Friday, December 2, 2016

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.


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