Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

Edinburgh and London

William Blackwood and Son

1871-2, 1874

"How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither?"

Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe than Mr Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight--- that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
(Chap. xx, p. 145)

Architecture::Rooms::Anterooms Geography::Vista Architecture::Labyrinth::Passages

Reading Karen Chase's Eros & Psyche: The Representation of Personality in Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. New York: Routledge, 1984. p. 174.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1874. First published Dec 1871-Dec 1872. Text from Chadwyck-Healey.

03/23/2009