Mr Casaubon and Dorthea’s letters

The Word document posted here (above) is an excerpt from Chapter V of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, in which there is an exchange of letters between Rev, Edward Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke. Mr. Casaubon has decided to propose to Dorothea.

Mr. Casaubon’s letter is a great example of over intellectualizing the emotions (such as I myself used to do sometimes in my youth; reading about the life of distant others can help one to better understand oneself), and of verbosity. So that would could be said plainly becomes encumbered in exposition.

Note how Dorothea does just the opposite in her response, saying what needs to be said in just three sentences.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   June 2024