The narrator’s tone shifts throughout Middlemarch, from detached to empathetic and back again. It can seem like the narrator is mocking certain characters (there are particular characters who exist mostly for a satirical comedic effect), and then the language moves into a more earnest tone. The following passage from Chapter 29—in which the narrator reflects on Casaubon’s character—is an example of this sort of tonal shift:
For my part I am very sorry for [Casaubon]. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.
The narrator has glibly reflected on Casaubon’s self-importance in earlier scenes, yet here the narrator decides they are “very sorry for him” and show a great deal of empathy for his “small hungry shivering self.”
The narrator’s tone can also become more philosophical, like in the following passage from Chapter 20 in which they reflect on how marriage changes people’s conceptions of each other:
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose name you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.
Here the message becomes not merely about Dorothea and Casaubon’s stilted post-marriage relationship but about marriage generally, and, even more broadly, how perceptions of others shift with increased intimacy. It’s notable that Eliot is not being pessimistic here, exactly—while Dorothea and Casaubon end up disappointed with each other the closer they become, this is not how all marriage is fated to be—as Eliot writes, companionship does not make “something better or worse,” but merely means it “will certainly not appear altogether the same.” This ends up being true in the novel, too, as Dorothea ends up finding herself more content with Will even after their marriage.
The narrator’s tone shifts throughout Middlemarch, from detached to empathetic and back again. It can seem like the narrator is mocking certain characters (there are particular characters who exist mostly for a satirical comedic effect), and then the language moves into a more earnest tone. The following passage from Chapter 29—in which the narrator reflects on Casaubon’s character—is an example of this sort of tonal shift:
For my part I am very sorry for [Casaubon]. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.
The narrator has glibly reflected on Casaubon’s self-importance in earlier scenes, yet here the narrator decides they are “very sorry for him” and show a great deal of empathy for his “small hungry shivering self.”
The narrator’s tone can also become more philosophical, like in the following passage from Chapter 20 in which they reflect on how marriage changes people’s conceptions of each other:
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose name you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same.
Here the message becomes not merely about Dorothea and Casaubon’s stilted post-marriage relationship but about marriage generally, and, even more broadly, how perceptions of others shift with increased intimacy. It’s notable that Eliot is not being pessimistic here, exactly—while Dorothea and Casaubon end up disappointed with each other the closer they become, this is not how all marriage is fated to be—as Eliot writes, companionship does not make “something better or worse,” but merely means it “will certainly not appear altogether the same.” This ends up being true in the novel, too, as Dorothea ends up finding herself more content with Will even after their marriage.
