Pride and the Helping Hand — Middlemarch

At Christmas dinner-parties the medical men gossip about Lydgate's expenses, Peacock's patients, and whether Rosamond's marriage can fund his household, while Mr. Farebrother defends the new doctor and Dorothea's hospital reports lend him professional credit. The town reads debt in shop visits and slow fees before Lydgate names it aloud to anyone who could help.

Farebrother finds Lydgate excited, vague, and opiate-haunted in his work-room after the cholera preparations, yet still assumes the marriage is pleasant because Rosamond performs composure in public. He sees agitation without the domestic key: pride and need are bottled behind theories that run wide of patient landmarks.

On New Year's Day at the Vincys', Rosamond wears studied negation while inwardly opposing her husband; Mrs. Vincy complains of his proud, close disposition, and Mary Garth tells Rumpelstiltskin while Fred watches Farebrother admire her. Lydgate looks bored beside a silent Mr. Vincy, as if the party were a stage for rank, not partnership.

In the hall Farebrother offers friendship and practical help through hard times, speaking gratefully of the living Lydgate won him; Lydgate repels him with cold reticence, says people exaggerate difficulties, and checks his watch. Eliot names the mortal strangeness: he could privately do the Vicar a service, yet cannot bear reciprocity implied; suicide seems easier than naming his case aloud to the one ally who would listen.