Middlemarch Ch. 19: Art, Beauty, and Uncomforta

George Eliot

Art, Beauty, and Uncomfortable Recognition

0:00

0:00 / 0:00

0:00

Summary

Historical markers fix the date: George IV, Wellington, Vincy mayor, Dorothea in Rome on her wedding journey. Romanticism still ferments among long-haired German artists; travelers mistake sacred art and carry thin pockets of knowledge about what they are seeing.

Will Ladislaw leaves the Belvedere Torso when Naumann seizes his arm: come quickly or she will change her pose. In the hall of the reclining Ariadne they find Mrs. Casaubon in Quakerish gray, cloak thrown back, one ungloved hand pillowing her cheek, gazing at sunlight on the floor rather than the marble. Naumann rhapsodizes on antithesis: pagan perfection beside living Christian consciousness. He wants to paint her as a nun, notes her wedding ring, mistakes Casaubon for father or rich patron, and urges pursuit. Will says she is married to his cousin and refuses.

Their quarrel turns to art versus language. Will insists painting stares with insistent imperfection; you cannot paint a woman's voice, which is diviner than anything seen. Naumann teases jealousy and calls her Will's aunt; Will forbids the word and names her Mrs. Casaubon. Something has happened to Will regarding her, though he barely knows her and half creates the irritation himself. The chapter ends with susceptibilities clashing against objects that remain innocently quiet.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Refusing the Living Pose

A person can become a scene without consent the moment someone else treats their posture as content. Will hears Dorothea's voice exceed any canvas while Naumann sees only antithesis and commission.

When you feel sharp anger at how someone is being looked at, ask whether the fight is about art or about who owns the story of a body.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Will Ladislaw

In Rome he and Naumann turn Dorothea's stillness among the statues into a picture she did not consent to be. Looking is safer than admitting he has walked into his cousin's marriage. Aesthetic hunger lets him possess a moment without asking for a place in the life that produced it.

Continue this thoughtLives That Do Not Become Monuments

Coming Up in Chapter 20

Two hours earlier Dorothea was sobbing alone in the Via Sistina. Eliot will show why Rome, which should have crowned her marriage, feels like a funeral procession of ideals, and why Casaubon's courtesy at breakfast will cut deeper than any ruin..

PreviousPrevious Chapter NextNext Chapter

Original text

1,485 wordscomplete

Chapter 19

Art, Beauty, and Uncomfortable Recognition

“L’ altra vedete ch’ha fatto alla guancia Della sua palma, sospirando, letto.” —Purgatorio, vii. When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome. In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years than it is at present. Travellers did not often carry full information on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets; and even the most…

Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.

Master this chapter. Complete your experience

Purchase the complete book to access all chapters and support classic literature

Buy atAmazon.com

Available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book formats

The Mill on the Floss

George Eliot

Also by George Eliot

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

Explores society & class

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Explores society & class

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

Explores society & class

Social Class & Status Love & Relationships Moral Dilemmas & Ethics

Lessons from Middlemarch

Theme-by-theme analyses that connect this book to modern life skills.

Deep diving the literary elements.

Art, Beauty, and Uncomfortable Recognition

Summary

Why This Matters