I’m noticing how much more willing I was to give credence to Dorothea’s enthusiasm for Casaubon when I read this as a young person! The one bit of it where I saw a spark in him in this chapter was the where he says we “must keep the germinating grain away from the light.” It suggested something protective toward her and some insight into what she understands as her latent qualities; but there was also something creepy about where his mind goes, toward darkness and airlessness. The first thing she hears him say is so terrible, it seems almost vampiric: that he “feeds on inward sources” in the same sentence in which he “live(s) too much with the dead,” i.e. the inward sources *are* the dead; and that his mind is like a ghost—a dead thing in his live body—and he is trying, amidst ruin and change, to refashion the live world on the model of this dead thing. And he associates this macabre process with the damage to his eyes—while Dorothea keeps referring to his “eye-sockets,” the absence of eyes (remember blind Milton). I would have said my high-school English teacher had too much sex on his mind for saying what I’m thinking of here!
I’ve not read Middlemarch in many, many years. It’s touching how differently it lands. But what I admired then and now is Elliot’s insight into human nature: the way a need worked over by desire, inflated by imagination (or projection) can be blinding. Haven’t I seen this often and at relatively close range? This is so exquisitely crafted in the character of Dorothea. And Mr Causabon is such a perfect object for her need to adore -- perfect in that he provides enough to receive her projection but still works to unsettle the reader. Elliot makes certain I understand the strength of Dorothea’s desire-- her attachment to this ideal of love. Right in front of me-- in the present tense--she forsakes a “real” love - her horseback riding and rejects the man who wants to foster that in her.
I’m also impressed in this reading by Elliot’s way of divvying up the internal “monologues.” The way she so gracefully moves from one character’s “head space” to another-- and who is excluded!
At this point in reading MM as always, I dislike both Dorothea & Causabon & feel they deserve each other. D for her religious pomposity & C for his utter lack of imagination & creepiness.
"... the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an imperfect reader." Run for the hills! But no, this is like music to Dorothea's ears!
"Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most interesting man she had ever seen.."
How many men has she seen??
Sir James is only "perverse" because he is preventing Dorothea from spending more time mooning over Casaubon.
"Everything I see in him corresponds to his pamphlet on Biblical Cosmology." An absurd and hilarious statement from Dorothea on Casaubon. Why does no one laugh at her? Maybe that's the reader's job?
Sir James: "As to the excessive religiousness alleged against Miss Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it consisted in, and thought that it would die out with marriage." This is also funny .. and leads GE to make one of her pronouncements about the wider world and the people in it -- "a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition."
She has got Sir James under a microscope, and he is not coming off at all badly for the scrutiny!
Mr. Casaubon on the other hand .. the word that comes to mind is ominous ... his mind is full of "fragments" that will never make a whole --
And this from Mr. Brooke: "A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlour of your cow-house. It won't do. I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone."
GE must have had an absolute ball writing this book ...
Ahead of this first encounter with Casaubon, Eliot gives an epigraph in which Don Quixote believes that the pot on a man’s head is the famed helmet of Mambrino. This first novel derives its tension from the conflict between perception and reality, and here in Middlemarch the heroine suffers from the illusion that this ugly old man is a great mind worthy of devotion.
Really enjoyed the discussion. Dorothea wants to serve something bigger than appearances, although appearances are all one has to go on when meeting someone new. Casaubon appears deeply read and serious, which he is when we learn more, but just as his intellectuality is ultimately sterile, so too is his entire person: he is asexual, while Dorothea is young and full of life and, while she seeks to hide it, a maiden awaiting a proper partner. Casaubon is not that partner, as we eventually find out. The father figure/teacher model does not work as a relationship for Dorothea; Eliot is suggesting that the lovers have to feel an essential equality for the relationship to work. Do Casaubon and Dorothea ever consummate their marriage? I assume not.
Jun 12, 2023·edited Jun 13, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg
I've read Middlemarch a couple times before (age 20, age 40....) and I now realize that I never looked closely at which men Dorothea is pointed towards, by her own desires or by the expectations of others, and which men are off that list. Chettam is considered a suitable match for respectability, the merging of estates, his health and age, his easy temper, and his genuine desire to make Dorothea happy (as best he understands how). Dorothea is drawn to Casaubon, a man with no blood in his veins or original thoughts, and later to Will Ladislaw, who has many original thoughts but lacks the grit to make them reality. The man who seems perfect for her, really, appears a bit later... Dr. Lydgate.
The doctor is ambitious, hardworking, and wishes to help mankind with his studies. On her side, if Dorothea must find fulfillment in her husband's life, Dr. Lydgate would make a fine partner. She would admire his studies, read research to help him, learn about his lab, and run a frugal household (not to mention, if the doctor must have ordinary patients, and he must, Dorothea seems to relish nursing the ill).
