The Widow's Cap and Future Plans — Middlemarch

To Dorothea, Will's parting seems the close of their personal relations: he will be another man if he returns, and she explains his reserve by the cruel codicil. She dwells on their ended intimacy and, not yet naming love, sobs over the miniature of Will's grandmother as if to comfort the unjustly judged. Eliot notes youth thinks each crisis final; Dorothea does not know Love had come briefly like a dream before waking.

At Freshitt, Celia removes Dorothea's widow's cap before Sir James and the dinner party; talk of second marriage stirs Mrs. Cadwallader's wit and Sir James's disgust. Dorothea declares remarriage as indifferent to her as fox-hunting and tells Celia she will never marry again, preferring plans to drain land and build a colony where work is done well and she knows every worker.

Sir James hears she will take to plans like her old self and secretly approves her choosing solitude over a second match the world expects. Mrs. Cadwallader had already plotted lords and marchionesses; Dorothea frees herself from oblique references to excellent matches with calm self-possession.

Youth commits its ardent soul to a vision of useful land while grief for Will runs under the resolve like a hidden spring. The cap removed, Dorothea speaks up as she used to; practical colonies replace what she cannot name, and Caleb Garth will receive the consultations she needs next.