Middlemarch

Lydgate’s Confounded Anger

Lydgate is utterly confounded that she risked herself on a strange horse without consulting him. After thundering exclamations of astonishment that warn Rosamond of his displeasure, he falls silent. He eventually states decisively that she will not go again, insisting that even with the quietest horse there is always the chance of accident. He reminds her that he had already asked her to give up riding the roan for the same reason.

Rosamond’s Obstinacy

Rosamond disputes this, pointing out that there is also a chance of accident indoors. Lydgate implores her not to talk nonsense and declares that he should be the one to judge for her. Rosamond arranges her hair before dinner and asks him to fasten her plaits, making him feel ashamed of standing there like a brute. Lydgate fastens them and kisses her nape, though he remains angry. Rosamond then insists he must not tell the Captain off, requesting that he leave the subject to her. Lydgate sullenly agrees, ending the discussion with his promising her rather than her promising him.

The Riding Accident

Rosamond had been determined not to promise. Her victorious obstinacy never wastes energy in impetuous resistance; instead, all her cleverness is directed toward getting the means to do as she likes. She means to ride the gray again, and she does so on her husband’s next absence, planning that he should not know until it is too late. The temptation is great: she loves riding, and being seen on a fine horse beside the Captain’s son seems like a fulfillment of her pre-marriage dreams, and also helps her connection with Quallingham. But the gentle gray, frightened by a falling tree in Halsell wood, causes Rosamond to fall, leading to the loss of her baby. Lydgate cannot show anger toward her, but is rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit soon ends.

A Mild Tenacity

In future conversations about the incident, Rosamond remains mildly certain that the ride made no difference and that she would have suffered the same outcome at home because she had felt similar symptoms before. Lydgate can only say “Poor, poor darling!” but secretly marvels at the terrible tenacity of this mild creature. Within him gathers an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond.

Lydgate’s Powerlessness

Lydgate had imagined his superior knowledge and mental force would be a shrine for Rosamond to consult, but he finds it is simply set aside on every practical question. He had thought her cleverness was of the receptive kind that became a woman, but now discovers its true shape: a close, aloof, independent network. Rosamond is quick to see causes and effects within the track of her own tastes and interests, but Lydgate’s professional and scientific ambition has no relation to her desires except as something incidental to her life, like an ill-smelling oil. Lydgate is astounded to find that affection does not make her compliant, though he doubts not that her affection is real.

Rosamond’s Recovery

Rosamond soon looks lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her father’s phaeton and thinking it likely she might be invited to Quallingham. She knows she is a more exquisite ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and reflecting that the gentlemen are aware of this, she does not sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see themselves surpassed.

The Missing of Mental Tracks

Lydgate, relieved of anxiety about her, relapses into what she inwardly calls his moodiness, a name that covers his thoughtful preoccupation with subjects other than herself. There is a total missing of each other’s mental track between them, evident even between persons continually thinking of each other. Lydgate feels he has been spending months sacrificing more than half of his best intent and power to tenderness for Rosamond, bearing her claims and interruptions, and looking through less and less of interfering illusion at the blank, unreflecting surface her mind presents to his ardor for his impersonal professional and scientific ends. His endurance is mingled with self-discontent, and he feels his concessions are often little more than slackening resolution.