Middlemarch (Grapevine Press)

by George Eliot

Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

Most men thought her bewitching when she was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it. She was open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring;

The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a

sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

“Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.”

“It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent.

All the while her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy.

“I am sure—at least, I trust,” thought Celia, “that the wearing of a necklace will not interfere with my prayers. And I do not see that I should be bound by Dorothea’s opinions

Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia’s mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?

“‘Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a dapple-gray steed, and weareth a golden helmet?’ ‘What I see,’ answered Sancho, ‘is nothing but a man on a gray ass like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.’ ‘Just so,’ answered Don Quixote: ‘and that resplendent object is the helmet of Mambrino.’”

She wondered how a man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality. His manners, she thought, were very dignified;

as different as possible from the blooming Englishman of the red-whiskered type represented by Sir James Chettam.

She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sir James had appealed to her.

“I have little leisure for such literature just now. I have been using up my eyesight on old characters lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an imperfect reader. It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed too much on the inward sources; I live too much with the dead.

He delivered himself with precision, as if he had been called upon to make a public statement;

Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most interesting man she had ever seen,

twitted with her ignorance of political economy, that never-explained science which was thrust as an extinguisher over all her lights.

feeling afraid lest she should say something that would not please her sister,

it was evident that Mr. Casaubon was observing Dorothea, and she was aware of it.

“I know something of all schools. I knew Wilberforce in his best days. Do you know Wilberforce?”

“I cannot let young ladies meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty.” Dorothea felt hurt. Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on her.

“It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man’s face.” “Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?” Celia was not without a touch of naive malice.

Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating.

He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.

he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could always put down when he liked.

A man’s mind—what there is of it—has always the advantage of

being masculine,—as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,—and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.

Every lady ought to be a perfect horsewoman, that she may accompany her husband.”

Dorothea colored with pleasure, and looked up gratefully to the speaker. Here was a man who could understand the higher inward life, and with whom there could be some spiritual communion; nay, who could illuminate principle with the widest knowledge: a man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!

it never occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm towards fifty, except, indeed,

Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty,

she found in Mr. Casaubon a listener who understood her at once, who could assure her of his own agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise conformity, and could mention historical examples before unknown to her.

“He thinks with me,” said Dorothea to herself,

And his feelings too, his whole experience—what a lake compared w...

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable,

every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge.

starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to

in looking at her his face was often lit up by a smile like pale wintry sunshine.

he had mentioned to her that he felt the disadvantage of loneliness, the need of that cheerful companionship with which the presence of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity.

of her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling required the meagreness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows, never surpassed by any great race except the Feejeean.

object if they had referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the newly awakened ordinary images of young love:

as the pathetic loveliness of all spontaneous trust ought to be.

that a sweet girl should be at once convinced of his virtue, his exceptional ability, and above all, his perfect sincerity.

But perhaps no persons then living—certainly none in the neighborhood of Tipton—would have had a sympathetic understanding for the dreams of a girl whose notions about marriage took their color entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the ends of life, an enthusiasm which was lit chiefly by its own fire,

the idea that he would do so touched her with a sort of reverential gratitude. How good of him—nay,

with an active conscience and a great mental need,

with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency.

The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on.

soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passi...

a guide who would take her along the grandest path.