Middlemarch: Will Ladislaw Illuminates Dorothea's Metaphorical Blindness

Will Ladislaw Shakes out his Brilliance onto Dorothea     

     Will Ladislaw has benefited from a liberal education and his attitudes toward learning and knowledge resonate with those of Cardinal Newman (The Idea of a University). Casaubon explains some of Ladislaw’s education philosophy: “On leaving Rugby he declined to go to an English university . . . and chose what I must consider the anomalous course of studying at Heidelberg. And now he wants to go abroad again, without any special object, save the vague purpose of what he calls culture, preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose a profession” (72). Casaubon mocks Ladislaw for declining to choose a profession (73); however, Ladislaw is conscious that by extensive travel and education, he is receiving a liberal education, which Newman explains will “be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession” (xix). Rather than fixing himself on one profession and restricting all his learning to that one field, Ladislaw opts for Newman’s concept of liberal education. He exposes himself to many branches of knowledge and to much scholarship, in part to assure that his own knowledge and scholarship is not thrown away “for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world” (190). Consequently, he considers a pluralistic and broad education to be the cornerstone to knowledge. 

What Newman's liberal arts program may have looked like

 As a result he, unlike Casaubon, gains synthesis and clarity in his mind. He explains to Casaubon and Dorothea that “Rome had given him quite a new sense of history as a whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made him constructive” (194). He experiences that phenomenon Newman attributes to a liberal education:  “[The] true 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). Ladislaw’s methods of learning have brought together many pieces of knowledge and formulated them into a coherent understanding of life. And his conception of the purpose of knowledge “[consists] neither in self-conceit nor in humility, but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in particular” (74). He, like Dorothea, desires to contribute to society.

               Ladislaw’s instruction and friendship to Dorothea is central to her intellectual growth.  His broad knowledge challenges her narrow philosophy. Her blindness to aesthetics, in particular, impairs her entire intellectual vision.  The metaphors of vision pervading the novel are often paralleled with aesthetics, to emphasize the relationship between epistemology and aesthetics.

Metaphorical blindness; failure to grasp aesthetics

In the first part of the novel, Dorothea is described as one who lacks vision, residing under a shadow of ignorance, which is largely due to her rigid Puritanical roots. She explains to him: “I am seeing so much at once and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine—something like being blind, while people talk of seeing the sky” (188). Ladislaw releases her from metaphorical blindness by illuminating to her the language of art (189). Eliot gives Ladislaw Apollo-like attributes, which resonate with his role of bestowing light onto Dorothea’s shadowy mind. The narrator describes Ladislaw: “The first impression on seeing Will was one of sunny brightness, which added to the uncertainty of his changing expression . . . When he turned his head quickly his hair seemed to shake out light, and some persons thought they saw decided genius in his coruscation” (191). Joseph Wiesenfarth suggests that, metaphorically, Ladislaw shakes out the light of understanding onto Dorothea’s ignorance (365).

Apollo, the Sun God

    The narrator indicates that people in Dorothea's time are generally deficient in their understanding and knowledge of art: "Travellers did not often carry full information on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets; and even the most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the flower-flushed tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's fancy" (172).  Dorothea’s ignorance toward art is amplified as a result of her Puritanism which has, not only denied her access to aesthetics, but has made her uneasy with art. Wiesenfarth states that “Puritans consider art to be more or less a misrepresentation of truth” (365). Given Dorothea’s Puritan education, she has difficulty endowing art with any value. She explains: “I should like to make life beautiful—I mean everybody’s life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside of life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think people are shut out from it” (201). She maintains that art must better the world, meaning it must improve the quality of one’s life. She cannot conceive that art enhances life because it stimulates thought and sensuousness. It is wicked to her that she enjoy art while others endure squander. Thus, it is, on the one hand, religious piety which accounts for her disinterest in art; on the other hand, it is her ignorance.  She simply does not know how to enjoy art; she does not speak the language of art: “I cannot help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way. I should be quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don't know the reason of “(201).  

