Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual.

(Chapter 20)

How does Eliot use distance to induce the reader's sense of compassion in Middlemarch?

“The minds of men are mirrors to one another” (Hume 365). David Hume’s well-known assertion that human perception is derived from experience has become one of the core theories of the philosophical study of empathy. Many theorists such as Ian Watt have argued how the novel focuses on the individual and the “particularization of the character”, claiming that by individualizing experiences in the story, readers are able to feel a stronger sense of connection to the main character. This would stimulate compassion within readers as it psychologically immerses them within the details of a person’s life, as if they were living it as their own. One of the main philosophical concepts that Eliot attempts to tackle in Middlemarch is the human ability, or inability, to feel compassion. In this paragraph where Dorothea faces her emotional turbulence after her honeymoon with Mr Casaubon, we can see how Eliot induces readers to feel a sense of sympathy for the characters by creating distance between the reader and the character.

Instead of diminishing the distance between the reader and the characters, Eliot has made Dorothea unreachable for the readers. Eliot’s narrative voice fluctuates constantly in this short passage. As the narrator describes Dorothea’s “fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding”, Eliot simultaneously sidetracks the narrative into a reflective monologue of how readers will not feel sympathy because of the ordinariness of Dorothea’s situation. The narrator’s voice permeates the description with the use of first-person narrative, “nor can I suppose”, bringing the attention to the narrator instead of Dorothea. The reader’s imagination of Dorothea’s sentiments is suspended by this sudden focus on Eliot’s philosophical commentary. The reader also becomes unable to emotionally connect with Dorothea in her moment of weakness. Thus, distance between the reader and Dorothea is forcefully created by the narrative voice’s dismissal of Dorothea’s feelings by claiming that they are not “anything very exceptional”. Eliot only gives a generalized account of Dorothea’s emotions by categorizing her amazement as one of “many souls in their young nudity” and her suffering as “some discouragement, some faintness of the heart”. The usage of ambiguous terms like “many” and “some” makes her experiences appear insignificant to the reader. Moreover, Eliot uses negative sentences to belittle her experiences. This tone of demeaning only tells us what Dorothea is “not”, instead of entering Dorothea’s mind to tell the reader what Dorothea is experiencing. Eliot makes it difficult for the reader to directly pinpoint the emotions that Dorothea experiences, directly creating a distance between the reader and Dorothea through the use of obscure language and narrative voice.

Nonetheless, this deliberate distance created between the reader and the character has made it even more likely for the reader to feel sympathetic towards Dorothea’s situation. Eliot invites readers to feel for Dorothea not by delving in deep to Dorothea’s own account of her feelings, but by showing the reality of how our individual experiences are merely a common human occurrence. At first glance, the narrator may appear to be supposing that Dorothea’s situation will fail to elicit sympathy because of how mundane her problems seem to be, claiming that “we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual”. In fact, Eliot is leading readers to see how Dorothea is in a dilemma that is not so different from what readers themselves might have experienced before. The ambiguous and generalized description of Dorothea’s troubles makes it easy for readers to sympathize with her as the commentary elicits readers to think about how they themselves have experienced similar scenarios in reality. The narrative voice vaguely summarizes Dorothea’s situation into a kind of “young nudity” as she is “left to ‘find [her] feet’”; while her “elder”, Mr Casasubon, goes about his business. Eliot conceals the real reason for Dorothea’s weeping from the readers, only stating how her “new real future” has “replaced the imaginary”. The general manner in which Eliot describes Dorothea’s situation distances Dorothea from the reader so that the flow of the story is paused, giving time for the reader to distinguish between the reality of the story and the reality of their own lives. Instead of forcing readers to experience what Dorothea experiences through blatant descriptions, Eliot normalizes Dorothea’s experience to call forth the innateness of sympathy within the reader. The distance that Eliot creates between the reader and the character reminds how it is impossible to fully understand someone else’s suffering, as one is never able to experience someone else’s lives in reality. Yet, this limitation is also what drives humans to feel sympathy. Perhaps by giving Dorothea the space and time to feel her emotions outside the knowledge of the reader, Eliot recognizes the distance at which we interact with others. This distance thus becomes the basis for humans to feel sympathy and compassion. 

Works cited:

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Modern Library, 2000.

Hume, David, L A. Selby-Bigge, and P H. Nidditch. A Treatise of Human Nature, 1978. Print.

Watt, Ian. The rise of the novel. Univ of California Press, 2001.