Dorothea's Longing for Education Leads her to Marry the Self-important Pedant Casaubon who quickly Reveals his Impotence--Sexually and Intellectually

Dorothea's Longing for Education Leads her to Marry the Self-important Pedant Casaubon who quickly Reveals his Impotence--Sexually and Intellectually 

Mr. Casaubon is the pedantic theological scholar, whose impressive knowledge of history and religious piety appeals to Dorothea (23). Dorothea yearns for serious scholarship; yet, as a woman, she is not taken seriously, nor does she have teachers. She considers that Casaubon’s work is of such importance that any assistance to this great man would satisfy her longings for purposeful education. She contemplates:  “To reconstruct a past world, doubtless with a view to the highest purposes of truth—what a work to be in any way present at, to assist in, though only as a lamp-holder!” (13).  

Georg Friedrich Kersting's Man Reading at Lamplight 

     Her choice in marrying Casaubon has much to do with the hopes of becoming educated. She expresses that “it was not entirely out of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and Greek” (56). Dorothea views Casaubon as an medium for learning; she imagines that her assistance to his scholarship will result in her receiving a liberal education. In expressing her yearning for knowledge, she relates: “And since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned men kept-the only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon?” (77) Not only will she “learn everything” as his wife, she imagines that he will be a spiritual light to illuminate her spiritual journey (23).

On their honeymoon, Dorothea realizes that she is tragically mistaken in her veneration of Casaubon, for he is an utter failure in scholarship. Eliot demonstrates how the approaches to learning adopted by Casaubon (and some British scholars of her day) are vain, and that they result in barrenness. What is most unproductive is his insistence on working in isolation. This insularity, then, renders him suspicious and narcissistic; moreover it leads to his aridity in scholarship. Casaubon fails to engage in an academic community on almost every level: he does not meet with fellow scholars, nor does he read their work.  According to Newman, fecundity is to be found within a community of scholars: 

When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day (147).

Casaubon engages in no dialogue with any scholarly community; yet when he publishes his pamphlets he longs for approval from Brasenose and from the Archdeacon, whom he suspects of not having even read the pamphlets (255). He suffers tremendous melancholy because of one “depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small drawer of [his] desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory” (255). Casaubon’s paranoia that people are discounting his work extends to Dorothea whom he suspects of mocking him. In addition, he is consumed with jealousy of his “scholarly compeers” (192). Yet, it is his refusal to explore outside of his insular studies which reinforces his self-doubts.  

Unlike the liberal education embraced by Brook, Casaubon’s research is limited to a restricted range of texts, i.e., Latin and Greek treatises (190). He looks to no one but “the dead” for guidance in his ambitious work (13). In his efforts to create a single, all-inclusive work, he becomes utterly lost. Dorothea, who desires to assist him, looks for “any wide opening” in which she can follow his theory; however we soon learn:

Poor Mr. Casaubon himself was also lost among small closets and winding stairs, and in an agitated dimness about the Cabeiri, or in an exposure of other mythologists’ ill-considered parallels, easily lost sight of any purpose which had prompted him to these labours. With his taper struck before him he forgot the absence of windows (181). 

Imagine poor Casaubon with his meagre compass trying to find his way out of these woods

He loses all clarity in the midst of his erudition. Again, Eliot extends the metaphor of blindness to describe Casaubon’s scholarly pursuits. Ladislaw laughs at Casaubon calling him an “elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in the vendor’s back chamber” (187). He equates Casaubon’s (and other British) scholarship to “results which are got by groping about in the woods with a pocket-compass while [others] have made good roads” (190). Casaubon’s refusal to consider an array of texts has led to his disorientation. Newman describes “a truly great intellect . . .  [as] one which takes a connected view of old and new, past and present, far and near, and which has an insight into the influence of all these one on another; without which there is no whole, and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations” (135). Casaubon’s work has no centre, no focus, because he attempts to build a philosophy only on ancient Latin and Greek texts. He wants to create a totalizing work, a key under which he brings together all mythologies; however, he is building his philosophy on too narrow of a range of texts.  That is to say that Casaubon has failed “to look at the subject from various points of view,” and this failure, according to Eliot, makes him “a narrow mind” (58).

Casaubon’s myopia renders him blind to the needs of the community; consequently, he provides no social good. Brooke tells Mrs. Cadwallader that “[Casaubon] doesn’t care much about the philanthropic side of things . . . He only cares about church questions” (46). His church questions, and subsequently his intellect, are wrapped around his thesis, which is aimed at reconciling all mythologies under one central theology. Lisa Baltazar maintains that Eliot’s “relentless critique of [Casaubon’s] ‘Key to all Mythologies’” demonstrates the repugnance Eliot has for “Anglican scholars in support of the doctrine of biblical infallibilism” (40). Baltazar examines Casaubon’s work against biblical scholarship contemporary with Eliot’s writing of the novel, and she establishes that Casaubon’s “Key to all Mythologies” is an attempt to uphold the infallibilist position held by most nineteenth-century theologians in Great Britain and to reject the new critical position accepted by most Continental theologians, and by Eliot, herself (41). Baltazar’s assertions about British theologians emphasize their resistance to progression. While Brooke is reluctant to embrace scientific and social advancements regarding social housing, so Casaubon is unwilling to embrace theological and mythological advancements regarding scholarship.  He is mistrusting of any thought not derived from the classics. He confesses: “I live too much with the dead. My mind is like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes” (13). Indeed, Casaubon cannot comprehend social change for he inhabits a space that is no longer relevant and which has also been exhaustively explored in previous scholarship. Any attempts he has of bettering society with his scholarly contributions are already undermined because he is not engaging within the discourse that has already been established. All the hopes for education that Dorothea had placed on her marriage to Casaubon have dissolved under the reality of the obscurity and futility of his scholarly project. Dorothea realizes her error in looking to Casaubon as the fount of knowledge. The narrator recounts: that “Dorothea had early begun to emerge from that stupidity, but yet it had been easier to her to imagine how she would devote herself to Mr. Casaubon, and become wise and strong in his strength and wisdom” (193). Casaubon has not been her fount of knowledge; furthermore, his egoism has forced her to question her motives and to question her beliefs. In this way, then, Casaubon has played a vital role in her education, for he has shattered much of her naïve idealism. In her vulnerability as an unloved bride, Dorothea is awakened passionately and intellectually by Casaubon’s younger cousin, Will Ladislaw. 

