I am certain Mr. Casaubon’s character will occupy many of my thoughts, therefore I must bring attention to his incredibly dull letter asking Dorthea for marriage.  I understand Dorthea and her childlike naïveté will bring elements of both hilarity and horror in her choices, but this letter should make her run like her hair is on fire.  Cold and reserved does not describe this letter accurately, there is more emotion in a job offer for an undertaker.

The attempt of flattery is astounding as Mr. Casaubon attempts to relate his admiration to Dorthea with a long and complicated sentence.  She has allowed his “observation” and “impression” to “emphatically” convince him of her “fitness” where she can ease the “consciousness…need” (pg. 43).  His letter of declaration of admiration is bland and unemotional, similar to reading your car’s owner’s manual.  How this letter sends the poor child to the floor with so much unrestrained emotion where she cannot even pray still amazes me.  Dorthea read the letter greedily and quickly, she missed many of the warnings that Mr. Casaubon supplies her.

Devoid of any obvious emotion, Mr. Casaubon moves to remind Dorthea about what he expects in a companion.    Plainly stating to Dorthea that he is looking for a woman who must have the “capability of devotedness”, Mr. Casaubon is not seeking a mental equal, but a common housekeeper that talks to him when he is lonely (pg. 43).  In addition, Mr. Casaubon gives fair warning to Dorthea on these intentions referencing to their time spent together where he believes, and we are to assume as readers, that she understands their future life together.  Boldly stating that he has “made sufficiently clear to [her] the tenor of [his] life and purposes,” Mr. Casaubon continues to reinforce the fact that he is looking for a person who understands that he will live and study just as usual (pg. 43).

Granted, Casaubon does compliment her with “mental qualities”, but that is the only positive item that he has given her other than what she will do for him (pg. 43).  Dorthea is missing the point when he tells her that he is looking for her to “cast charms over vacant hours (pg. 44).  This is not a statement that says he will sweep her away on a cloud of love, it says that he will take on a bride but continue to work and study as he always have and devote attention to her only when he finds it convenient.   I cannot hold Mr. Casaubon in contempt for not being upfront and honest as his letter clearly indicates the reasons why he choose Dorthea and what her purpose would be.

Obviously Dorthea has interesting ideas regarding what her life will be like with Mr. Casaubon.  Her afternoon spent fantasizing about her future with Mr. Casaubon and presumes it would be equivalent to “marrying Pascal.” (pg. 19)  Plainly stated, Mr. Casaubon is approving her, and could very well live alone with no issue, but because he does not find her offensive and she appears to want to be devoted to him, he will provide her with financial security, faithfulness and some affection (pg. 44).  Dorthea is clearly looking to marry out of what she believes is love, but Casaubon is really looking for a caregiver, not a wife that he will companion.  Assuming Dorthea’s fantasies inhibit her from seeing the scope of her decision, Mr. Casaubon’s warnings and cautions from other people, the readers will wait with baited breath as this dramatic irony unfolds.

Vickie Culpepper

Mass market romance always follows the same pattern—two people meet, fall in love, overcome an obstacle, and eventually skip off into the sunset together, destined for a future of happiness or they die tragically and are forever more a testament to true love. This formula has been a massive success in all media because everyone loves the idea of being in love. It is because I am so used to this formula that I immediately hated Dorothea. She sacrifices the worldly things that make her happy and a relationship with a man who appreciates her personality in favor of cerebral pursuits and a marriage with a cracked foundation. Throughout Book 1, Dorothea sets herself up for unhappiness, but due to her youth, fails to see that her pride and ambition are blinding her to real happiness.

Dorothea follows her heart straight into a marriage with a man who does not love her, does not want her to be anything other than his stereotypical notion of a ‘good’ housewife.  In fact, Mr. Casaubon should be a warning to Dorothea; he is foremost a student, putting the academic life above everything. He ends up in a small town, and while well-off, his only family dislikes him. His nephew, an artist, ignores the academic life and is a disappointment to Mr. Casaubon. He is essentially alone until Dorothea falls in love with him. The “colors” of his house were “subdued by time”, indicating a stagnancy that is depressing. His life is lacking in color and vibrancy literally and figuratively.  Even the proposal letter Mr. Casaubon writes to Dorothea lacks all passion. He says that “a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you (20). In this, Mr. Casaubon shows a personal need that Dorothea can fulfill. She will be a means to an end, or a housekeeper with benefits. This self-serving nature for the good of scholarly work shows a vanity that is off-putting and should serve as a warning.

