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    Middlemarch
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    Middlemarch
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    Middlemarch
    Ebook1,146 pages18 hours

    Middlemarch

    By George Eliot

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    About this ebook

    Making masterful use of a counterpointed plot, Eliot presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832. The main characters, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, each long for exceptional lives but are powerfully constrained by their own unrealistic expectations as well as conservative society. The novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSheba Blake Publishing
    Release dateMay 19, 2015
    ISBN9781304359025
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot’s best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.

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    Reviews for Middlemarch

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      In Middlemarch, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) examines life in the fictional Midlands town of Middlemarch, focusing on various characters and their intersecting narratives in order to examine women’s role in society, the place of religion, contemporary politics, and more. Eliot’s writing comments on the internalized misogyny of her time. In one instance, Mrs. Vincy says in conversation with Rosamond, “Oh, my dear, you must allow for young men. Be thankful if they have good hearts. A woman must lean to put up with little things. You will be married some day” (pg. 105). This view of marriage runs through most of the book, with both Dorothea and Lydgate experiencing failed marriages. Eliot continues, “[Mrs. Garth] was not without her criticism of [her neighbors] in return, being more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and… apt to be a little severe towards her own sex, which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural” (pg. 262).In discussing the role of art, Will Ladislaw and Dorothea Casaubon debate the work of Tamburlaine, which Will argues represents “earthquakes and volcanoes” as well as “migrations of races and clearings of forests – and America and the stream-engine” (pg. 231). Change runs as a through-line in the book, specifically the Reform Act of 1867, which doubled the adult male enfranchisement rate in England and Wales. Eliot begins hinting at this as she discusses the role of politics in rural life (chapter 18). Further discussions of art include references to significant authors of the day, including Sir Walter Scott, Lady Blessington, and L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), the poet (pg. 291).In a lengthy aside on politics, Eliot writes, “The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth was dead. Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally depreciated, and the new king apologetic was a feeble type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time. With the glow-worm lights of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbours?” (pg. 383). Here, then, is material that sheds light on the rapid political changes occurring in the latter half of the nineteenth century. While the book can be slow at times, Eliot’s commentary on social issues, in particular the dynamics of marriage and political change, will be of interest to anyone studying the late-Victorian era.
    • 4/5
      A very nicely written book that gives a rounded view of the town of Middlemarch by bringing together the points of view of a cast of different characters. The book went deep into the psychology of each character which was intriguing, and I really loved the characters of Dorothea and Mary. The book has a strong thoughtful streak, and George Eliot has a lot of insightful things to say about the world. It is also a very realistic book, no wild gothic drama.

      On the downside, it is a very long book, and I did lose interest in some parts, particularly in Bulstrode & Lydgate's chapters. And the ending was a little unsatisfying.

      What books would I compare this to? Well, it has a dash of Vanity Fair in its past perspective & ambition, a streak of Le Miserable in its ensemble cast, a dollop of Dickens with its ideology, and a hint of Austen in its wit.

      I wouldn't recommend this as light reading, but if you have the time to commit to it, it is really a quite special book.
    • 5/5
      A thoughtful yet entertaining read about the people and customs of an English town from the earlier part of the 19th century. The characters are very well drawn, their personalities are not superficial, and I was willingly dragged into the story, something I expect a very well-written book should do. This tale is never boring, but as the sentences often have deeper meanings one needs to take time to read this work slowly, unhurried, and without distraction. Quite good and worth the time and effort. Solid.
    • 4/5
      It's most interesting in the ways she differs from Austen. Much more political and philosophical and concerned with morals and the class system. I liked how it swept over many of the citizens of Middlemarch. It was about the whole town.
    • 5/5
      Trollope loved george eliot & g. lewes, that's enough for me.
    • 2/5
      Is it blasphemous to say this book disappointed me?

      Listen. It's a fine story. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's a lovely look at provincial life, full of the drama and romantic tension one expects from 19th century literature. But that's-- all it was to me. It was nothing special, nothing life hanging.

