How does Casaubon exert his power over Dorothea?

“But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did.” … “I couldn’t take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were possible to pack him off…it would look all the worse for Dorothea to those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her—distrusted her, you know.” (Ch. 49)

But the months gained on him and left his plans belated: he had only had time to ask for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp on Dorothea’s life. (Ch. 50)

Upon his death, Casaubon keeps Dorothea under his control through exploiting Dorothea’s sense of duty as his wife, and through public surveillance with his will. This disciplinary power, as Miller points out, is psychological and forces the party on which power is exerted to undergo “endless self-examination” (18). Despite Casaubon no longer existing physically, his power is exerted over Dorothea by making Dorothea feel conscious of her own actions.

Dorothea’s sense of duty is exploited with the unfulfilled promise. Although the promise’s content is not mentioned in the novel, the act of promising in itself binds Dorothea’s widow life under Casaubon’s control, as Dorothea’s conscience of refusing her almost-dead husband and conventional sense of duty as his wife requires her to follow through the promise, and breaking it would lead to remorse and guilt.  Hence Dorothea’s struggle to obey in chapter 48, for obeying would mean losing her freedom for the rest of her life. Casaubon’s power is exerted over Dorothea here through forcing Dorothea to create psychological shackles within herself.

Another form of control is through public surveillance, established through Casaubon’s codicil. Middlemarch is a closely-knit community in which news spreads fast within the neighborhood. Similar to Featherstone’s will, the contents of Casaubon’s will would inevitably be known to the rest of the community in time. Casaubon’s peculiar instructions that Dorothea will lose the property should she marry Ladislaw alone makes it difficult for Dorothea to freely meet see Ladislaw, or have a clean reputation in Middlemarch. As in the first quote, it would make Dorothea look bad if the will’s contents spread within the community. Dorothea’s actions would become under public surveillance as the gossiping community monitors her and Ladislaw.

Why does Casaubon manage to exert power over Dorothea in these two ways? This has to do with the fact that disciplinary power is embedded in the foundations of the novel by Eliot. Miller notes that the novel is placed in “the age of discipline” (18), where many elements in the novel are related to or, help build an environment in which disciplinary power can be enforced. Eliot situates the novel at a time when following duties and expectations are greatly important, and sets the story within the small location of Middlemarch in which social circles overlap heavily. Both time and setting allow Casaubon’s ways to control Dorothea to be possible.

In short, Casaubon exerts his power over Dorothea through exploiting Dorothea’s sense of duty as his wife with the promise, made greatly important to the characters by the conventional setting of the story, disobeying which would bring heavy psychological pain to Dorothea. In addition, Casaubon’s will possibly puts Dorothea under public surveillance because of the peculiar instructions which, when the will’s contents spread within the small community, would make her the center of gossip and limit Dorothea’s freedom to act as she pleases. These two ways of exerting power over Dorothea by Casaubon are only possible because of the way Eliot constructs her novel, by constructing a world in which expectations and conventions are important to the individual and in which everyone in the neighborhood has close connections with each other.