Middlemarch

Will Ladislaw’s Letter of Refusal

Will Ladislaw’s Letter of Refusal

The following day, Mr. Casaubon receives Will’s reply. Will acknowledges his generous conduct in the past but maintains that an obligation of this kind cannot fairly fetter him. A benefactor’s wishes, he allows, may constitute a claim, but with a reservation as to their quality; a benefactor’s veto might impose such a negation on a man’s life that the consequent blank would be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. He cannot take Casaubon’s view of how his acceptance of lawful occupation will affect his position, and he does not see why the obligations of the past should restrain his freedom to live where he chooses and maintain himself by any lawful occupation. He remains, with persistent obligation, Will Ladislaw.

Mr. Casaubon’s Suspicion and Disgust

Mr. Casaubon’s Suspicion and Disgust

Mr. Casaubon feels, with what seems ample cause, that no man has juster ground for disgust and suspicion. He is convinced that young Ladislaw means to defy and annoy him, to win Dorothea’s confidence, and to sow her mind with disrespect or aversion toward her husband. Some hidden motive, he believes, is needed to explain Will’s sudden rejection of his aid and abandonment of his travels; and Will’s defiant resolve to fix himself in the neighborhood through Mr. Brooke’s Middlemarch projects, so different from his former choice, makes clear to Casaubon that the undeclared motive has relation to Dorothea. He does not suspect her of doubleness, but he has the uncomfortable knowledge that her tendency to form opinions of his conduct is accompanied by a disposition to regard Will favorably.

The Dilemma of Duty

The Dilemma of Duty

Casaubon must now consider his duty. He shrinks from applying directly to Mr. Brooke, who is likely to meet every representation with apparent assent and then conclude by assuring him that young Ladislaw will do him credit. He equally shrinks from consulting Sir James Chettam, with whom there has never been any cordiality and who would immediately think of Dorothea without her name being mentioned. Without some alarming urgency, failure is as probable as success in either course. Distrustful of everyone’s feeling toward him, especially as a husband, Casaubon recoils from letting anyone suppose him jealous or find marriage other than blissful, lest he admit what he believes others have long suspected of him.

Proud Reticence and Silent Fury

Proud Reticence and Silent Fury

All through his life Mr. Casaubon has been trying not to admit even to himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy, and on this most delicate of subjects the habit of proud suspicious reticence tells doubly. He remains proudly, bitterly silent. He has already forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he is mentally preparing other measures of frustration against the man whom he now regards as the secret source of his disquiet.

CHAPITRE XXXVIII.

Sir James Chettam and the Cadwalladers gather to discuss Mr. Brooke’s ill-advised foray into Middlemarch politics and his ownership of the “Pioneer” newspaper, which has drawn sharp criticism from the rival “Trumpet” for Brooke’s stinginess as a landlord. Mrs. Cadwallader dismisses his attempts at political reform as mere whistling, while the group debates whether Brooke will actually secure a nomination for Parliament or whether experienced Whig candidates like Bagster will outperform him. The conversation reveals anxieties about Brooke’s relation Will Ladislaw, who serves as the Pioneer’s editor and whose foreign connections and radical associations make him an object of suspicion among the local gentry who dined with him at the Hall. When Brooke arrives, he attempts to laugh off the Trump’s scathing characterization of him as “retrogressive” and defends his tenant policies as generous, insisting he is “uncommonly easy” with his old renters, though Sir James quietly notes that no new tenant would accept the farms on such unfavorable terms.

Public Judgment on Human Conduct

The chapter opens with a Guizot epigraph affirming that public judgment on human actions, though perhaps slow, eventually becomes effective. This theme of societal judgment permeates the subsequent discussions about Mr. Brooke’s conduct and reputation.