      I liked it, sure, but maybe I wasn't in the mood to appreciate it.

      I'm glad I read it, but I doubt I'll be picking it up again any time soon.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. It was not a good idea to read this book alongside The red and the black, that cold research lab where only the main character is real and all the others are plot devices to trigger psychological and/or political observations. It made Stendhal’s books look so much worse, and Eliot’s book so much superior. But Middlemarch isn’t just great in comparison, it’s great, full stop. Eliot's quiet snarkiness worked its magic on me from the first few pages, where there are plenty of leisurely descriptions of country life that she then undercuts with a precisely timed placing of a tongue in her cheek. Expertly done, and it works on two levels -- "let me tell you how these people think things work", and "I'll make a joke so you and I both know that things are actually more complex than that; but we still understand why these people think so". Good stuff. Most of this book centres around the travails of four couples and their immediate families (or lack thereof). That means there’s a fairly large cast to keep track of, but that is exactly where this book’s strength lies: their interactions and conflicts are brilliantly developed. All her characters feel like real, three-dimensional people who act in accordance with their convincingly-portrayed psychological makeup. Relatively few of the conflicts in this book are due to coincidence; it’s real-seeming characters behaving in uncontrived but conflicting ways. Very well done, that. Eliot also makes this seem so effortless and genuine and unartificial, which is another big mark in her favour. And finally, while she cares about all her characters (the omniscient authorial voice will sometimes straight-up tell readers as much), she does not shrink back from subjecting them to ruin and despair -- her caring for these characters does emphatically not trump the consequences of their unfavourable (in)actions or incompatible desires. This was a wonderful read by an author who knows what they are doing. Those are the best books.
    • 3/5
      Tales of people, how other's expectations don't match the reality.
    • 4/5
      (Original Review, 2002-06-15)A drop of water on your head is easy to ignore; a constant drop in the same spot becomes a form of torture.For some women, their big problem is they can't kick out a cheating boyfriend. For others, their problem is they can't say no to a bridezilla best friend. Others are hung up on their bosses, or confused about their careers, or having issues with overbearing mothers, or with parents getting divorced, etc. In fact, the full range of human experience that a young single woman in her twenties might encounter. How about going for a long walk instead of watching TV, putting down your (collective you, not you, VoxGirl) fork, and drinking water, unsweetened tea and black coffee instead of sodas and lattes? High self-esteem out the ying-yang will naturally result, and as a bonus, no more need for chick-lit.As for the 'it's the women's fault for having low self-esteem' argument, well, if you want to be in a loving relationship or married someday, and your looks have been made fun of for most of your life, and then almost every form of media available to you during the course of your entire life, from books to movies to TV shows to advertisements show beautiful women - and almost exclusively beautiful women - finding love, it just may affect you, no matter how strong you are and how confident you may be in other aspects of your life.Quite a lot of TV shows, movies, etc. show average-looking men (even without power or status) who win the hearts of (or are married to) stunningly beautiful women; how many TV shows or movies have average-looking women (without power or status) winning the hearts of (or being married to) stunningly handsome men?It's not just chick-lit; even literature and literary novels about love and marriage, whether George Eliot's “Middlemarch” to Jeffrey Eugenides's “The Marriage Plot”, tend to feature very beautiful women as the romantic leads. If I want to read about a pleasant-looking-but-not-beautiful romantic heroine in “literature,” I can safely turn to Austen or the Brontës, but I'm having trouble thinking of more examples.
    • 5/5
      Yet another of those books that escaped me far, far longer than it should have. It was a great joy to dive into this world, and while there were definitely a few characters (probably more than a few) that I wanted to reach out and shake some sense into, I enjoyed it thoroughly. The Modern Library edition I read had some odd typos (many d's were replaced with t's, for no discernible reason), so beware that version perhaps, but it's a classic for a reason, and one I'm sure I'll come back to.
    • 5/5
      I love the Virginia Woolf quote about Middlemarch: "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."
    • 5/5
      So refreshing to read of characters motivated by their core beliefs, yet clearly modifying their actions based on new information or circumstances.
    • 5/5
      It gives you a very broad and holistic view of life; it’s not just about about-to-get-married stuff.......................Incidentally the title refers to a stiflingly average small town: “.... a sore point in his memory in which this petty medium of Middlemarch had been too strong for him.”