On their honeymoon, Dorothea and Casaubon get into an argument and Eliot uses a simile to capture its intensity:
This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual with Mr. Casaubon. It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, but had taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the round grains from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it. Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which surrounds the appreciated or desponding author.
Comparing Casaubon’s tirade to the rushing out of “round grains from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it” communicates the heat (or anger) that is “cracking” Casaubon’s composure.
There is also a personification in this passage that the narrator names as such—Dorothea, in Casaubon’s eyes, is nothing more than “that shallow world” that surrounds his brilliance. This is entirely Casaubon’s projection—he believes Dorothea to be judging him when, in reality, she supports his work more than anyone else in the novel.
In this moment, Casaubon channels his frustration about not fulfilling his ambitious dreams—in other words, not finishing his manuscript The Key to All Mythologies—into criticizing and belittling his wife. This is one of the moments that Eliot highlights the inevitable bitterness that comes from not achieving one’s goals.
The first time Lydgate stops by the Vincy household after telling them he wouldn’t be visiting anymore (so as not to encourage Rosamond’s affection for him), he is greeted by Rosamond, who starts to cry. The narrator uses a simile to describe the way that the tears appear in Rosamond’s eyes:
At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would. That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love.
Comparing Rosamond’s tears to “water on a blue flower,” the narrator communicates the delicate beauty of her tears, helping readers understand why this moment turned Lygdate’s “flirtation into love” when he had so recently been set against pursuing a relationship with Rosamond (to the point that he was no longer even stopping by her house). This is one of the rare moments when Eliot humanizes Rosamond, showing that she is not merely greedy (wanting to marry Lydgate for his social status) but has genuine feelings for him as well.
While still married to Casaubon, Dorothea starts wanting to spend more time with Will. The narrator uses a simile to capture the effect Will’s presence has on Dorothea:
Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul. Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her husband might think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's guest.
In comparing Will to a lunette—or window—in “the wall of [Dorothea’s] prison,” the narrator signals the ways that Will helps Dorothea feel free from the confines of a marriage in which she feels stifled and useless. As a woman in this sexist society, Dorothea is unable to fully escape the prison of her marriage (until Casaubon dies, of course), requiring her to find people like Will who offer her moments of reprieve.
This passage is also an example of foreshadowing as, at this point in the novel, Dorothea is completely unaware that she has feelings for Will. While he is merely her lunette-like friend at this point, he goes on to become the very person who helps her fully escape from her prison by becoming a caring husband.
In the final paragraph of the novel, Eliot uses a simile to compare Dorothea’s nature to the River Gyndes:
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.
This simile rests on readers knowing the story of the River Gyndes, a tributary of the Tigris River that, so the story goes, King Cyrus of Persia redirected into 360 channels in order to punish the river for drowning one of his horses. Like this mythological river, Dorothea’s energy and ambition were dammed up (by her sexist society) and redirected into smaller channels.
There is both a pessimism and optimism to this simile—Dorothea was not allowed to be the singular powerful force she hoped to be, but her true nature wasn’t squashed either; her energy was able to multiply and be shared with more people. In this way, it is possible to see her as having had more of an impact than if she had become a more political or scholarly person focused on one cause or project, as she was able to touch the lives of more people in small ways.
