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Personification
Explanation and Analysis—A Heated Argument:
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.
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