Passage pertaining to my discussion: 

Passage from Book Four, Chapter 42

“But the resolved submission did come; and when the house was still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his hand. If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and even risk incurring another pang. She would never again expect anything else. But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the carpet.” (427)

Question: How does the passage reflect the power dynamic in the Casaubon’s' marriage? 

Eliot presents the Casaubon’s marriage as a struggle, albeit a predictable one. Upon Dorothea’s disillusionment in Rome, she feels that the...

“we are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship of illusion. In writing the programme for his burial he certainly did not make clear to himself that his...

“But Dorothea was strangely quiet – not immediately indignant as she has been on a like occasion in Rome. And the cause lay deep. She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked at her husband’s failure, still more at his possible consciousness of failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became tenderness.” (400) 

Both Dorothea and Casaubon are caught up in pursuing their own idealistic and ambitious goals for their lives. What does this passage suggest about Dorothea’s reckoning of her husband’s unfulfilled potential and how does this affect her perception on her own ideals?

Many of the characters in Middlemarch grapple with the shortfalls in their lives, where their expectations and perceptions of the future and self are unable to be materialised in reality. Thus leading to their disappointment and dissatisfaction due to a...

Even though Middlemarch is described as a web, its residents are secretly paranoid and often do not form truly intimate connections with each other. How are we to understand Middlemarchers’ paranoia?

Passage from Book 4, Chapter 37:

“Poor Mr Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to win Dorothea’s confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps aversion, towards her husband” (375).

     The above passage describes Mr Casaubon’s discontent with Ladislaw after receiving a letter from him, in which Ladislaw declares that nothing can restrain him in his choosing where to live.

     Mr Casaubon assumes himself to be fully justified to suspect Ladislaw due to the latter’s visiting Dorothea and possibly instigating conflicts between him and Dorothea, even though Mr Casaubon...