I am curious by the title of Book 6…’The Widow and the Wife’. Is George Eliot referring to one person, or two? Spiteful Mr. Casaubon, in a final attempt to restrict his wife’s future, drew attention to the possibility of Dorothea as Will Ladislaw’s wife. Both characters are forced to deal with this news, leading to more conflict in Middlemarch.
Chapter 54’s heading (La Via Nuova) guilelessly captured Dorothea ‘s perceived saintly qualities, at least in the eyes of a certain beholder. Lest the reader become too enamoured by this flawless depiction, however, the author followed immediately with a humorous account of why Dorothea could not bear to be around her sister and the infant Bouddha (p535) any longer… even D. admits to boredom. The truth of doting mothers who insist on being the center of attention made me chuckle in appreciation!
The new widow returned to Lowick Manor from her sister’s home. Fair-minded by nature, Dorothea believed that she ‘owed’ money to Mr. Ladislaw, based on her husband’s financial support in the past, and Will’s eagerness to spend it. The codicil opened her mind to another possibility. Unwittingly, Mr. C. mistrusted her faithfulness, causing Dorothea to imagine her friend as something more… now her soul thirsted to see him (p 539). Their encounters made them aware of a shared sentiment, which was new in Dorothea, but maturing in Will. As he shifts from a selfish playboy, to a serious, even noble, lover (from a distance), he refuses to beg for money, and decides to leave the woman he idolizes. But, first, Will longs for some unmistakable proof that she loves him (p 545). Will’s pride is dependent on such confirmation, in order to sustain and launch him towards a political career, away from Middlemarch. But does Will love Dorothea enough to admit his own feelings? Is he willing to be as vulnerable as he hopes she will be for him? Meanwhile, Dorothea misinterprets his immanent departure, concluding that only a friendship has been terminated. She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly… (p 548).
A shocking revelation to Will and to the reader occurs at an unpleasant meeting with Bulstrode. Will is offered restitution for his mother’s stolen inheritance; the unchallenged, arrogant banker, is insulted when Will refuses: You shall keep your ill-gotten money (p 624). At this point, I sensed a profound transformation in the core of Will’s character…standing up to the most powerful man in town, Will departed with fresh dignity and a secret hope (p 627) to make something of himself. His subsequent conversation with Dorothea, fraught with awkwardness as both tried to speak the truth, ended disappointingly in a brusque farewell. The love they felt for each other, remained unspoken.
So, when Book 6 ends, ‘the widow’ has not become ‘the wife’. Perhaps Rosamund is ‘the wife’, particularly in her contrasting role to our protagonist. Lydgate has impetuously married the lovely, but shallow Rosamund, whose goal is material possessions and rising social class. Her doctor husband, however, is preoccupied with medical reform, and he has no money. Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing. (p 165) Deterioration of their relationship is inevitable…and the irony is that Dorothea as a wife fulfills what Lydgate naively expected from Rosamund: (an) accomplished creature who venerated his high musings… would never interfere with them; …would create order in the home and accounts with still magic…marriage would not be an obstruction but a furtherance. (p 352) Dorothea’s desire to please, to learn and to make the world a better place, obstructed her decision to marry Mr C., just as Rosamund’s narcissistic mindset manipulated Lydgate to enter into marriage. Both women‘s circumstances make the reader uneasy… thus sustaining our attention.
Tudy Hill