Middlemarch, Books 4-5 posts

Spoiler alert, my fellow Victorianists.  The following gives away some key plot points of Books 4-5.

Books 4 and 5 develop around strangers and estrangement.  Two strangers—the frog-faced Joshua Rigg and the enigmatic Raffles—turn up suddenly in “the prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch” (323).  They are strange in that little is known about them and they come from distant places, but yet it quickly becomes clear that they are not unconnected with the people and the affairs of the community.  Rigg, we learn, is the illegitimate son of Featherstone, meaning he is a blood relation to many of the would-be heirs.  Raffles it seems has connections both to Bulstrode and to Will, and also brings to light a connection between the other two.  You might consider, then, the extent to which one can be a stranger in Eliot’s world.  Those who appear to be wildly different or foreign are often revealed to be intimately connected to the town.  Do we see anyone who is completely separate from the community? 

Of course, proximity is no guarantee of intimacy.  Books 4 and 5 also feature a number of estrangements between related characters.  Mr. Brooke’s career as a reform politician is endangered by the fact that he is largely estranged from his tenants—people who live on the same land that he does.  Marital estrangement also continues to escalate.  Rosamond and Lydgate, shockingly, grow further and further from each other, as do Casaubon and Dorothea.  In the case of the latter, Casaubon’s death would seem to sever them completely.  Moreover, Dorothea feels a new level of estrangement—“a violent shock of repulsion from her departed husband” (490)—when she learns about the codicil Casaubon added to his will.  At the same time, his “dead hand” seems to retain a hold on her: Casaubon remains intertwined with Dorothea’s life so long as his injunction not to marry Will affects her feelings and behavior.  You might examine a scene of estrangement and consider how the people involved are separated from each other and how they remain bound together.

Finally, you might consider the appeal of the strange.  Throughout the novel we have seen Middlemarchers cleave to strangers.  When watching Featherstone’s funeral procession, Mrs. Cadwallader is drawn to the face of the unknown man that is “queerer” than any other (328).  Earlier, too, we learned that both Rosamond and Bulstrode liked Lydgate the more for being a stranger to Middlemarch.  “One can begin so manyt things with a new person,” the narrator noted in relation to Bulstrode, even begin to be a better man” (125).  What is so useful about strangers?  Considering how Rosamond and Bulstrode are doing now, were they right in their sense that a stranger would provide them with opportunities?

Enjoy below some images of isolation and estrangement (and perhaps strangeness).

All best,
Prof. M.

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia (1889)

Frederick Leighton, Solitude (c. 1890)

Middlemarch, "Old and Young" posts

Hello Victorians,

On Thursday we will be discussing Book II, “Old and Young.”  In your responses, you might consider the various things and people to which this title refers.  Perhaps most directly it suggests the relatively old Casaubon and the relatively young Dorothea whose marital union will come back into focus mid-way through Book II.  After all, the narrator and other characters often describe Dorothea in terms of her blooming youth while Casaubon is continually depicted as if extremely old or even dead (he looks like a “death’s head skinned over” in Mrs. Cadwallader’s colorful expression).  And yet, in point of fact, Casaubon is merely middle-aged, and Dorothea, even from the opening sentence, appears to have affinities with a distant past.  Moreover, Casaubon is no less naïve than his wife in the illusions he cherishes about marriage and marital partnership.  To what extent, then, is their relationship defined by their difference in age?  Or does the title in fact apply equally to other characters?  In general, what do the young people of the novel have in common; what separates them from the old?

Alternatively, we might take “Young and Old” in a broader sense, applying to generations or historical progression.  Notice how frequently Eliot shifts between the individual histories of her particular characters and a larger, cultural history.  Lydgate, for example, understands his identity in direct reference to medical innovators who have come before him.  Further, this book is filled with oscillations between the present moment of the narrative (1829-32) and distant moments in history.  Dorothea and Casaubon voyage to Rome on their honeymoon, for example, where Dorothea struggles to comprehend the fragmented vision of ancient worlds she encounters, and to feel any kinship with that lost culture.  What is the function of such large historical narratives in relation to the stories Eliot is telling?      

Happy reading,

Prof. M.

Roman statue, called Sleeping Ariadne, Vatican Museums; the statue to which Dorothea is compared in the opening of Chapter 19.

Melancolia I, Albrecht Durer.  This is the most iconic representation of the pose that indicated melancholy in Renaissance culture, the pose referred to in the Dante epigraph to Chapter 19 and in Eliot's description of Dorothea.