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.
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