The Sisters and Their Differences — Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke is not yet twenty, living at Tipton Grange with her scattered uncle Mr. Brooke and her younger sister Celia. She is strikingly beautiful but dresses with deliberate plainness; Eliot says religion alone would have dictated it. Her mind is theoretic and hungry for moral greatness: she knows Pascal and Jeremy Taylor by heart and treats fashionable dress as an occupation for Bedlam. Celia has more common-sense and mildly acquiesces in Dorothea's views, yet Eliot insists the younger sister has always worn a yoke and keeps private opinions. Neighbors prefer Celia's innocence; Dorothea seems too unusual, though men find her bewitching on horseback. She imagines suitors must be in love with Celia, not her, and dreams of marriage as tutelage under a great scholar, not flirtation with the amiable Sir James Chettam.

The chapter's hinge is their mother's jewels, six months after Mr. Brooke handed them over. Celia wants to divide and wear them; Dorothea says they should never wear ornaments at all, gives Celia the amethyst necklace and pearl cross, and refuses a cross for herself as a trinket. Then sunlight hits an emerald in a ring-box. Dorothea exclaims at the beauty of the gems, rationalizes them through Revelation, and keeps the emerald ring and bracelet while sending the rest away. When Celia asks if she will wear jewels in company, Dorothea answers haughtily that she cannot tell to what level she may sink. Both sisters end the scene unhappy until Dorothea presses her cheek to Celia's arm in silent reconciliation.

Through the chapter Eliot also sketches Mr. Brooke's vagueness, Dorothea's heiress prospects, and the arrival due at dinner of the Reverend Edward Casaubon, a learned scholar engaged on a great religious history. Dorothea already feels venerating expectation before they meet. Casaubon represents exactly the intellectual, fatherly marriage she craves, and the chapter closes with that anticipation hanging over the jewel scene's exposed contradiction.