Middlemarch Ch. 7: The Shallow Stream of

George Eliot

The Shallow Stream of Passion

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Summary

Casaubon spends weeks at the Grange while his Key to all Mythologies waits, having deliberately chosen courtship to secure female companionship, fancy, and tendance for declining years. When he tries to abandon himself to feeling, he finds an exceedingly shallow rill and concludes poets exaggerate masculine passion. Dorothea's ardent submission satisfies his previsions; he briefly wonders whether she lacks something, then decides tradition must be wrong.

She asks to read Latin and Greek as Milton's daughters did, promising not to be naughty or stupid. He permits copying characters to save his eyes. She wants masculine knowledge as ground for truth, not only wifely devotion, and wishes, poor child, to be wise herself. Lessons discourage her; Greek accents hint at secrets beyond woman's reason, while Celia sees other people's pretensions more clearly because she feels less.

Brooke interrupts the tutorial, declares classics too taxing for women, praises light music and pretty playing, and tells Casaubon to teach Dorothea quiet. Casaubon hates iterated tunes; Dorothea prefers the sobs of the Freiberg organ. Brooke shuffles out imagining Casaubon a future bishop because of a pamphlet on the Catholic Question. Eliot notes he will later denounce bishop incomes without remembering this hour, a quiet joke about minds that hold contradictory views at once.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Testing Help That Keeps You Small

Lessons can flatter your devotion while leaving your judgment dependent. Casaubon finds courtship a shallow rill yet enjoys Dorothea's submission, and Brooke tells her deep study is too taxing while she copies Greek to save his eyes.

When someone offers to teach you, ask whether the help would still be offered if you became an equal who could disagree.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Edward Casaubon

He chose courtship to secure tendance for declining years, then finds only a shallow stream where passion was supposed to run. The discovery does not send him back to Dorothea as a person. It confirms that feeling was never his element, which leaves the Key in charge of the self.

Continue this thoughtThe Work That Must Not Be Seen Failing

Coming Up in Chapter 8

Sir James, warned by Mrs. Cadwallader, will seek the Rector's help to delay the marriage and find no ally. He will still build the cottages, and Celia will begin to receive the attention he once gave Dorothea..

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Chapter 07

The Shallow Stream of Passion

“Piacer e popone Vuol la sua stagione.” —Italian Proverb. Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at the Grange in these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress of his great work—the Key to all Mythologies—naturally made him look forward the more eagerly to the happy termination of courtship. But he had deliberately incurred the hindrance, having made up his mind that it was now time for him to adorn his life with the graces of female companionship, to irradiate the gloom which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals…

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The Shallow Stream of Passion

Summary

Why This Matters