5 Middlemarch - Read By Stephanie Poppins

Middlemarch by George Eliot explores the lives of its inhabitants as they navigate societal expectations, personal aspirations, and the changing world around them. The story centres on Dorothea Brooke, a young, idealistic woman who marries an older scholar.

In this episode, Dorothea is frustrated with the unwelcome attentions of Mr Chettam.

Transcript

Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,

Your go-to podcast that offers you a calm and relaxing transition into a great night's sleep.

It is time to relax and fully let go.

There is nothing you need to be doing now,

And nowhere you need to go.

Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day drift away.

This is your time and your space.

Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.

There is nothing you need to be doing now,

And nowhere you need to go.

Happy listening.

Chapter 3 Continued Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than other ladies of her age.

Signs are small measurable things,

But interpretations are illimitable,

And in girls of sweet ardent nature every sign is apt to conjure up wonder,

Hope,

Belief,

Vast as a sky and coloured by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge.

Because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust,

It is not therefore clear that Mr.

Cassabon was unworthy of it.

He stayed a little longer than he had intended on a slight pressure of invitation from Mr.

Brooke,

Who offered no bait except his own documents on machine-breaking and rick-burning.

Mr.

Cassabon was called into the library to look at these in a heap,

While his host picked up first one and then the other to read aloud from in a skipping and uncertain way pausing from one unfinished passage to another.

Mr.

Cassabon made a dignified though somewhat sad audience,

Bowed in the right place and avoided looking at anything documentary as far as possible,

Without showing disregard or impatience,

Mindful that the man who took him on this severe mental scamper was not only an amiable host but a landholder.

Was his endurance aided also by the reflection that Mr.

Brooke was the uncle of Dorothea?

Suddenly he seemed more and more bent on making her talk to him,

On drawing her out,

And in looking at her his face was often lit up by a smile like pale wintry sunshine.

Before he left the next morning,

While taking a pleasant walk with Miss Brooke along the gravel terrace,

He had mentioned to her he felt the disadvantage of loneliness,

The need of that cheerful companionship with which the presence of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity.

And he delivered this statement with as much careful precision as if he'd been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be attended with results.

Indeed Mr.

Cassabon was not used to expect he should have to repeat or revise his communications of a practical or personal kind.

The inclinations which he deliberately stated on the 2nd of October he would think it enough to refer to by the mention of that date,

Judging by the standard of his own memory,

Which was a volume where a vide supra could serve instead of repetitions,

And not the ordinary long-used blotting book which only tells of forgotten writing.

But in this case Mr.

Cassabon's confidence was not likely to be falsified,

For Dorothea heard and retained what he said,

With the eager interest of a fresh young nature to which every variety and experience is an epoch.

It was three o'clock in the beautiful breezy autumn day when Mr.

Cassabon drove off to his rectory at Lowick,

Only five miles from Tipton,

And Dorothea,

Who had on her bonnet and shawl,

Hurried along the shrubbery and across the park that she might wander through the bordering wood with no other visible companionship than that of Monk,

The great St.

Bernard dog who always took care of the young ladies in their walks.

There had risen before her the girl's vision of a possible future for herself,

To which she looked forward with that trembling hope,

And she wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption.

She walked bristly in the brisk air,

The colour rose in her cheeks,

And her straw bonnet,

Which our contemporaries might look at with conjectural curiosity as an obsolete form of basket,

Fell a little backward.

She would perhaps be hardly characterised enough if it were admitted she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind,

So as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner,

At a time when public feeling required the meagerness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows,

Never surpassed by any great race except the Fijian.

This was a trait of Miss Brooke's asceticism,

But there was nothing of an ascetic's expression in her bright full eyes as she looked before her,

Not consciously seeing,

But absorbing into the intensity of her mood the solemn glory of the afternoon,

With its long swathes of light between the far-off rows of limes whose shadows touched each other.

All people young or old would have thought her an interesting object if they had referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the newly awakened ordinary images of young love.

But perhaps no persons then living,

Certainly none in the neighbourhood of Tipton,

Would have had a sympathetic understanding for the dreams of a girl whose notions about marriage took their colour entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the ends of life,

An enthusiasm which was lit chiefly by its own fire,

And included neither the niceties of the trousseau,

The pattern of plate,

Nor even the honours and sweet joys of the blooming matron.

It had now entered Dorothy's mind that Mr Cassabon might wish to make her his wife,

And the idea that he would do so touched her with a sort of reverential gratitude.

How good of him!

Nay,

It would be almost as if a winged messenger had suddenly stood beside her path and held out his hand towards her.

For a long while she had been oppressed by the indefiniteness which hung in her mind like a thick summer haze over all her desire to make her life greatly effective.

What could she do?

What ought she to do?

She,

Hardly more than a budding woman,

But yet with an active conscience and a great mental need,

Not to be satisfied by a girlish instruction comparable to the nibblings and judgements of a discursive mouse.