Yet Dr. Lydgate never seems to even look at Dorothea, and Dorothea never looks at him. I wonder if the rightness of their pairing seems obvious to other modern readers? did it occur to Eliot's contemporaries? Is the class divide so impermeable? I'm looking forward to looking at whatever slight contact the text indicates between Lydgate and Miss Brooke to see why they disregard each other.
Yes! I think she wants to renounce the superficiality of what it means to be a woman and engage in the life of the mind and doing serious work. She cannot square what she perceives as contradictions and instead embarks on her “self-mortuary” ways. This term, self-mortuary, gets me every time. Chilling, and yet something women have been actively engaged in for centuries.
It’s true that mr. Brooke mentions Sir Humphrey Davy rather pointlessly, but on some meta-level I’m wondering if the mention of this romantic chemist who invented laughing gas, the Davy lamp, wrote some beautiful poems, lived and loved intensely (Anna Beddoes) isn’t accidental. Sets a mark on the chapter about affinities, chemistry between people.
Look closely: The painting shown of Milton doesn’t depict Milton’s daughters reading to him, but rather the blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to one of his daughters. (Its title is Milton Dictating to his Daughter.) Familiar roles in Academia: The great man appropriating the talent of a younger woman. Roles that Casaubon and Dorothea aspire to fill.
One thing that strikes me as very important is this bit about "reconstructing past worlds." Casaubon, perhaps jokingly named after the great philologist Isaac Casaubon, presents himself as "wandering about the world and trying mentally to reconstruct it as it used to be in spite of ruin and confusing changes." Dorothea picks up on that especially: "To reconstruct a past world...what a work to be in any way present at..." I'd submit that is what seals the deal, it's a big part of the electric charge between them, strange as it might seem.
So far Celia seems to be better grounded than Dorothea. Dorothea wants to find a father, while Celia has her eye on Sir James Chettam. I wonder which one of these Mary Ann Evans identified with herself?
Another warning sign about Casaubon (and sign his soul might not be great-excellent question, Mona!) is his self-absorption. That opening speech of his has eight “I”s in a row, and “my mind.” I...I...I...”my eyesight.”
Never read Middlemarch, and when I bought this hefty book I knew I'd need a support system to take it on. What great comments and suppositions and insights by all. this will be a terrific summer!
I’m noticing how much more willing I was to give credence to Dorothea’s enthusiasm for Casaubon when I read this as a young person! The one bit of it where I saw a spark in him in this chapter was the where he says we “must keep the germinating grain away from the light.” It suggested something protective toward her and some insight into what she understands as her latent qualities; but there was also something creepy about where his mind goes, toward darkness and airlessness. The first thing she hears him say is so terrible, it seems almost vampiric: that he “feeds on inward sources” in the same sentence in which he “live(s) too much with the dead,” i.e. the inward sources *are* the dead; and that his mind is like a ghost—a dead thing in his live body—and he is trying, amidst ruin and change, to refashion the live world on the model of this dead thing. And he associates this macabre process with the damage to his eyes—while Dorothea keeps referring to his “eye-sockets,” the absence of eyes (remember blind Milton). I would have said my high-school English teacher had too much sex on his mind for saying what I’m thinking of here!
I’ve not read Middlemarch in many, many years. It’s touching how differently it lands. But what I admired then and now is Elliot’s insight into human nature: the way a need worked over by desire, inflated by imagination (or projection) can be blinding. Haven’t I seen this often and at relatively close range? This is so exquisitely crafted in the character of Dorothea. And Mr Causabon is such a perfect object for her need to adore -- perfect in that he provides enough to receive her projection but still works to unsettle the reader. Elliot makes certain I understand the strength of Dorothea’s desire-- her attachment to this ideal of love. Right in front of me-- in the present tense--she forsakes a “real” love - her horseback riding and rejects the man who wants to foster that in her.
I’m also impressed in this reading by Elliot’s way of divvying up the internal “monologues.” The way she so gracefully moves from one character’s “head space” to another-- and who is excluded!
At this point in reading MM as always, I dislike both Dorothea & Causabon & feel they deserve each other. D for her religious pomposity & C for his utter lack of imagination & creepiness.
"... the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an imperfect reader." Run for the hills! But no, this is like music to Dorothea's ears!
"Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most interesting man she had ever seen.."
How many men has she seen??
Sir James is only "perverse" because he is preventing Dorothea from spending more time mooning over Casaubon.
"Everything I see in him corresponds to his pamphlet on Biblical Cosmology." An absurd and hilarious statement from Dorothea on Casaubon. Why does no one laugh at her? Maybe that's the reader's job?
