When Marriage Meets Money Reality — Middlemarch

Mr. Vincy comes home from the will reading with his views reshuffled: disappointment at the market makes him swear at the groom, so Fred's idleness now earns a thrown embroidered cap and an order to pass his examination next term or leave the university for good. Fred, who yesterday expected horses and immediate marriage to Mary, is mute; Lucy pleads that providence saved the boy once and calls the estate a robbery.

Rosamond hears her father's threat to withhold consent and money from her Lydgate match, then calmly insists Papa does not mean it and that the engagement stands. She will manage him as she manages linen and the piano hour, while Lydgate, accepted and in love, spins a gossamer web of courtship at the piano, buys a house and dinner-service like ordering coats, and tells Farebrother marriage will bring calmness and freedom for science without counting cost or Rosamond's plate at Brassing.

When Rosamond hints that her father may forbid the match, Lydgate claims her as his because she is of age and urges a six-week wedding. She negotiates hems and honeymoon length; he buys plate at Brassing while telling himself that a wife's taste is a small price for the laboratory peace he has never had to budget or defend to Mr. Vincy and his broker.

Mr. Vincy demands life insurance, which reassures the mothers but not the budget or the groom who expected horses yesterday. Rosamond's obstinacy and Lydgate's egoism braid into a marriage plot moving faster than any father's purse, life-insurance forms, or warning from Farebrother about money, setting up the debt and discord that will later nearly drown both in Middlemarch gossip and tradesmen's letters while Fred still must pass his examination under Caleb's eye and Mary still refuses to be bought with Featherstone's midnight codicil. The Vincy household splits: Rosamond spends in advance on house and plate, Fred shrinks from labor, and Lydgate mistakes domestic music for the calm he will not find once bills arrive and creditors know his name at the New Hospital board and at every tradesman's door Rosamond has already opened.