[“whose opinions had a great weight of grocery on their side.”]Many of the characters have intellectual inclinations, but find it difficult to escape the “petty medium”................................Comparing every English novel to “Pride & Prejudice” is a bit like comparing every rock band to the Beatles; it’s tiresome. However, sometimes I slip into it. [To extend the metaphor, George Eliot is more like Pink Floyd than the Beatles.] It’s impossible not to notice the broader vistas in Eliot compared to the views that Austen almost intentionally constricts around the feminine mystique. In “Pride & Prejudice” you’re supposed to laugh at Darcy for thinking that young women might want to study other languages, or anything even vaguely abstract. In “Middlemarch” Dorothea is earnestly distressed that she has not learned German, the better to drink in God and scholarship. In “Pride & Prejudice” the portrait of the scholar is virtually always painted with a view towards making fun—the popular kid making fun of the nerd. In “Middlemarch”, both the ideal and the flaws are given treatment. It would be a mistake to think that every book published before 1985 has an honest appreciation for learning, but “Middlemarch” does........................Without, I hope, sounding too jealous of glory, it’s a lot better to be told about the things that actually happen, the complete spectrum, and not just to be presented with a carefully constructed fiction. (“In my family, people will never argue over money when people die! Better yet, no one in my family will ever die! We’ll just be rich— or at least we will be, when it’s time to have a party.”).............................“If you only wanted ‘love’, then life would just be one long love-fest.” No, we choose people for flawed reasons, and then we have to live with it.................................One can easily say that it is all “good”, e.g. for a female, simply by forgetting upwards of three-quarters of the thing, and that is the feminine mystique; one can with even greater ease (and not inconsiderable pain) say that is all “bad”, and that is merely the other feminine mystique. The great thing, however, is to say that the thing is *as it is*.................................It’s nice how everyone’s story is everyone else’s story.
    • 4/5
      Middlemarch is, as much as anything, a domestic novel illustrating the importance of marriage. The decision to marry, to entrust one's future and well-being to another person, is not to be taken lightly. In a desire to be useful to a man of letters, beautiful young Dorothea Brooke ties herself to a melancholy and jealous man who is unworthy of her devotion. Dr. Lydgate rashly chooses a wife based on physical attractiveness rather than depth of character and lives to regret his decision. Both Dorothea and Lydgate find a measure of peace by submitting their own desires to those of their mates, without receiving much in return. Mary Garth proves to be as shrewd as she is pretty. Both Mary and her suitor are fully aware of his shortcomings, and their partnership enables him to succeed where he would otherwise have failed. George Eliot's keen insight into human nature makes this character-driven novel feel as fresh as a contemporary novel. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This book took me two months to read. Granted, it was an office book (read during lunch at work), but two months is a long time, when you are reading consistently. It's epic. I don't know how I got through high school without reading this, but I finally picked it up because one of the women in my book club makes reference to it CONSTANTLY. And I understand why. It did drag for me in parts, and made me contemplate 4 stars, but the writing skill shines through every page, all seemingly nine hundred million of them, in the details and the character development and the sheer breadth of plot...and how can you not give a book like that 5 stars?
    • 5/5
      This is one of my favorite novels. I love reading the story of this community, especially Dorothea and her trials with the Rev. Casaubon. As Virginia Woolf once said, this is truly a book for adults.
    • 4/5
      "Middlemarch" is the antithesis of "Pride and Prejudice," a work at once both feminist and realist. Eliot's prose is richly textured, but at times so heavy that it obscures the plot, which moves very slowly. Like "Anna Karenina," it also interweaves parallel stories of different couples, and just as with "Anna Karenina," I can't manage as a reader to care about all of them equally. I came away from the book feeling that I had read something historically important and timeless in a certain way, but not enjoyable in a timeless way.
    • 5/5
      It's true, what all those people said about this book. This is one of those books that alters your lens on life. I was not kind to this book, and did not give it its proper due because I took much too long to read it, being frequently distracted by more superficial discourses, which only diluted the richness of the style and depth of the prose.
      But despite that, it waited for me patiently and did not fail to reward, and nor did I fail to marvel.
    • 5/5
      I really liked that even the minor characters in this book were real people, not just cardboard caricatures to move the plot along. I also appreciated the subtle dashes of humor that only become apparent as you adjust to Eliot's style. Overall, amazing book that really engaged me mentally and emotionally. Everyone should at least give this one a chance.
    • 5/5
      Well worth the effort. Eliot is a brilliant, witty, nimble, insightful, and compassionate writer.
    • 5/5
      Classic sweeping amusing
    • 5/5
      So much has been said in the reviews here, and consequently I find I have little to add. I read this in college and hated it. I suspect I hated it because I had fun things to do and this book is REALLY LONG. I am not sure though how it should have been shortened. I recently noted in another review (for Asymmetry) that great editors often write exceptionally crafted books with nothing remotely extraneous left in the text. I think this qualifies. 905 pages of necessary. I rotated between listening and reading this book, and the audiobook time means I finished this before winter, I found I kept returning to the text to reread. Every word does matter, and that level of focus is not possible for me with audio.So read the other reviews that will tell you this is about the most perfectly crafted novel in the English language. It is. The story is complex, funny, tragic, mundane, honest, and deeply gratifying. I need to re-read it soon, though I typically do not re-read. (I also cannot imagine how anyone thought a man had written this, but that is another conversation.)
    • 5/5
      I tried and failed to read Middlemarch back in 2012. But, it is one of my brother's favorite novels and when it comes to literature, I trust his taste above all.

