few Mr. Bulstrodes.
“…time, like money, is measured by our needs.”
“They really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven.”
I can’t believe I have never read this before. I am enjoying it immensely!. Thanks, the Toast!
“Times had altered since then, and no sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon’s leaving a copy of himself; moreover, he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his mythological key…”
MYTHOLOGICAL KEY. She is saying Casaubon is a Virgin, right?
I was sort of wondering if they had ever consummated the marriage.
I guess I actually meant impotent (esp in regards to earlier post about virginity! ugh! sorry) But yeah I think not!
There’s a bit when they are courting that seems to hint in this direction too: “Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him; and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion.”
I really hope not, given how much the man hates affectionate caresses. *shudder*
The introduction to the edition I’m reading suggests that it’s not just disappointment with Casaubon’s scholarly limitations that’s making Dorothea sob bitterly on her honeymoon. One does wonder, given all the deathly imagery around him.
oh yeah, i kinda forgot about that – but I think Eliot does allude to that during the honeymoon part, too. I mean I know the “mythological key” thing is a metaphor, but while I was listening (audiobook version) I was like IS THAT REALLY WHAT SHE IS SAYING?? SCANDALOUS!!! I love it.
Yes! That’s a bit that Eliot only hints at here.
But I am almost certain that not only is Casaubon a virgin BEFORE the wedding; he is a virgin AFTER the wedding too, IYKWIMAITYD.
That is, from certain hints in this text, I am almost certain the Dorothea/Casaubon relationship is never consumated.
i agree. lucky for dorothea!
I’m not through the entire assigned reading yet, but this is my second (or third?) time reading Middlemarch. I love the quote Nicole put in the post, but the one I most identify with is Mr. Farebrother’s “I feed a weakness or two lest they should grow clamourous.” Because yes.
Yeah, I have that marked too!
Team Mary Garth!
MARY GARTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is all.
Mary Garth is my favorite in this book.
Mary Garth Mary Garth Mary Garth!!!
The conversation where she shuts Fred down over and over is wonderful! I want to hang out with her and ignore boys.
OK, can we talk about the narrator here for a minute? Most of the time, Eliot employs a bog-standard 19th-century 3rd-person omnipotent narrator…who occasionally slips in a casual first-person commentary—”I think Lydgate turned a little paler than usual,” frex. What’s up with that?
Favorite quotes!
Lydgate on the attractions of medicine: “There was another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an opportunity for some indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and to be the possessor of genuine though undemanded qualifications.”
Throwaway description of furniture: “…the sofas resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs…”
Eliot describing the internet, basically: “There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”
I noticed the narrator thing, too! But I don’t have any answers. I kind of like it, like occasionally George Eliot just couldn’t stick with the 19th century third-person program and had to be like, “LOOK THIS IS WHAT I THINK”
I love the narrator, love how she (definitely a she) flits between caustic 3rd person observations, free indirect speech, and just inserting herself into the book, especially near the end.
I think a few writers employ the third-person-who-is-actually-a-first-person including notably Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.
Sometimes called an ‘intrusive’ narrator too — Scott and Thackeray both do this a lot too. The narrator is definitely her own character in the novel, just outside the action.
Also describes politics, the media, and a dinner party I was at last week.
Also, I am constantly shocked by how, like, timeless all the stories seem. other than the bonnets and the horses, this could pretty much take place yesterday. People are still making the same mistakes.
This is my second time reading, and though I haven’t marked my copy up (it’s a mass-market size with tiny print & tiny margins) there are a few parts I remembered and looked for– Casaubon’s torturous insecurity about his academic pursuits– oh God, it stings. I, too, have a tendency to collect and collate information and no special confidence in my ability to synthesize it. Fear of turning out a Casaubon is basically the reason I haven’t gone to grad school.
Mary Garth is too good for Fred Vincy, and they both know it, thank God. It’s funny, I see Fred in so many boys and young men I know– this assumption that everything will work out in their favor because it always has before, the idea that anyone they know will help them out, that any wrong they do will be forgiven without too much penance. The older they get, the less cute it is. I don’t remember this storyline too well, but hopefully circumstances will cause him to knock it off so he & Mary can be happy together.
I think one thing that makes me like Fred Vincy so much is that he *does* know that Mary Garth is too good for him.
He knows how lucky is he that she cares about him — he does appreciate what a prize he has in her. If he can recognize what a wonder she is, he can’t be as awful as he persists in acting through the early pages of this book!
I also like how he keeps bringing her books to read even though it gets him in trouble with Featherstone. That puts me Team Fred for life, I think.
I have not been keeping up on the reading (important Xmas related knitting projects are eating my evenings), but Middlemarch is one of my favorite books. Did I ever tell you about the time in college when my roommate and I were in the same English lit class, and I told her the character she most reminded me of was Mrs. Cadwallader? The next day in class, the professor bashed Mrs. C as a meddlesome busybody, and so I had to write an entire essay justifying Mrs. Cadwallader and all the other pragmatists of Victorian novels in order to defend my poor roommate. She unintentionally got back at me later by telling me I looked like Alice in Wonderland, and the next day the prof was all about how the original Alice illustrations show a “pouty, sullen blonde.” The moral of this story is, go to lecture before you compare your friends to characters.
First time reader of Middlemarch here. Everything with Fred Vincy is making me cringe sooooo much. Sooooo much. Yes Casaubon is horrid but at least we know he’ll die soon enough. That doc gave him, what, 15 years? Hopefully it will be shorter.
But Fred! Fred is young, and ugh, destined to be with MG?! First with the money borrowing, then the shenanigans with the horse buying/selling, the subsequent onus on the Garth family, then the whole horrible scene with Mr. Featherstone’s will…. ughghghjah CRINGE CITY, USA, POPULATION: me.
MG is my girl. I love the simile when she embraces her dad “… [she] kissed him with childish kisses which he delighted in,–the expression of his large brows softening as the expression of a great beautiful dog softens when it is caressed.” Caleb Garth is a Saint Bernard.
Fred gets better! But yes, he behaves very badly here in the beginning. I love how Mary Garth calls him on it.
haha, I was about to comment the exact same thing: Fred gets better!!!!
One of my favorite bits, especially for what it reveals about Rosamund’s character, is at the start of chapter 31, when Lydgate tells her that Dorothea is worried about Casaubon, and how much he (Lydgate) admires her devotion to her husband.
Rosamund replies: “Of course she is devoted to her husband.” …but she was thinking at the same time that it was not so very melancholy to be mistress of Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon.”
I love the bits where a character says something that doesn’t accurately reflect his/her true feelings. You can almost see the wheels turning in their heads as they try to say the appropriate thing without giving too much away.
Another example from the first part, when Fred accepts the money after getting the note from Bulstrode: “You are very good sir,” said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast between the words and his feeling.
One of my favorite things about this novel is how complex the chronological structure is – there’s lots of doubling back to show us things from other perspectives (which connects really neatly to the point about the pier glass passage @prost quoted above). In the Vatican scenes, for instance, we start with Will and Naumann and their sighting of Dorothea, and then go back in time to see how Dorothea got there, but only after going forward a bit first… There are lots of examples like that–Chapters 27-29 are another favorite sequence of mine.
On the Casaubon’s marital relations: “in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter’s, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.”
My grad school prof claimed that this was Eliot’s metaphor for Dorothea’s loss of virginity.
Sounds unpleasant 🙁