The problem is that Dorothea is so infatuated with what she could learn from Mr. Casaubon that she is blind to any of his faults. You have to admire Dorothea; she has the gumption and dedication to stick to her self-sacrificing quest for intellectual improvement. However, she does this at the expense of her future happiness. I believe that she truly loves the idea of marriage to Mr. Casaubon; she could not have survived her uncle’s warnings about the pitfalls of married life otherwise. But loving the idea of a marriage is not substantive. Dorothea wants to learn and be taught, seeing her relationship with Mr. Casaubon as a means to further her education. She does not notice Mr. Casaubon’s coolness of feeling because of her youthful zeal for knowledge. It is hard to notice that your lover has his feet firmly on the ground when you are being swept away.

I can forgive her overlooking Mr. Casaubon’s lack of romantic feeling because of her passion, though I feel the marriage will end unhappily. What I cannot forgive is her innate hypocrisy of morality. Dorothea uses her ascetic pursuits as a shield to protect against the world. She gives up horse riding because “she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way” (2). She is constantly governing and judging the actions of the people around her, from the puppy Sir James would give her to her sister admiring jewelry. She judges others on their wealth and pride, but never looks inward in inspect her own self-regard. I feel like throughout the remainder of Middlemarch, Dorothea’s life with spiral as she grows up and gets a realistic look at her husband and life.

-Valerie Harrison

Book One of George Eliot’s Middlemarch introduces us to the inhabitants of the town for which the novel is entitled, honing its focus on the young ingénue, Dorothea Brooke. Portrayed as an intellectually religious zealot who is “given to self-mortification,” Dorothea’s marriage prospects are less bleak than one would assume of such a character (14). Although many inhabitants of Middlemarch find Miss Brooke’s spiritual fervor disagreeable and at times off-putting, both Sir James Chettam and the Reverend Edward Casaubon develop romantic interest in the ascetic young maiden. Unfortunately for Miss Brooke, her “childlike ideals of marriage”, paired with her Uncle’s aversion to seek the advice of any “superior woman” eventually contribute to our heroine’s unlikely and ill-matched betrothal to Mr. Casaubon (6).

As a young woman with no mother or “middle-aged lady as guide and companion,” Dorothea’s sole female confidante appears to be her younger sister, Celia (6). This places her at somewhat of a disadvantage as she has no true mentor for whom to turn when faced with matters concerning love and matrimony. Her choice in seeking Mr. Casaubon’s affections seem to highlight Dorothea’s desire for direction and guidance in her growth as a woman. This need leads her to conflate the roles of partner and mentor in which she imagines that “[t]he really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father” (6).

Edward Casaubon’s age and academic superiority seem to satisfy Dorothea’s criteria for a suitable husband and life-partner. As someone who desires to affect change in a meaningful way, her position as a woman constricts Miss Brooke’s choices and leaves her few avenues for personal growth. She “struggl[es] in the bands of narrow teaching,” leading her to view Mr. Casaubon as an intellectual savior and someone whose seemingly infinite wisdom will complement and complete her own (24). Dorothea’s compulsion to “learn everything” stems from her own insecurities and the feeling that without complete knowledge she would not “know what to do, when [she] got older” (24).

Sir James Chettam’s brash and sometimes shallow personality may appear to contrast strongly with that of our heroine, but this dissimilarity belies the complementary aspects of the two youths. As a man of action, Chettam’s financial position, along with his desire to please Dorothea, lead him to champion her crusade to renovate the town’s cottages and elevate the living status of the working poor in the community. This project acts as a divining rod for the reader, allowing us to see past Dorothea’s spiritual and intellectual musings straight to her heart’s passion. While Sir James recognizes how much the cottage project energizes Dorothea and adopts it as his own, Mr. Casaubon does “not care about building cottages”, diverting the topic almost as quickly she can introduce it (28).

