Middlemarch

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The chapter opens with a Spenserian stanza celebrating the woman so assured of herself that neither fortune’s rise nor fall can move her—a creature of such steadfastness that she need not fear the spite of grudging foes, nor seek the favor of friends. It is the ideal to which, in their various ways, several women in this story are still striving.

In Middlemarch, the death of George the Fourth, the dissolution of Parliament, and the general depreciation of the Wellington and Peel ministries have created a strange political unsettlement. Country people, accustomed to fixed allegiances, find themselves reading newspapers that contradict one another, and Mr. Vincy’s dark joke—whether it is merely a general election coming or the end of the world—captures the prevailing mood. Buyers of the Pioneer had once abandoned it for taking Peel’s side on the Catholic Question, yet they remained dissatisfied with the feeble blasts of the rival Trumpet.

Into this confusion steps Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who has secretly purchased the Pioneer and now, under the pseudonym of a thoughtful statesman, has published a leading article urging reform. Mr. Hackbutt, his tongue running freely as ever, lets it slip in Mr. Hawley’s office that the article emanated from Brooke. Hawley, a country lawyer who deals in facts and detests abstractions, is delighted at the prospect of Brooke’s downfall. “Let Brooke reform his rent-roll,” he snarls, calling him a “cursed old screw” whose buildings are going to rack. When Hackbutt defends some abstraction about the rights of representation, Hawley cuts him short: “Large towns be damned!”

The discovery that Brooke has set himself up as a political force, with a brilliant young editor—Will Ladislaw, a foreign relation of Casaubon’s—at his elbow, sends ripples of alarm through the local gentry. Mr. Brooke himself, however, is in transports. He finds in Will a young man ready to seize the points of the political situation with a large spirit and a fine memory, and he goes so far as to tell Casaubon that Will is “a kind of Shelley”—adding hastily that he means nothing irreligious, only the enthusiasm for liberty, which under proper guidance can be made into something useful.

Casaubon, on his side, receives this information with tight-lipped silence. He had once helped Will with money and was already beginning to dislike him; now that Will has refused further help and chosen to stay in the neighborhood, the dislike curdles into something bitter and strange. It is not merely the jealousy of a winter-worn husband—though Dorothea’s presence, with her keen critical faculty, sharpens it. Casaubon feels that Will must secretly despise him, that the honey-sipping cousin has his own quiet contempt, and the loss of the superiority he used to enjoy by signing cheques has become intolerable.

Will, for his part, struggles against his own ingratitude. He knows that Casaubon has supported him and his mother after his father’s death, but he cannot help feeling that marrying Dorothea was a wrong done against her. “It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices,” he says to himself, and he pictures her inward sorrows as if writing a choric wail. Yet beneath all this is the simple truth: nothing in the world invites him so strongly as the presence of Dorothea.

One rainy morning Will contrives to be at Lowick under pretense of sketching. The weather drives him indoors. Pratt, the butler, announces him to Dorothea in the library, where Mr. Casaubon is fortunately out. Dorothea greets him with her sweet unconstrained smile, and for a moment both feel as though two flowers had opened then and there.

“I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again,” she says. “It seems strange to me how many things I said to you.”

“I remember them all,” Will replies, his soul filled with the contentment of being in the presence of a creature worthy to be perfectly loved.

She confesses that, since Rome, she has tried to learn Latin and a little Greek, so that she can help her husband better. But it is difficult—people seem worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired. Will, unable to restrain himself, suggests that Casaubon should hire a secretary, so that Dorothea may help him only in lighter ways. She rebukes him immediately. “Please not to mention that again,” she says. “I should have no happiness if I did not help him in his work.”

Will then lets fall that Casaubon had once offered him the secretaryship and he had not been good enough for it. He goes further, explaining that Casaubon dislikes him because he disagrees with him—a remark that Dorothea receives with strange quiet, for she has now begun adjusting herself to the clearest perception of her husband’s failure. She defends him gently: “Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is admirable.”

Then Will tells her about his grandmother, Julia, who was disinherited by her family for marrying a poor Polish refugee who taught languages for his bread. His mother, too, was cast off and went on the stage, where she died by an accident four years ago. “You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides,” he says, smiling.

Dorothea’s sympathies kindle. That very evening, in her blue-green boudoir, she broods over the wrong done to Julia. The miniature on the wall seems to plead for justice. Why should inheritance punish love? She resolves that Casaubon’s will, which leaves the bulk of his property to her, ought to be altered, so that Will Ladislaw might be secured a rightful income. She must speak to her husband.

In the sleepless hours of the night, she raises the subject with him. Her plea is met with icy rebuke. Mr. Casaubon, wounded and proud, tells her that she is not qualified to discriminate on such questions and that he will accept no dictation from her. “It is not for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw,” he says. The words fall like a knife.

The next morning, Casaubon dispatches a coldly formal letter to Will, addressing him for the first time as “Dear Mr. Ladislaw” rather than “Will,” informing him that his acceptance of Brooke’s proposal would be highly offensive and that any contrary issue must exclude him from further reception at Lowick.

Will’s reply is firm. He acknowledges the past generosity but insists that an obligation of this kind cannot fetter his freedom of movement. He means to maintain himself independently.

Casaubon, reading the letter, feels the sting of a young man’s defiance. He suspects that Will means to win Dorothea’s confidence and sow her mind with disrespect. He considers appealing to Brooke or to Sir James Chettam, but his proud reticence forbids it. To admit jealousy would be to confess his own inward self-doubt, and on that most delicate of subjects the habit of suspicious silence tells doubly. So he remains proudly, bitterly silent, and mentally prepares other measures of frustration.