      I want to hug and snuggle with this book, to sleep with it under my pillow so some of George Eliot's genius might seep into my poor little brain while I sleep. Eliot might be the best illustrator of human nature and the many contradictory aspects of a person's self that I've ever read. Dorothea Brook is in the running for my favorite all time heroine. (Sorry Elizabeth Bennet, Margaret Hale and Hermione Granger.) I wanted to slap her and tell her to snap out of it at the beginning, but by the end I was desperate for her to find her happiness. There were storylines that didn't interest me too much, and besides Dorothea and Mary every single character irritated me, but by the end of the book I cared about everyone. Even Bulstrode. But not Rosamond. Never Rosamond.

      I listened to the audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson who is, hands down, the premier British literature audio book performer.

      It's a testament to how much I loved this book (thought this disjointed review doesn't do my admiration justice) that I will definitely read it again, all 900 pages or 34 hours of it.
    • 4/5
      Middlemarch is a small English town, with all the requisite townfolk. In the 1830s, we find Dorothea Brooke, an idealistic young lady looking for a lofty and intellectual husband. She thinks she had found it in Edward Casaubon, an older scholar and reverend who is writing a religous history that she hopes to assist him with. Tertius Lydgate is an idealistic doctor, who hopes to follow his dream of actual doctoring ill patients, rather than lining the pharmacys pockets with prescription writing. He falls in love with the haughty and spoiled Rosamond Vincy. Her brother Fred Vincy is a gadabout, waiting for an ancient relative to die so he can inherit his money & land. The book takes these stories and the stories of the other townspeople and turns them in to a delightful look at the times. You can see the disasters coming, thanks to the authors asides, but the characters cannot see them, and it is great fun to watch the ups and downs of the people in Middlemarch.
    • 4/5
      This was a pleasant light reading, which has not really captivated me. It is a social study with about a provincial town filled with being in love, marriages, deaths, money worries and happiness. Most actions were predictable and relatively typical of that time. You will quickly become familiar with all protagonists and almost can already guess what happens before it undergoes in the book.
    • 4/5
      In all honesty, I enjoyed it more and read it faster than I thought I would. My favorite line of Eliot's came at the end: "...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."Of all the characters, I liked Rosamond the least (Mr. Casaubon coming in a close second to "Rosy"), and I liked Dorothea the best. In the end, I'm glad "Dodo" went for it.
    • 5/5
      Middlemarch is primarily the story of Dorothea Brooke - a woman who wants to make the world a better place at a time when women were not encouraged to have ideas outside of their own homes. This ardent desire leads her to make some poor choices, and some admirable ones.This book is also a story about marriage. We see how Dorothea's marriage turns out - her sister Celia's marriage (Celia is the typical woman of her day), Rosamund's (the spoiled town beauty) marriage, and the marriage prospects of Mary Garth, a poor working girl.The author helps us to get inside the minds of her characters, which helps us to decide if we like them or not, or if we've made similar choices too. Often I found myself sympathizing with a character I initially disliked, because I was helped to see their emotions.It's very much a grown up book. If I had read this in my teens I would not have gained as much from the reading. There's no "and they lived happily ever after" here - Eliot keeps the story grounded.If I had to sum up [Middlemarch], I'd say Eliot gives us an inside view of the lives of women in her day. There's also quite a bit of political talk, helping us see what it must have been like to live in England while so much was starting to change.For me, this book was just about perfect. One day I'd like to re-read it because I know there are some things I missed this time around.
    • 5/5