Again, if Miss Brooke only had a motherly figure with whom she could share her experiences, desires, and misgivings, she might have directed our protagonist to follow her heart and turn a blind eye to Chettam’s superficial mind instead of Casaubon’s withering physique. As someone who clearly understands that “[m]arriage is a state of higher duties,” Dorothea’s ability to withstand some grievances would better serve her in an alliance that could actualize her ambitions rather than elevate her intellect. Her desire to a live a purposeful and spiritual life seems to revolve itself in the renovation of cottage dwellings rather than academic study, but her youthful naiveté prevents her from understanding this and leads her to accept the hand of an ill-suited suitor.

Emily Fleischhauer

Two Men One Woman

            Everyone knows the typical 1800’s British novel. Girl usually orphaned and sometimes poor meets rich, arrogant, rude, handsome man. Girl finds some sort of redeeming quality and falls in love with the rude man. Girl and rude man get married. Elliot has a bit of a different idea.

At the beginning of book one Sir James Chettam who is rich, handsome, and can provide for Dorothea Brooke. However Dorothea feels nothing for the man that most Victorian heroines would fall head over heels for. She fell in love with Causabon, because she feels she could have debates and talk with him about more intellectual things with him. Causabon is also equally wealthy however compared to Dorothea he could be her father.

Many people gossip about it and Chettam is hurt by Dorothea’s rejection, but decides to focus on her sister. The sister Celia is more of a stereotypical woman in the novel. She likes Chettam and Chettam is also closer to the girl’s age. Celia also has better taste than Dorothea. Celia wants to live a comfortable life, but she also wants to have a good looking relative and is scared of Causabon due to how old he is.

In most of the books the heroine always ends up with the right man. She always marries the good looking, rich, kind man who at one point that cares for her. Dorothea missed that boat and will probably end up paying for it later. She had to marry the old man that was not good looking. Chettman was a better choice he even gave Dorothea a puppy. The only thing Causabon is going to eventually give Dorothea is misery and boredom and no life. Causabon also seems like he just wants a wife to sit at home all day and take care of him due to his age. Dorothea and Chettam would probably live around the same time and die around the same time.

Dorothea should have also listened to Chettam’s offer. Yes he wasn’t as intelligent in Dorothea’s opinion; Chettam did not look like a cradle robbed with his age. Chettam also likes to listen to Dorothea and listens to her aspirations about improving the cottages, he even put money down to make it happen and Casaubon who is a clergyman and should care about that stuff thought that it was ridiculous and probably thinks Dorothea had no mind since she did not want to change a single thing in his dreary house.

Dorothea also reads too many studies on theology, which could have been the reason she was attracted to Causabon the guy, is a clergyman. She feels he would understand what she was say more than Chettman would understand if she were to have a discussion with Chettman. Chettman also might have been lost if Dorothea were to go off on a rant and she probably felt that Causabon could have followed her rant which no one is really able to follow a rant. I think Dorothea should have picked James Chettam

Fiction offers me diversion and insight into our human journeys. I was initially attracted to this blog by Virginia Woolf’s quote about Middlemarch, as one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. I am curious what she means, and Woolf is an author whom my older daughter chose for her masters thesis. I liked Martha’s link with Moby Dick, which I have not read since AP English class in high school (late 1960s). Both books appear overly long and potentially arduous, but I recall my surprise at being attracted to an intellectual challenge. I look forward to sharing with you all, thanks to George Eliot’s wit and talent, another stealthy convergence of human lots (p 95), as we ponder Miss Brooke and friends over the summer.

What first caught my attention in Book 1? Authentic characters, with whom I could immediately relate! I count myself, along with St Theresa and Miss Brooke, an ardently willing soul (p. 3). As a 20 year old, I was naïve, idealistic, and drawn to morality; so I understand Dorthea’s passion to improve herself through knowledge and charitable action. But she is not always consistent (p 14).