Sir James: "As to the excessive religiousness alleged against Miss Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it consisted in, and thought that it would die out with marriage." This is also funny .. and leads GE to make one of her pronouncements about the wider world and the people in it -- "a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition."
She has got Sir James under a microscope, and he is not coming off at all badly for the scrutiny!
Mr. Casaubon on the other hand .. the word that comes to mind is ominous ... his mind is full of "fragments" that will never make a whole --
And this from Mr. Brooke: "A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into electrifying your land and that kind of thing, and making a parlour of your cow-house. It won't do. I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone."
GE must have had an absolute ball writing this book ...
Ahead of this first encounter with Casaubon, Eliot gives an epigraph in which Don Quixote believes that the pot on a man’s head is the famed helmet of Mambrino. This first novel derives its tension from the conflict between perception and reality, and here in Middlemarch the heroine suffers from the illusion that this ugly old man is a great mind worthy of devotion.
Really enjoyed the discussion. Dorothea wants to serve something bigger than appearances, although appearances are all one has to go on when meeting someone new. Casaubon appears deeply read and serious, which he is when we learn more, but just as his intellectuality is ultimately sterile, so too is his entire person: he is asexual, while Dorothea is young and full of life and, while she seeks to hide it, a maiden awaiting a proper partner. Casaubon is not that partner, as we eventually find out. The father figure/teacher model does not work as a relationship for Dorothea; Eliot is suggesting that the lovers have to feel an essential equality for the relationship to work. Do Casaubon and Dorothea ever consummate their marriage? I assume not.
Each moment of Dorothea’s ambivalence and certitude makes Middlemarch as current as right now....
I've read Middlemarch a couple times before (age 20, age 40....) and I now realize that I never looked closely at which men Dorothea is pointed towards, by her own desires or by the expectations of others, and which men are off that list. Chettam is considered a suitable match for respectability, the merging of estates, his health and age, his easy temper, and his genuine desire to make Dorothea happy (as best he understands how). Dorothea is drawn to Casaubon, a man with no blood in his veins or original thoughts, and later to Will Ladislaw, who has many original thoughts but lacks the grit to make them reality. The man who seems perfect for her, really, appears a bit later... Dr. Lydgate.
The doctor is ambitious, hardworking, and wishes to help mankind with his studies. On her side, if Dorothea must find fulfillment in her husband's life, Dr. Lydgate would make a fine partner. She would admire his studies, read research to help him, learn about his lab, and run a frugal household (not to mention, if the doctor must have ordinary patients, and he must, Dorothea seems to relish nursing the ill).
Yet Dr. Lydgate never seems to even look at Dorothea, and Dorothea never looks at him. I wonder if the rightness of their pairing seems obvious to other modern readers? did it occur to Eliot's contemporaries? Is the class divide so impermeable? I'm looking forward to looking at whatever slight contact the text indicates between Lydgate and Miss Brooke to see why they disregard each other.
Yes! I think she wants to renounce the superficiality of what it means to be a woman and engage in the life of the mind and doing serious work. She cannot square what she perceives as contradictions and instead embarks on her “self-mortuary” ways. This term, self-mortuary, gets me every time. Chilling, and yet something women have been actively engaged in for centuries.
It’s true that mr. Brooke mentions Sir Humphrey Davy rather pointlessly, but on some meta-level I’m wondering if the mention of this romantic chemist who invented laughing gas, the Davy lamp, wrote some beautiful poems, lived and loved intensely (Anna Beddoes) isn’t accidental. Sets a mark on the chapter about affinities, chemistry between people.
Look closely: The painting shown of Milton doesn’t depict Milton’s daughters reading to him, but rather the blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to one of his daughters. (Its title is Milton Dictating to his Daughter.) Familiar roles in Academia: The great man appropriating the talent of a younger woman. Roles that Casaubon and Dorothea aspire to fill.
One thing that strikes me as very important is this bit about "reconstructing past worlds." Casaubon, perhaps jokingly named after the great philologist Isaac Casaubon, presents himself as "wandering about the world and trying mentally to reconstruct it as it used to be in spite of ruin and confusing changes." Dorothea picks up on that especially: "To reconstruct a past world...what a work to be in any way present at..." I'd submit that is what seals the deal, it's a big part of the electric charge between them, strange as it might seem.
So far Celia seems to be better grounded than Dorothea. Dorothea wants to find a father, while Celia has her eye on Sir James Chettam. I wonder which one of these Mary Ann Evans identified with herself?
Another warning sign about Casaubon (and sign his soul might not be great-excellent question, Mona!) is his self-absorption. That opening speech of his has eight “I”s in a row, and “my mind.” I...I...I...”my eyesight.”
Never read Middlemarch, and when I bought this hefty book I knew I'd need a support system to take it on. What great comments and suppositions and insights by all. this will be a terrific summer!
Yes.