Middlemarch, Book III - Waiting for Death by George Eliot (Marian Evans)
Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Our story resumes with Fred Vincy finding himself in debt (again) and
unable to pay (again). This time, he has borrowed a rather sizable sum from Mr.
Garth, Mary's father (remember - Fred has the hots for Mary). Fred
hatches a harebrained scheme to trade his horse for a less-expensive one, but
the new horse promptly lames itself (apparently some animals were harmed
in the making of this book) and Fred has to confess to the Garths that he can't
pay them back. The lovely Garths are astounded, and are forced to use the money
they've been saving for 4 years (to put a son in school) on their daily
expenses and beg their eldest, Mary, for her savings as well. Fred feels
terrible, and then falls ill. Lydgate nurses him back to health (and Rosamond,
Fred's sister, seizes the opportunity to flirt with Lydgate). Meanwhile,
when Dorothea and Casaubon return from their disastrous honeymoon in Rome, we
find out that Dodo's sister Celia has gotten engaged to Dodo's earlier suitor,
Sir James Chettam. Dodo and Casaubon have a fight over a request for a
visit from Will Ladislaw, and Casaubon has some sort of fit. Lydgate comes to
the rescue again and Casaubon recovers, but Lydgate tells Dodo on the sly that
Casaubon has a weak heart, and if he doesn't cut back on his Strenous Studies,
he may die rather quickly. Dodo is horrified (because for some unknown reason
she cares about sallow Mr. C). Meanwhile, Mrs. Bulstrode yells at Lydgate
for leading her daughter on (because she heard through the grapevine Rosamond
and Lydgate were flirting InaPprOpriately in Public) and when Lydgate goes to
chat with Rosamond about it, they end up getting engaged (even though Lydgate
had NO intention of getting engaged). Fat and unpleasant Mr. Featherstone's
health goes downhill and all of his family and the Vincys are speculating about
his will. He calls Mary up to his room in the wee hours and frantically
begs her to burn one of the two wills he's created and to take all the money in
his cash tin, but she resists him and after letting him sleep off his fit,
realizes that he has, in fact, kicked it.
On the Garth family's house
- "We get the fonder of our
houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends have. Fred liked
the Garth house, knowing it by heart even to the attic, which smelt deliciously
of apples and quinces, and until today he had never come to it without pleasant
expectations." reminds me of the Light's house - although I'm pretty
sure their attic doesn't smell like apples. ;)
Mrs. Garth, on instructing her
children while tending to the needs of the house and family
-"She thought it good for
them to see that she could make an excellent lather while she corrected their
blunders 'without looking', that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her
elbows might know all about the subjunctive mood or the torrid zone, that in
short, she might possess 'education' and other good things ending in '-tion',
and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a useless doll.
Mrs. Garth, to her youngest son:"That apple-peel is to be eaten by the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I
must give them your piece of pasty."
Mrs. Garth, to her
daughter: "How rude you look,
pushing and frowning as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus,
I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so." tee
hee hee. this reminded me of my French host mom yelling at her son, Vianney, to
keep his hands out of his lap at the kitchen table. "Qu-est ce que tu fais
là? Les mains sur la table, s'il te plaît!"
On a town-wide game of telephone
leading to false conclusions about Mr. Lydgate's origins:
"Mrs. Taft, who was always
counting stitches and gathered her information in misleading fragments caught
between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was
a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of
evangelical laymen.
On Mr. Casaubon's unenthusiastic
soul:
"To know intense joy without
a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon
had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being
enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into
passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was
hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying."
Mr. Casaubon's response to Mr.
Lydate's suggestion that he take up some hobbies like fishing, toy-making, or
wood-working:
"'In short, you recommend me
to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood', said poor Mr. Casaubon with
some bitterness. 'These things', he added, looking at Lydgate, 'would be to me
such relaxation as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction.'"
Hagh.
On glowing from the March wind:
"He asked for Mrs. Casaubon,
but being told that she was out walking, he was going away when Dorothea and
Celia appeared, both glowing from their struggle with the March wind." I
went for a nice run this morning and I feel SURE that when I returned I was
positively Glowing from my struggle with the March wind. :0)
Passages I found
particularly pleasant:
- "There was always a little storm over his extravagance if he had to
disclose a debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within doors."
- "That he should ever fall
into a thoroughly unpleasant position - wear trousers shrunk with washing, eat
cold mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck under" in
any sort of way - was an absurdity irreconcilable with those cheerful
intuitions implanted in him by nature." the Horror! to wear
trousers shrunk with washing and Eat COLD Mutton! I can barely imagine.
-"To superficial observers
his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually
reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his
satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful." heheheeheheheheh.
-Mr. Garth, on not
hastily jumping into an engagement: "That's the long and short of
it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is,
and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon
turns into working day, my dear."
-"Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon,
returning from their wedding journey, arrived at Lowick Manor in the middle of
January. A light snow was falling as they descended at the door, and in
the morning, when Dorothea passed from her dressing-room into the blue-green
boudoir that we know of, she saw the long avenue of limes lifting their trunks
from a white earth and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless
sky."
- on Dodo's return to the
blue-green boudoir she once admired: "Her blooming, full-pulsed
youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill,
colourless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never-read
books, and the ghostly stag in a pale, fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing
from the daylight."
-"The world would have a new
dreariness for her, as a wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a
little while into a garden."
My lovely mother is doing a
read-along for this one on her e-reader and she's Beating me! Granted, she's
not training for a half-marathon, finishing her Master's thesis, or looking for
a full-time job. But still! So onwards I plunge, into Book IV of this wondrous
tome, Centerprocession!
Happy Easter!