      I have a customer, an old gentleman who has written many books himself, who insists that Middlemarch is the best novel ever written. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but it is superb, and worth reading if only for the character of Dorothea. And the way the weather, as in silent films, uncannily accompanies the underlying emotional turning points in the novel.
    • 5/5
      (a very few spoilers) How does one really go about writing a review for a novel like Middlemarch? There’s just so much here, a great cast of characters, good story, beautiful--if difficult--prose, preternaturally acute observations about human and individual nature, philosophy, politics, religion, art, science, family relations, marriage… and the list goes on. I enjoyed this novel immensely and place it among my top 3 favorite novels. I finished it over a week ago but haven’t stopped flipping back through it yet.The action of the novel takes places from 1829 to 1832, about 40 years before the writing of the novel. This was a time of great change in England that must have been very disorienting—the Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the death of George IV in 1830, the spread of the railways, the outbreak of cholera in 1832, and the domestic unrest leading up to the First Reform Act of 1832 (the novel closes in the spring of 1832—the Act was passed in the summer).Against this backdrop of uneasy change we find a number of characters who yearn to do great things, though they don’t all know exactly what, and to establish a sense of order and meaning in their lives and the world around them. Mr. Casaubon works on his “Key to All Mythologies,” a scholarly volume which will elucidate the universal principles that lie behind all religions; Tertius Lydgate wants to find “the one primitive tissue” that makes up all living things; Dorothea wants to find a way to connect her life in the present with the great scholars of the past, and to connect here and now with people who need help. In reading of their quests, I was reminded of a dear professor who used to speak of a search for unity (in all its various guises—we were speaking of music theory) in connection with a search for God and ultimate meaning. This is the feeling that I get when I read about the characters’ struggles, and when Dorothea tells Will, “I have always been finding out my religion since I was a little girl.”None, I daresay, of the characters reach the true heights of the good that they want to do in the world. Very few of us do. But in Middlemarch, this doesn’t come off as tragedy. George Eliot, describing herself, said that she was neither an optimist, nor a pessimist, but a “meliorist.” She believed that humans were making progress toward a better, more equal society, and that the world could be improved through human action. Though our (and their) individual lives may not seem to add up to much, Eliot writes of Dorothea, “…The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” I find this to be a great consolation.I’ve tried and so far failed to wrap my head around the structure of the novel. But I can say that the whole thing appears to be a big, criss-crossing web of relationships. Any given character can be tied to most of the other characters in the novel—sometimes practically all of them. The “diffusive” effect that Eliot describes in speaking of Dorothea applies to the other characters as well; a single action often travels along the threads of the web and affects multiple characters. The idea of unity is expressed by making each character and group a part of a greater whole.Eliot clarifies the moral aspect of each individual as a single part of a whole by juxtaposing selfless characters against self-centered characters. The finest characters in the novel are fine not because they are perfect, but because they are clear-eyed about themselves and sympathetic toward others. The characters who suffer most often bring their pain on themselves through their egoism and lack of self-perception. One character is so egoistic that she can’t imagine that she is ever in the wrong; another character believes that God Himself sanctions all his actions and breaks into a panic (with drastic moral consequences) when it appears that his moral failings may be revealed to the town. Dorothea and Edward Casaubon’s marriage is