Behind the Scholar's Mask — Middlemarch

Eliot interrupts the marriage plot to ask why Dorothea should own the only point of view. Casaubon, blinking and mole-spotted, spiritually a-hungered like the rest of us, married by the same social logic as any man of position: choose a blooming young lady, younger and more educable, make settlements, expect family pleasures and a copy of himself. He hoped Dorothea might even replace a hired secretary. When she accepted with effusion, he believed happiness was beginning.

His soul, sensitive without enthusiasm, fluttered in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. The Key to All Mythologies weighed like lead; Carp's depreciatory review lived in a locked drawer and in verbal memory; even Christian hope leaned on the immortality of the unwritten Key. Dorothea had won a place in the library by pleading insistence, copying quotations for a new Parergon on Egyptian mysteries.

One morning Casaubon hands her Will Ladislaw's letter in a distant tone and declares he will decline any visit, since guests of desultory vivacity are a fatigue. Dorothea, stung by a complaint she has not made, asks why he treats her as an opponent. He calls her hasty and closes debate. She leaves Will's letters unread and copies Latin with furious neatness. Half an hour later a book crashes to the floor; Casaubon clutches the library steps, gasping. She reaches him: "Can you lean on me, dear?" Sir James recommends Lydgate; Celia, hearing the news, says Casaubon is not half fond enough of Dorothea.