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.
Enjoy below some images of isolation and estrangement (and perhaps strangeness).
All best,
Prof. M.
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| John William Waterhouse, Ophelia (1889) |
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| Frederick Leighton, Solitude (c. 1890) |
OKAY, so I finally re-looked up who Aquinas was (because like the awful student I am, I forgot my history lessons), and he is to Casaubon like St Theresa to Dodo. He was a famous doctor of the church, and is considered to be /the/ greatest philosopher and theologian. So now it all makes sense, and I shall also now always imagine Casaubon with that ridiculous haircut.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of strangeness…
Dodo might be the closest we get? If only because she doesn’t consort with anyone at all, and never really did. But her issue is that we are trained to view the events of the novel as planets orbiting her sun-- or the halo around the mirror scratches, as it were.
Casaubon is more alienated than she in ways, though, because although he gives his little sermons on Sundays, he doesn’t associate with anyone else. I’m still a wee bit confused as to how he even entered the story/Brooke’s estate for that party. He just doesn’t fit.
I also find that it’s the strangest people--in oddness and distance--who are most appealing. Naumann is still one of my favourite characters, and he never sets foot in Middlemarch (or does he? I don’t know. Spoilers perhaps…?). Featherstone’s relations are annoying, but they travel from far and wide, so regardless of relation to a key Middlemarch figure, do they count as “strangers”?
I feel like this question of strangeness can be addressed both in-novel as well as to the reader; and how much do you want to bet that Eliot is playing with our brains in both instances? In that we start to think like Middlemarchers and become accepting of all the really strange quirks of the central figures and their families and neighbors, but become enamoured with anyone from outside the same thirty kilometres or so. The problem is that most of the strangers eventually come to stay permanently in Middlemarch, and we simply don’t have another Naumann incident. Middlemarch is a quicksand in that way, it invades your mind. Good job, Eliot.
They are all Theresas. My God, the rampant lack of self-awareness in these characters. Just adorable. Additionally, when we discussed it Avigail said this, “Casaubon is the anti-Featherstone, your affections grow weaker as he dies.” Enough ranting.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that in regards to estrangement, like everything else in the Middlemarch, the more you look, the more you see, the more confused you are. Ladislaw to me is the most estranged character at this point in the novel. By working at the paper, he has removed himself from normal society and the social constructs that the rest of them love so much. It is interesting that with Ladislaw the more independent he gets, the more removed from society he becomes, the more social standing he seems to garner. The townspeople do like strangeness, and Will manages to make friends with several important people and still slum it with his poor band of followers.
Will, is also estranged from Dorothea. Obviously, because they cannot be together and because they are uncomfortable being around each other, but also because he has put her on a pedestal. Eliot herself informs us that Will does not plan on marrying Dorothea when Casaubon dies. To him, she is a saint, and how could he ever marry a saint? God, there is an entire chapter dedicated to his waxing poetic about her! (kind of like how the more you love an author, the less you want to meet them because the less likely it is that you will manage to contain yourself and will be unable to form any kind of relationship with them). This level of hero worship hinders any relationship forming.
I think estrangement can branch out into another form: estrangement from self. Another term for this may be disillusionment? I think there are a few characters that are out of touch with themselves, and as a result find their worlds crashing on themselves. The first is Dodo. She, maybe because of her religious beliefs, refuses to allow herself to be unhappy. Perhaps this is a good thing, because she can't really end her marriage anyway (well in this case it ends without her consent). When someone separates themselves from their internal truth fro so long, I feel like it can have negative effects. How will Dodo move on? Will she ever learn to pursue her own happiness? In addition, I think Ladislaw is having some major disillusionment trouble particularly when he is singing rhymes and heading to church as if Dodo will throw herself into his arms the moment he sees her. He needs to be honest with himself about whether she will actually ever love him. And also, whether he truly feels they are meant to be together.
ReplyDeleteCan't believe I'm saying this, but Casaubon has won the wispiest shadow of something resembling empathy and concern from me -- and it happened before he kicks, though, admittedly, it was generated in light of his approaching death in Chapter 42, which was not at all unappreciated when he actually croaked. In describing Causabon as having “a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing," GE latches onto an extremely Causabon moment with an observation that is magnificently universal. He's the Intellectual, but does not everybody experience that fearsome possibility that they have and/or are achieving nothing at all? I do anyway, and it was in that line that GE got me identifying with a Causabon moment. He is not repugnant, and not only because he's oblivious to the hell he created for our Dodo bird. The totality of his essentially pathetic, accomplishment-empty life, his lack of self-awareness and dumbness to others' needs (emotional, psychological) are terrible -- for him as well as for others. His extraordinarily selfish and jealous nature makes him insufferable, but not a monster. He really is just a messed up little dude: aimless, though pretending to lofty, intellectual ambition; hopelessly misogynistic; a social fool. But, he is not stupid, only suffering from a “fatty degeneration of the heart." No disease could have been more perfectly chosen and described with which to strike Causabon, as it is precisely his much degenerated, hidden, sluggish heart, intractable and nearly dead, that makes him a semicolon. However, he is not imperially an idiot: he is not wrong when it comes to Will, his concerns about what marrying Will would do to Dorothea are not unfounded. As unpleasant as it may be to hear a man talk about a woman - his own wife! - as a fundamentally clueless, naive individual lacking the emotional stamina and mental acuity to resist a guy, he is totally aware of what is going to go down when he...goes down. Pushing away the clouds that make up Causabon's heart, one finds that he is displaying concern, whatever its form or origins, for someone other than his own self and legacy. Chapter 42 as an ending to Book 4 finally scratched that itchy feeling I got whenever I read about Causabon: he's being recognized for exactly what he is and is not, with no more and no less than just what he is being attributed to him. No need for my excessive going off on him; him just being him is punishment enough.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how about that last moment of Book 4, with Dorothea coming to settle with no expectations from her husband and her marriage, followed immediately by the Causabon's pseudo-walking into the chick-flick, romantic sunlight - though obviously and emphatically not given that he's a sneeze away from death and they're both damn miserable. I know I've focused solely on Book 4 here, and so much happens after this point, but Chapter 42, in that isolated state before Book 5 crashes through the door, felt extremely important.
I really appreciate what Miryam said about estrangement from self. It seems, from comparing the relationships of estrangement (ie, Dorothea and Casaubon, or Rosamund and Lydgate) to those of connection (Dorothea and Will), the type of relationship is dependent on whether each member can see and appreciate the other or not. If one member feels that they cannot be themselves around the other, they are estranged. Simple, I know, but interesting to see in action. Dorothea’s attributes her extreme unhappiness around Casaubon to her need to repress her true nature around him, for if she did express her true feelings he would be disdainful of them. Casaubon, in turn, feels that she sees him as pathetic, and not the great mind he thinks (or rather hopes) himself to be. Similarly, Lydgate and Rosamund grow more estranged as she wishes her were something other than what he is (a workaholic doctor) and he wishes she would stay a contented angel. In contrast, Dorothea feels that Will understands her, that she can be herself around him, and he in turn loves the openness and free communication between them. When Dorothea begins to shut herself off around Will, it’s a testimony to the strength of their relationship that it is keenly felt. With Mary and Fred, there is a similar lack of pretense or discomfort – Mary tells Fred exactly how she feels, and Fred is his little jellyfish self. Hence, the level of connection between people seems to be dependent on how connected the other lets them be to themselves.
ReplyDelete