Middlemarch

The Uneasy Corner

Lydgate confronts the most troubling aspect of his conscience—whether he would have acted differently if he had not taken the money. While maintaining he would have made strict inquiry if he had imagined disobedience to his orders, he nonetheless questions whether the dubiousness of medical treatment, the argument that his own treatment would be considered wrong by most professionals, and the shrinking from insulting Bulstrode would have had the same force with him if he had remained independent of financial obligation. This is the uneasy corner of his consciousness. He reflects that in his time of freedom he had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt, insisting that science properly maintains a contest with mistake and must keep the conscience alive. Yet now the scientific conscience has fallen into debasing company with money obligation and selfish respects.

General Black-Balling

The social consequences of the scandal become painfully clear as Lydgate recognizes the pattern of avoidance and suspicion surrounding him. Even as he had been paying off debts and recovering his fortunes, townsmen were avoiding him or looking at him strangely. Patients had begun calling in other practitioners. The reasons, once obscure, are now transparently obvious—the general black-balling has begun. He sees clearly that his practice and reputation are utterly damned, and that even valid evidence clearing him would make little difference to the townspeople who have already rendered their judgment. He has been set down as tainted and will be cheapened in their eyes regardless of truth.

Dogged Resistance

Rather than submitting to the misconstruction, Lydgate’s energetic nature transforms despair into determined defiance. Despite the mounting pressure to retreat from Middlemarch, he resolves to remain and face the worst that can be done against him. He refuses to shrink from showing his sense of obligation to Bulstrode, recognizing that association with the man has been fatal to him yet unwilling to abandon a crushed fellow-mortal whose aid he had used. He determines not to make a pitiful effort to secure his own acquittal by denouncing another. His resolution crystallizes into stubborn intention: he will do as he thinks right and explain to nobody, refusing to be starved out by the town’s hostility.

The Weight of Rosamond

Lydgate confronts another troubling aspect of his situation—how Rosamond will respond to the unfolding scandal that must soon affect them both. He has no impulse to share the burden of his trouble with her, recognizing her presence as an additional weight of chain to drag. He is in no mood to bear her “dumb mastery” and prefers to wait for the incidental disclosure that events must soon bring about rather than initiate the conversation himself.

CHAPITRE LXXIV.

This chapter opens with an epigraph from the Book of Tobit on growing old together, then turns to the ways Middlemarch wives might learn of their husbands’ disgrace, with Mrs. Bulstrode and Rosamond as prime subjects of the town’s busy moral scrutiny. A tea-party conversation among Mrs. Hackbutt, Mrs. Sprague, Mrs. Tom Toller, and Mrs. Plymdale dissects the Bulstrode scandal, debating Harriet’s culpability, Mr. Thesiger’s position, and the likely need for the family to live abroad, while Mrs. Plymdale wrestles with conflicts between her friendship, her firm’s profitable dealings with Bulstrode, and her ties to the better circle through the Tollers. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bulstrode, sensing something is being concealed from her, makes anxious calls on Mrs. Hackbutt and Mrs. Plymdale, picking up on their evasive tenderness and their careful avoidance of any mention of her husband, until shaken and deathly pale she drives at last to her brother Mr. Vincy’s warehouse seeking answers.

The Ardent Charity of Gossip

In Middlemarch, no wife can long remain unaware that the town holds a poor opinion of her husband. Although feminine intimates would never bluntly inform a wife of unpleasant truths about her spouse, a woman with leisure suddenly presented with something damaging about her neighbors is moved by several moral impulses—candor, love of truth, and concern for a friend’s moral improvement—to speak out. This “ardent charity” drives the virtuous to make a neighbor unhappy for her own good.