From Middlemarch
Dorothea Brooke. So far, she is the lead character in Middlemarch, although others are now being introduced (Lydgate, Fred Vincy, Mary Garth) who are coming to the foreground. But the first part of the book is entitled “Miss Brooke”. So obviously she is of great importance. I have said below that I see a lot of myself in Dorothea, and it is perhaps because of that deep identification that I find her so annoying. It’s tough sometimes, to truly see yourself. To have your motives explained to you in cold clear language … It makes you shiver and want to hide. The mark of a great novelist, in my opinion.
To boil it all down shamefully, Dorothea is a rich girl, inflamed with the desire to be useful. She wants to live the life of an ascetic, she enjoys sacrifice, she is full of religious passion, she dresses in an ostentatiously plain way, denying her own beauty … and her main goal in getting married is to find an ideal husband, one whom she can look up to. Love has nothing to do with it. I’m over-simplifying, but that so far is what I know of Dorothea.
The following excerpt pretty much tells you all you need to know about Dorothea:
Most men thought her bewitching when she was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it.
Here are some of Eliot’s descriptions of the “earnest” Dorothea, descriptions which open the book:
Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likelyl to seek martyrdom to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom, after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.
I know this is a bit old, but I noticed nobody had responded to it. I think “earnest” is the perfect adjective to describe Dorothea, and her “ardour” is the other word that I distinctly remember Eliot using. I am not sure how far you are in the book, but I find her visit to Rome absolutely unforgettable–those descriptions are so beautifully wrought.
I’m not sure you would be interested, but I have this idea about the way in which miscommunications between the characters of Middlemarch and their subsequent tragic failures of ambition actually contribute to the success of the narrator’s grand ambition, which is to create a “Study of Provincial Life.” If you’re interested, we can talk more or I could even send you what I’ve written.