Power, Politics, and Romance — Middlemarch

Hospital politics surface at the Vincys' dinner table while Lydgate is still new to Middlemarch. Bulstrode's power over the chaplaincy appointment is discussed even in a family connected to him. Mr. Vincy prefers Farebrother's companionable sermons to Tyke's dry doctrine. Lydgate says appointments should not follow personal liking and argues that the fittest man for a post is not always the most agreeable. He then insults the coroner Chichely by defending medical judgment over legal training, apparently forgetting who sits opposite him. Dr. Sprague stares at his wine-glass; Chichely will call him prick-eared later. Moving in good Middlemarch society is dangerous for a man who insists knowledge should qualify office. Mr. Vincy cheerfully suggests they join the ladies.

In the drawing room Lydgate monopolizes Rosamond in a tete-a-tete. She never jokes but always says the right thing, and her music seems to release a hidden soul though she is mainly an exquisite interpreter. Fred's Cherry Ripe does not stop her performance. He tells her he has found charms in Middlemarch nearer than the landscape rides. She asks about dancing; he says he would dance with her if allowed. He stays through supper and punch, watches Farebrother play masterly whist, and leaves thinking first of fever research, not marriage.

Walking home he admires Rosamond's polished intelligence and virtuous beauty, picturing a wife as feminine radiance like flowers and music. Then he reads Louis on fever far into the night with a passion for microscopic paths anguish takes, pitying men stuck in blinkered professions. He congratulates himself on choosing medicine, which unites scientific distance with neighborly warmth, and thinks Farebrother an anomaly among clergymen who may play cards for money.

Rosamond, meanwhile, has registered every look as proof of a romance she already plotted for rank and escape from Middlemarch vulgarity. She thinks of his good birth and a celestial life without vulgar people. She sketches landscapes and practices music while awaiting his proposal. Eliot's punch line lands on both: each lives in a world of which the other knows nothing. Social ease, professional bluntness, and erotic staging advance on the same evening without any shared understanding.