Dorothea – disillusioned, devoted, weary, affectionate, emotional
“But this stupendous fragmentariness heightened the dream-like strangeness of her bridal life.”
Being in a foreign place right after a life changing event has made the transition seem even larger and more foreign to her.
Mr. Casaubon – realist, detached, bemused, formal, sensitive
“What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his; and such capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him by the general life of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of dried preparation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.”
Mr. Casaubon was world-weary. His knowledge no longer held any personal interest for him, it was simply knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Will Ladislaw – fickle, temperamental, shy, friendly, dreamer
“He was conscious of being irritated by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation.”
Will realized he was reading too much into small matters; seeing insults and slurs where none were meant.
I think that Eliot does hold true, in Middlemarch, to the sentiments expressed in On Realism. Ladislaw and Mr. Casaubon are particularly believable. The jealousy and conflicting emotions they show seem real. Their reactions to each other’s presence are natural, for all that they are stilted. Dorothea, too, seems real, but to a lesser extent. I think it’s entirely probable for a young woman to be disappointed by the change in her husband’s behavior on their honeymoon, but I think it’s less probable that she could be oblivious to Ladislaw’s feelings. She has a touch of the ideal, not real, about her, in that she adheres to the ideal moral code, rather than the moral practices. Overall, and especially in the details, Eliot’s Middlemarch conforms to the desire for truth and realism expressed in On Realism.
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