| Middlemarch Contributor(s): Eliot, George (Author) |
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ISBN: ISBN-13: 9798595414944 Publisher: Independently Published OUR PRICE: $19.79 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2021 * Not available - Not in print at this time * |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics - Fiction | Historical - General - Fiction | Psychological |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Lexile Measure: 860 |
| Physical Information: 1.12" H x 7" W x 10" (2.08 lbs) 552 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Herhand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those inwhich the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature andbearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincialfashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, -or from one of our elderpoets, -in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia worescarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixedconditions, in most of which her sister shared. The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good: " if youinquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tyingforefathers-anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestordiscernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, andmanaged to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate. Youngwomen of such birth, living in a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly largerthan a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter. Then there waswell-bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have beenenough to account for plain dress, quite apart from religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines withoutany eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor byheart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes offeminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of aspiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions ofdrapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the worldwhich might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she wasenamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have thoseaspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in aquarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girltended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by goodlooks, vanity, and merely canine affection. With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yettwenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost theirparents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in aSwiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy thedisadvantages of their orphaned condition. |