With some endowment of stupidity and conceit,

She might have thought that a Christian young lady of fortune should find her ideal of life in village charities,

Patronage of the humbler clergy,

The perusal of female scripture characters unfolding the private experience of sorrow under the old dispensation,

And Dorcas under the new,

And the care of her soul over her embroidery in her own boudoir,

With a background of prospective marriage to a man who,

If less strict than herself,

As being involved in affairs religiously inexplicable,

Might be prayed for and seasonably exalted.

From such contentment poor Dorothea was shut out.

The intensity of her religious disposition,

The coercion it exercised over her life,

Was but one aspect of a nature quaint,

And with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching,

Hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses,

A walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither,

The outcome was sure to strike others as once exaggeration and inconsistency.

The thing that seemed to her best,

She wanted to justify by the completest knowledge,

And not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on.

Into this soul hung her as yet all her youthful passion was poured.

The union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance,

And give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path.

I should learn everything then,

She said to herself,

Still walking quickly along the bridal road.

It would be my duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works.

There would be nothing trivial about our lives.

Everyday things with us would mean the greatest things.

It would be like marrying Pascal.

I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen it by,

And then I should know what to do when I got older.

I should see how it was possible to lead a grand life here,

Now in England.

I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now.

Everything seems like going on a mission to a people whose language I don't know.

Unless it were building good cottages,

There can be no doubt about that.

Oh,

I hope I should be able to get the people well housed in Lowick.

I will draw plenty of plans when I have time.

Dorothy had checked herself suddenly with self-rebuke for the presumptuous way in which she was reckoning on uncertain events.

But she was spared any inward effort to change the direction of her thoughts by the appearance of a cantering horseman round a turning of the road.

The well-groomed chestnut horse and two beautiful setters could leave no doubt the rider was Sir James Chetham.

He discerned Dorothea,

Jumped off his horse at once,

And having delivered it to his groom,

Advanced towards her with something white on his arm,

At which the two setters were barking in an excited manner.

Delightful to meet you,

Miss Brooke,

He said,

Raising his hat and showing his sleekly waving blonde hair.

It has hastened the pleasure I was looking forward to.

Miss Brooke was annoyed at the interruption.

This amiable baronet,

Really a suitable husband for Celia,

Exaggerated the necessity of making herself agreeable to the elder sister.

Even a prospective brother-in-law may be an oppression if he will always be presupposing too good an understanding with you and agreeing with you even when you contradict him.

The thought that he had made the mistake of paying his addresses to herself could not take shape.

All her mental activity was used up in persuasions of another kind,

But he was positively obtrusive at this moment and his dimpled hands were quite disagreeable.

Her roused temper made her colour deeply as she returned his greeting with some haughtiness.

Sir James,

Meanwhile,

Interpreted the heightened colour in the way most gratifying to himself and thought he never saw Miss Brooke looking so handsome.

I bought a little petitioner,

He said.

Or rather,

I bought him to see if he will be approved before his petition is offered.

He showed Dorothea the white object under his arm,

Which was a tiny Maltese puppy,

One of nature's most naive toys.

It is painful to me to see these creatures bred merely as pets,

Said Dorothea,

Whose opinion was forming itself that very moment,

Under the heat of irritation.

Why?

Said Sir James as they walked forward.

I believe all the petting that's given them does not make them happy.

They're too helpless and their lives are too frail.

A weasel or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting I like to think the animals about us have souls something like our own and either carry on their own little affairs or can be companions to us like Monk here.

Those creatures are parasitic.

I'm so glad I know you do not like them,

Said good Sir James.

I should never keep them for myself,

But ladies usually are fond of these Maltese dogs.

Here,

John,

Take this dog,

Will you?

The objectionable puppy,

Whose nose and eyes were unusually black and expressive,

Was thus got rid of.

You must not judge of Celia's feeling from mine,

She continued.

I think she likes these small pets.

She had a tiny terrier once,

Which she was very fond of.

It made me unhappy because I was afraid of treading on it.

I am rather short-sighted.

You have your own opinion about everything,

Miss Brook,

And it is always a good opinion.

What answer was possible to such stupid complimenting,

She thought.

Do you know I envy you that,

Sir James continued as they continued walking,

At the rather brisk pace set by Dorothea.

I don't quite understand what you mean.

Your power of forming an opinion.

I can form an opinion of persons.

I know when I like people.

But about other matters,

Do you know,

I often have a difficulty in deciding.

One hears very sensible things and opposites sides.

All that seems sensible.

Perhaps we don't always discriminate between sense and nonsense.

Dorothea then felt she had perhaps been rather rude.

Exactly,

Said Sir James,

But you seem to have the power of discrimination.

On the contrary,

Said Dorothea,

I am often unable to decide.

But that is from ignorance.