"I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe." 

Lydgate, in the vote for the hospital chaplain, felt "the hampering threadlike pressure of small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity." 

I am reminded of the young mother in Between the Acts, drifting through the library reciting poetry and talking about the menu, who, when her boy is maligned by his grandfather, is "pegged down on a chair arm, like a captive balloon, by a myriad of hair-thin ties into domesticity." These ties are resented, how can they not be? How has Farebrother not trained his female relations better, Lydgate wonders. Is Farebrother a sort of Hercules, having chosen responsibility over pleasure? A hero doomed by that choice but forever renowned afterwards for his strength and determination? 

Here are a cluster of quotes I loved from this month's reading: 

Mary believes "any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it." 

A stranger is considered all sorts of things, "known merely as a cluster of signs for his neighbors' false suppositions." 

"'I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike,' said Lydgate. 'But I have noticed that one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than the other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as it comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the same way.'"

"'Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humor?'"

"'They really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven.'"

Lydgate's "nature was keenly alive" to Farebrother's qualities. 

"The meditative process of shaving." 

Lydgate believes that "a woman ought to produce the effect of exquisite music." Plain women? Face with philosophy and investigate with science. Hilarious. 

Fred and Rosamond both want the best of everything without having to think about paying. 

I love their sibling banter. Fred: "A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions." 

Who will inherit Mr. Featherstone's fortune? "Money's a good egg, and if you've got money to leave behind, lay it in a warm nest." Likely Fred, who is handsome, lively, and frivolous. Perhaps Mary Garth, plain and poor but devoted. 

Featherstone's sister Jane Waule "was accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty's intentions about family," which reminds me of a reel I watched yesterday. A young woman said that in Slavic culture, friction means connection, so harsh truths are spoken. Mary says something in a similar vein to Rosamond: "If one is not to go into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?" 

Rosamond "was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own." 

"Their eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze." But Rosamond was primed for this feeling, this "falling in love," with a well-born stranger. 

 ok I'm back in. I had forgotten about Camden Farebrother, or, I suppose it is possible he didn't make quite as large an impression on me ten years ago. Perhaps now that I am closer to his age, I feel the piquancy of his character more; I no longer share with Lydgate "the usual shallowness of a young bachelor." Finished the last part of March's reading in the magnolia tree. 

 Feeling so bummed out. I don’t remember feeling like this book was such a drag the first time through. I am currently reading through Lydgate’s section in Book II and keep finding it just so remote. I lose interest quickly. I have so much to read before the weekend and it feels like plowing through sludge. I loved this book. What happened?

 February’s reading was dryer. The pages of my book are “foxed.” Am I using that correctly? Yellowing at the edges, creeping in towards the text. Still finding sparks of truth, of humor, but maybe because the month has been so busy and I read less regularly, I felt Middlemarch was the duller of media I kept returning to. 

 A favorite part from my reading this month was when Celia gets the first hint that Dorothea has some sort of attraction to Casaubon. Their uncle announces that C. is coming for dinner, which in itself isn't noteworthy, but I love the description of Celia following her uncle's gaze and seeing this on Dorothea's face: 

"It seemed as if something like the reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features."

Beautiful. 

Celia is "really startled," she feels "disgust," vexed, "a sort of shame mingled with a sense of the ludicrous." Then we get this description of their day:

"The day was damp, and they were not going to walk out, so they both went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia observed that Dorothea, instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to some occupation, simply leaned her elbow on an open book and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp. She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate's children, and was not going to enter on any subject too precipitately." 

The silvered cedar, the wet, languid day ahead of them, and Celia computing just how she will bring up her suspicions. Dorothea anticipates her sister and dreads the "corrosiveness of Celia's pretty carnally-minded prose." What a line!! She's right to dread it, because Celia's words are well-aimed: 

"Is anyone else coming to dine besides Mr Casaubon?"

"Not that I know of."

"I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat his soup so." 

Could there be a better attack then to address the annoyance of hearing someone else eating? And someone to whom you may marry and have to listen to three times a day until one of you finally escapes through death?