ruined in great part because of his fear that she is inwardly criticizing him and his jealousy of another man; as well, he has lived by and for himself for so long that once he marries Dorothea, he finds that he simply doesn’t have room for her in his life. The tragedy of this marriage is all the more maddening because Mr. Casaubon so needlessly drives a stake between himself and Dorothea—you sense that if he could just get outside of himself, the troubles would be over.Speaking of marriages, I very much enjoyed reading about the different marriages in Middlemarch. The novel doesn’t end in weddings, like so much 19th century Brit Lit—the weddings are only the beginning, and then the real work happens. The marriages aren’t all bad, either; for one, I found very much to admire in Mr. and Mrs. Garth’s marriage. They complement each other well; they accept each other’s faults cheerfully, and they never speak ill of each other to their neighbors. The Garths, including their daughter Mary, may well be my favorite characters in the novel. (But it’s so hard to choose!)Middlemarch ranks with Les Misérables as the finest moral fiction I’ve read. When Dorothea speaks of finding out her religion, she says that the belief that comforts her is this: “That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower." Later, she will say, “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” The self-examination and struggle for meaning that many of the characters go through is truly inspiring, and there’s much to learn from this novel. Eliot writes during one scene (bless the intrusive narrator!), “Some one highly susceptible to the contemplation of a fine act has said, that it produces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes one feel ready to begin a new life.” Fred Vincy felt it, and so did I. And Eliot’s finely-tuned and finely-timed sympathy always shows up just when you are ready to pronounce a final judgment on a character—just as you’re about to say, what a bad guy!, her intrusive narrator intervenes and says, but hey, look at what he has going on inside him—don’t you sympathize?—and really, are you sure that you’re the one to judge him? Don’t you do the very same thing sometimes? And you have to say, well, by gum, I do.And to add to all the above (seriously, if you haven’t read this novel, just stop reading my review and go read Middlemarch instead!), there is a magic to George Eliot that transcends character and plot. Just one example: each chapter has its own epigram. One chapter is preceded by a lovely bit of verse (written by Eliot) describing the sympathetic resonance of a bell. To determine the pitch of a bell, Eliot explains, one need not strike it directly; one can instead play a flute into the bell, and when it hits the right pitch, the bell will vibrate in unison with it. The chapter then describes how one character ends up falling with another quite instantly. He has up to this point flirted with her but resisted any serious attachment; but at the falling of her tears, his heart is touched, and it “[shakes] flirtation into love.” I read this scene with the idea of the sympathetic resonance in mind, and the power, the thrilling awe and beauty of the integrated experience has been burned into my brain forever.Read Middlemarch. Read it now.
    • 3/5
      Given that MIDDLEMARCH is an all time favorite of many LT readers, I'll tread lightly here.With the recent rewriting of many classics, here's my new version following Dorothea's marriage:Casaubon's cold public demeanor, superior distancing attitudes, and lack of affectiontoward his bride undergo a radical change in the bedroom.He radiates into a red-hot lover!This transformation conflicts with Dorothea's physical passions and religious sensibilities,resulting in her dim-witted, yet intentional, decision to tell her husband that she thinksthat his nephew, Will, who he loathes, DOES deserve more of her husband's money after his projected death.Casaubon then divorces Dorothea who falls into Will's welcoming arms untilshe enlightens him about the reasons for her defection.Casaubon and Will accidentally meet at an inn where they are introduced to sistersembarking from a carriage and begin new and friendly adventures.Dorothea falls in love with her priestly confessor and ... "Oh dear! Oh dear!"