Question

What role does the narrator play in the tension (i.e. exacerbating/ briding etc.) between Dorothea's intellectual pursuit and the reality of her position as a woman bound by expectations of marriage and servitude? 

Question

Dorothea sees her relationship to Casaubon not only as lovers, but more as a teacher and a student, or a disciple to a God. Some hints of servitude can also be seen. (“Kissing his unfashionable shoe ties as if he were a Protestant Pope”, “as Milton’s daughters did to their father”) What is Eliot trying to convey through their unique dynamic?  

Ishaan Madhok's Question

To what extent is Dorothea's attraction towards Mr. Casaubon, and romantic disinterest in Sir James, a reaction to her uncle's continual frustrastions of her attempts to be taken seriously in her intellectual pursuits? Is Dorothea trying to acquire by marriage the intellectual gravitas, one she considers Mr. Casaubon to be in possession of, that a patriarchal society, one represented by Mr. Brooke and his belief that "Young ladies don't understand political economy", has denied her by dint of her gender?

Girton College

Girton was the first college for women at Cambridge University. It opened in 1869 and was first located in Hitchen, but moved to the village of Girton in 1873 (closer to Cambridge). There are references throughout the novella to Girton.

Paternoster Row

Considered the heart of the publishing trade, this is a street in the City of London near St. Paul's Cathedral. The City is the historic financial district of London. It is suggested in the novella that Gertrude has made many trips here with manuscripts or at least sent many manuscripts by mail, hoping and failing to get them accepted for publication.

Campden Hill

This is where the Lorimer sisters live at the very beginning of the novella. It's in South Kensington, near Holland Park. South Kensington is an affluent area of London. 

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