Your daily #Middlemarch quotation, exploring dusty corners of the world’s greatest #novel. #GeorgeEliot #Victodon #DailyMiddlemarch @litstudies
“'Young ladies don’t understand political economy, you know,' said Mr. Brooke, smiling towards Mr. Casaubon. 'I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. There is a book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one time—human perfectibility, now. But some say, history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it myself. 1/2
I have never for a moment sympathised with Casaubon. He even manages to make mythology dull. And he absolutely crushes Dorothea's youthful idealism and intellectual aspirations.
@vogelbeere @doctorwaffle There is that one moment, early in the tale, when Eliot breaks the fourth wall to lay bear Causkubon’s sense of his own failure/imposter hood, and how it will now be exposed by a marriage to someone who believes in him. It’s an explicit moment when Eliot asks us to feel Causubon’s inner life, and it’s amazing.
And never repeated in the whole of ther est of the novel.
@vogelbeere @doctorwaffle So should we all.
To me, that one moment of sympathy for a character she otherwise paints pretty monochromatically as a monster is very important to the novel's success. He wanted saiving, but nothing in his character, talent, or circumstances permitted saving.
Eliot was being both humane and brutal.
Deanna Kreisel
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Yvonne Aburrow 🌻