Hall of Statues, in the Vatican, where Dorothea is spotted by Ladislaw

Sitting in the Vatican, the narrator asks the reader to consider Dorothea “who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meager Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain” (176). Wiesenfarth explains that, as a Puritan, Dorothea has “the right moral impulse . . . [but] is cut off from the deeper truths of nature and history and culture because she does not know the language of art” (365).  She confesses to her uncle: “I never see the beauty of those pictures which you say are so much praised. They are a language I do not understand. I suppose there is some relation between pictures and nature which I am too ignorant to feel—just as you see what a Greek sentence stands for which means nothing to me” (70). She has no epistemology for viewing or appraising art.

    On her honeymoon in Rome, she is left on her own while Casaubon devotes his time to conducting research for his Key to all Mythologies. On one occasion, Ladislaw and his German artist mentor Naumann spot her: 

Ariadne

They were just in time to see another figure standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble: a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish gray drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face around the simply braided dark-brown hair. She was not looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor. But she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly paused as if to contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at them, immediately turned away (172).

Unlike the narrator who frames this very scene with a kind of condescension, Naumann describes Dorothea within an aesthetic discourse: "What do you think of that for a fine bit of antithesis? . . . There lies antique beauty, not corpse-like even in death, but arrested in the complete contentment of its sensuous perfection: and here stands beauty in its breathing life, with the consciousness of Christian centuries in its bosom. But she should be dressed as a nun; I think she looks almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in my picture" (173). Dorothea's contact with Ladislaw and his artist mentor profoundly change how she views art and how she begins to view herself. 

               Ladislaw guides her through the troubling relationship between aesthetics and social responsibility. He instructs her to enjoy life, for “enjoyment radiates” (201).  In this way, he guides her so that she can declare that “some things which had seemed monstrous to her were gathering intelligibility and even a natural meaning ; but all this was apparently a branch of knowledge in which Mr. Casaubon had not interested himself” (196). Her exposure to new branches of knowledge facilitates her liberal education. It is significant that it is outside of Middlemarch, outside of narrow opinions (47), that Dorothea is educated. Rome, “the city of visible history,” challenges her epistemology (176). Not only is she overwhelmed by the majestic beauty and profound history and philosophy embodied in this city, she is wrought with the emotion of a young bride neglected by her husband. And in this vulnerability, “Dorothea’s ideas and resolves seemed like melting ice floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had been but another form” (181).  

      We note the changes in her epistemology when she returns to Lowick (after her honeymoon). When she first visited Lowick she “found the house and the grounds all that she could wish for” and she “walked around the house with delightful emotion. Everything seemed hallowed to her” (65). After her time in Rome, she finds Lowick “nothing but dreary oppression” (250). When she walks into her boudoir, it is obvious that she has changed:

               The ideas and hopes which were living in her mind when she first saw this room nearly three months before were present now only as memories: she judged them as we judge transient and departed things. All existence seemed to beat with a lower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object was withering and shrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the room was disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency (250)

Dorothea is no longer looking through the lens of religious dogma and idealism. Her veneration of Casaubon has been snuffed out. Prior to her marriage, her idealism magnified Lowick Manor: the furniture became grander; the textiles became more colourful; the ceilings seemed higher. All was seen through her hopeful vision. When she returned, she notes: “The very furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk . . . the stag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost . . . the polite literature in the bookcases looked more like immovable imitations of books” (248). Her vision has altered significantly since Ladislaw guided her learning in Rome. At home in Middlemarch, Ladislaw continues to educate Dorothea. Unlike her uncle or her husband, Ladislaw is interested in what she has to say and “[he] always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw” (328). He continues to be that source of illumination and joy. She describes her feeling of seeing Will which is “like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air” (328).

               Upon returning to Middlemarch, Dorothea, whose education acquired abroad has ameliorated her character, is in a position to extend the philanthropic gesture she so fervently desires. The character qualities she has gained from her education resonate with Newman’s vision that the well-educated possess “good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command, and steadiness of view . . .  In some it will have developed habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward to eminence in this or that intellectual department” (xix). Indeed Dorothea begins to demonstrate good sense and these other qualities as she is given opportunity. We see evidence of these characteristics especially in her relationship with Mr. Lydgate. As such, we need to explore briefly his education experiences to demonstrate his shortcomings and to understand how Dorothea functions as a Saint Theresa to him. 

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.

Wiesenfarth, Joseph. “Middlemarch: The Language of Art.” Modern Language Association 97.3 (1982): 363-77. JSTOR. Web. 16 November 2010.