Throughout all of Book II of Middlemarch, I kept remembering a quote from the movie Serenity—“what you plan and what takes place ain’t ever exactly been similar”. There is a natural discordance between plans and actual events, but Mr. Lydgate, Dorothea, and Mr. Casaubon, due to not realizing that they have less control over their future than they imagine, come through Book II bruised and battered.
Take Mr. Lydgate. He is by all appearances a master of his own destiny. He is a well-educated doctor, just setting out on his journey of professional life. He purposely chooses to move to Middlemarch instead of a metropolis because his “plan of the future” was “to do small good work for Middlemarch, and great work for the world”, necessitating he remove himself for the bustle and self-importance of the city and live in the country where he could practice in relative quite. He did not mean to immediately get caught up in small town politics, let alone being to develop friend and potential enemies from the outset. Lydgate sets himself up as one of the most important people in a small town—as a pillar of the ‘good’ set of society—and has no concept of the role society demands he fill. He looks forward to a future full of personal academic inquiry, but it seems that goal is going to be totally derailed.
Meanwhile in Rome, a city that is full of sensuous pleasure for all the senses, Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon are finally realizing that they may have entered into marriage without considering the motives of the other person. The Dorothea we meet in Book I is in love with learning. Though she bows to the ‘intellectual superiority’ of men, she fully believes herself to be intelligent and learned. This is seen most clearly in her quest to redesign and help the poor within her provincial location. She is feisty and dearly wants to fulfill her duty to help others. She sees her potential marriage to Mr. Casaubon as a potential avenue for greater learning, though “from the very first she had thought of Mr. Casaubon as having a mind so much above her own, that he must often be claimed by studies which she could not entirely share” (106). Dorothea wants to act as a secretary and pupil to Mr. Casaubon —not act as a demure wife and nurse. In Rome, she wants to learn about her surroundings and gain from Casaubon’s knowledge, but he is forever in the Vatican library. This location is interesting because he and Dorothea are now literally in a male dominated place, religiously and intellectually, and Dorothea is left out with statues and paintings of idealized women.
Mr. Casaubon would have been more comfortable if he had married a statue of a women then Dorothea. He really only wanted a nurse and wife, not an intellectual equal. His attitude in Rome is one that completely dismisses Dorothea’s insights. He talks down to her constantly, coddling her intellectually like a child. When asking her if she would like to see some frescos, he remarks that “the romantic inversion of a literary period, and cannot,… be reckoned as genuine”, but if she likes these “wall-paintings” they can go see them ( 109). He speaks of them in this manner to highlight his own intelligence while referring to them as ‘wall-paintings’ to make sure that Dorothea knows what he is deriding. He wants an idealized wife and nurse, not an intellectual sparring partner. Both are beginning to come around to the idea that their desires when they entered into marriage are not going to be met.
Book II is entitled Old and Young—a very apt name considering fate makes equal fools of Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon, and Mr. Lydgate. They all must struggle to leave behind their simplistic notions of how their future will turn out in favor of reality. Elliot masterfully allows us to watch as all three characters experience the growing pains of reality.
Valerie Harrison