Works Cited

Baltazar, Lisa. “The Critique of Anglican Biblical Scholarship in George Eliot’s Middlemarch.” Literature and Theology 15.1 (2001): 40-60. Oxford Journals. Web. 27 November 2010.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1872. Toronto: Bantam, 1992. Print.

Newman, Cardinal John Henry. The Idea of a University. New York: Longmans Green. 1907. http://www.newmanreader.org. Web. 27 November 2010.

Mr. Brooke--Equivocator/Blunderer/Ditherer--Educates Young Dorothea?

Mr. Brooke--Equivocator/Blunderer/Ditherer--Educates Young Dorothea?

     While it has been several weeks since I last posted about Middlemarch, I am finally returning to the topic of this fine novel. I wanted to continue discussing the education received by our protagonist Dorothea. In my Nov. 15, 2013 post, I maintained that she--and Victorian women, in general--were not privy to any substantial education. Nevertheless, Dorothea, due to her aptitude for learning, absorbs knowledge from those around her. Her cosmopolitan uncle, Mr. Brooke, is a likely agency for Dorothea's education, given that he is her guardian since she has been twelve years of age.
     Although Dorothea is obliged to her uncle, she disapproves of his indifference to the less fortunate and to his miserliness: 

“In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk or his way of ‘letting things be’ on his estate, and making her long all the more for the time when she would be of age and have some command of money for generous schemes” (5). 

Brooke is a cosmopolitan, who has had access to a liberal education at Cambridge, in addition to the knowledge he has gleaned on his travels throughout the continent and the British Isles. We discover that his education and philosophy are of an eclectic nature, chosen on the basis of their presumption of social responsibility. Consider his discussion over agricultural science: “I went into a great deal of science myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone. . . . fancy farming will not do—the most expensive whistle you can buy” (12). He disregards the value of science because scientific research demands responsibility which is inconvenient for landowners, like Mr. Brooke, who watch idly as their properties deteriorate to the misfortune of their tenants. He boasts about his knowledge of economics, quoting from Adam Smith:

There is a book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one time—human perfectibility, now. But some say history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued. I have argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far—over the hedge, in fact. It carried me a good way one time; but I saw it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in time. But not too hard. I have always been in favour of a little theory; we must have Thought (13).

                     
Brooke welcomes new theory, but he is not eager for progression. Thought leads to progression which leads to change. Brooke belongs to that social class who is averse to scientific advancements, because they do not like the ethical responsibilities it places on them. He equivocates on almost every position, so that he stands for nothing. He runs for parliament as an independent on a platform of a reform, but he is loath to execute any reforms on his own land. While he has had a liberal education, in the sense that it is broad and varied, he has not developed from it those attributes described by Newman, i.e., freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom. Dorothea rejects all that Brooke stands for, because it lacks social conscience. As a result, her own ascetic position is reinforced and her educational deficits are amplified.
    Brooke professes knowledge on many subjects, but his knowledge is without conviction. Newman describes such men:

We sometimes fall in with persons who have seen much of the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous part in it, but who generalize nothing, and have no observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in information in detail, curious and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under the influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or political, they speak of everyone and everything, only as so many phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not discussing them, or teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No one would say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained to any great culture of intellect or to philosophy (136).

Brooke is one of those persons whom Newman explains is “simply talking.” At his dinner party, he dominates the conversation, demonstrating his mastery over many subjects, but not facilitating much of a dialogue. In spite of Brooke ‘s extensive education he lacks the cultivation of intellect and, subsequently, does not “discharge his duties to society” (Newman 178). Newman advocates for the “enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, of understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual dependence” (137-8). Brooke’s conversation at his dinner party is disjointed. Moreover, Brooke does not fully realize the disparities in his philosophy and in his practice; for example, his political platform of reform is inconsistent with his non-progressive practices as a landlord.

A cottage in disrepair
     As a result of Brooke’s hypocrisy, Dorothea is further induced to reject what she views as artifice, but which she comes to experience as art. She relates how she finds the art in Brooke’s home oppressive (65). She explains to Brooke:

That is one reason why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle—which you think me stupid about. I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don’t mind how hard the truth is for the neighbours outside the walls (354).

Dorothea finds offense in her uncle’s easy way of finding delight in art while his tenants and neighbours can find no delight in their impoverished living conditions. Dorothea becomes more entrenched in her puritanical views in an effort to rebel against what she sees as Brooke’s extravagance and irresponsible use of knowledge. His lack of conviction leaves her without much guidance and she foolishly marries Casaubon.

One final note about Mr. Brooke: he is quite comical, always blundering and dithering and equivocating. He's a Newt Gingrich of the 19th century. 

Experiences of Youth and Childhood

The Experiences of Youth and Childhood

 How do the experiences of youth and childhood provide a foundation for life? How do the experiences of childhood and youth affect our development--mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually? 

 
Write a short paragraph in which you answer this question.You can share an example from childhood. You can elaborate on how each of the types of development is impacted. You can provide hypothetical instances.