Chapter 12 – their eyes met

Fred and Rosamond ride to their uncles’ house. Mr. Featherstone’s sister Jane Waule is there. She is a gossiper. But she is there because she is worried that her brother’s property will not go to her and her other brother Solomon when Mr. Featherstone dies.

Narrator: “The human mind has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so preposterous a result was not strictly conceivable. But we are frightened at much that is not strictly conceivable.”

Is the orderly structure of inheritance and social class breaking down, thus bringing a “moral chaos”?

Conversation between Featherstone and his nephew, Fred, about Fred’s involvement with financial speculation (rather than land), his debts, and his desire to inherit from Featherstone.

Conversation between Mary and Rosamond about Lydgate and Fred.

Featherstone doesn’t like Mary reading books to herself.

Mary is described as a “plain” young woman. The narrator talks about being called ugly. Eliot was called ugly by her peers. Mary is said to be honest and have truth-telling fairness as a virtue. Rosamond says to Mary, “Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality.” Is this Eliot speaking for herself?

Finally, Mr. Lydgate (the doctor) arrives. In a very short time he and Rose fall in love…

And their eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze.

Rose immediately begins to envision their happy life together “which offered vistas of that middle-class heaven, rank.”

Fred worries about having to approach his uncle, Bulstrode, to request evidence that Fred was not scheming to inherit part of Featherstone’s property.

Chapter 11 – movement and mixture

There is a new surgeon in town—Mr. Lydgate. He has feelings for Rosamond Vincy. He thinks a woman “ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.”

Mr. Casaubon “took a wife to adorn the remaining quadrant of his course, and be a little moon that would cause hardly a calculable perturbation.” Man as planet, woman as moon. Someone to just be around.

Lydgate thought Miss Brooke “did not look at things from the proper feminine angle.”

The narrator out that the “old provincial society” is giving way to a “new consciousness of inter-dependence….Municipal town and rural parish gradually made fresh threads of connection—gradually, as the old stocking gave way to the savings-bank.” There was “movement and mixture.”

New word: tetchy. “You are the sweetest temper in the world, but are so tetchy with your brothers.” Tetchy = irritable, cranky, annoyed.

“A woman must learn to put up with little things. You will be married someday.” Woman have to “put up.”

“We had whist.” Whist = a card game.

I laughed at this sentence: “Fred’s studies are not very deep,” said Rosamond, rising with her mamma, “he is only reading a novel.” A great novelist making fun of her profession (through her characters).

Chapter 10 -- messages from the universe

Chapter 10

As Casaubon discusses his young cousin’s search for a vocation, the language sounds to me like 21^st century jargon for a kind of New Age spirituality:

Genius, he held, is necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances.

Does this language sound familiar? Await the messages from the universe. I hear people today talk about how “the universe” is leading them; or asking “the universe” for help. It’s a substitution for theistic language. So many folk these days have trouble talking about “God” as a Being up there somewhere. Theistic language sounds too childish or like belief in a fantasy. So a more scientific and blurry term is used: universe. I did not know this terminology was used in the 19^th century. Casaubon goes on:

The superadded circumstance which would evolve the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned.

An added dimension. “God” is replaced, but like God, the universe “beckons.” So, the call of God is now the call of the universe. Eliot hangs on to a notion of “calling.”

Will [Casaubon’s cousin] saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the intentions of the universe with regard to himself.

Now the universe has “intentions.” Sounds like “the will of God” rewritten to assuage anti-theistic prejudices. Is this Eliot’s own view? That the universe has “intentions” and “calls” people to their purpose in life?

Two hundred years before Eliot was writing this great novel, the philosophers Leibniz and Spinoza were offering two different concepts of God. Spinoza’s God was Nature itself. All Substance was God, and God was all Substance. We call this view pantheism. This was probably the view that Albert Einstein held too. Leibniz, on the other hand, argued for the more traditional God—a God who has a mind and a will. A God who makes choices; a personal God.

It appears that George Eliot and 21^st century folk are trying to have it their cake and eat it too. “The universe” indicates a non-personal reality—a kind of substitute for a theistic God. Yet, if the universe has intentions for us, some kind of theistic notion slips back in. Make up your mind. Is there an Ultimate Intelligence (Mind) that relates to life, or is life a meaningless roll of the dice? I think those are the only two alternatives.

On page 83 is the a clear mention of the historical context.

For in that part of the country, before Reform had done its notable part in developing the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties…

The country is in transition. Reform is taking place. Distinctions and ranks are being broken down. A more democratic spirit is arising. The old feudal class system is eroding.