Why does Dorothea sacrifice human emotion for what she imagines to be of more value, like building cottages, or choosing to marry an oracle (p 90), Mrs Cadwallader’s candid assessment of Mr Causabon? Is her life so uneventful and unimportant that individual fulfillment can be attained only by assisting this older man to organize his copious notes? Exposed to a toy box history of the world (p86), Dorothea longs for a teacher to satisfy her yearning to be a scholar (p 87). Celia empathizes with her sister’s rationale, but counters such pious sense of duty with clear judgment.

Celia’s pet name for Dorothea, Dodo, reveals an undercurrent of jest and irony. Despite the elder Miss Brooke’s earnest mind-set, who can take her seriously when she admits that fondness… is not the right word for the feeling I must have towards the man I would accept as a husband (p. 36). Nor can I understand her plan to marry someone so undemonstrative and full of moles and sallowness. At this point I moved from character- identity to a fascination in the author’s ability to amuse and have fun with her characters!

Mr Causabon’s response to his engagement is also worrisome… a hindrance to his great work (p63); he lays blame on Dorothea for his own want of male ardor; and he is weary (p 85). No surprise at Eliot’s description of his house: melancholy, in autumnal decline, exuding formal tenderness (p73-5). Through a lover’s eyes, Dodo sees only her deficiencies (p 75), not the fading soul of her intended. Several days later, she notices a sense of aloofness (p 88) in Mr C that alarms, but, once more, shuns her instinct.

As Dorothea and Mr C abruptly exit the story, Eliot introduces a whiff of fresh air with the entrance of Lydgate, Rosamund, and Fred Vincy. Animated (p 91)candor replaces pitiable acquiescence, and my spirits lifted… except for the poignant detail that Dorothea and Lydgate might have shared a zeal for reform.

Tudy Hill

And so we embark on Middlemarch, a brick-sized book which has daunted me over the years and which is one of those books—like Moby Dick, if we’re being honest—which I’ve spoken of in a whisper, ashamed that I haven’t yet read them. Reading Book 1, I’ve been surprised and completely engrossed in a world of well-drawn, fully realized characters, immediately distinguishable from each other by their habits, perspectives, and reactions, as well as their physical and verbal tics. (Mr Brooke’s “you know” and Celia’s staccato observations are particularly distinctive and pleasing.)

From the first page, the Brooke family’s financial and social situation is described keenly: “…the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably ‘good’: if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers…” (7) We learn that the older sister Dorothea is a “young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick labourer and prayed fervidly as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles—who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old theological books!…a man would naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship.” (9) Yet, we learn, “those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by this alarming hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably reconcilable with it.” (9)

One article I encountered quoted Harold Bloom’s declaration that George Eliot was the only “major novelist, before or since, whose overt ­moralizings constitute an aesthetic virtue rather than a disaster.” I do think there’s some way Eliot is using empathy and morality as a kind of pattern integral to the aesthetic value of the story, but this is one of those thoughts I’m going to hold onto as I read deeper into the book. Bloom’s observation initially resonated with me because I was so surprised at the way Eliot uses “overt-moralizings” not as a means to an end in a fundamentally moralizing story, but to create flawed, complicated characters. I’m invested in these characters’ worldviews, beliefs, and opinions, however short-sighted, wrong-headed, or naïve they may be.

Two of the great tools Eliot is using alongside this overt moralizing are humor and the occasionally intrusive narrator. There is a wry, quick-witted funniness here, not just in the characters and their observations, but in the way the narrator sees these characters and the situations they find themselves in. One-liners abound. (e.g., “Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.” (9)) One of my favorite scenes came when James Chettem presents Dorothea with a maltese puppy : “’It is painful for me to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets,’ said Dorothea, whose opinion was forming itself that very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of irritation.” (30)

This is perhaps a good example of how Eliot’s use of “overt-moralizings” has so far subverted my expectations. I understand that I’m not expected to necessarily support Dorothea’s beliefs or agree with her. But I somehow end up loving her for her opinions, for the youthful passion of her beliefs, even when they’re made up on the spot, even when they center on an innocent puppy.

–Martha Park