Middlemarch Compassion and Forgiveness Quotes

Dorothea tells Will Ladislaw that she can't appreciate all the fine art while they're in Rome because she can't get past the consciousness that so many people in the world aren't able to see it. Remember that at the time this novel takes place (the 1830s), you couldn't just go online and buy a print or a plaster copy of your favorite work of art – you had to see it in person or not at all. And Dorothea is always conscious of the plight of the poor. In Rome, she can't forget how many people across the world are too busy trying to scrape together enough money to buy their next meal to enjoy all the art in Rome. She feels that it would be selfish to enjoy what so many people aren't able to access. But Will Ladislaw calls that feeling a "fanaticism of sympathy." In other words, she's taking her sympathy way too far. Is that possible?

This is a rare moment when the narrator steps in and uses the first person singular ("I") to talk about herself as though she were a character in the book. We've seen a few other passages where she uses the first person plural ("we") to include the reader and all the characters in a general statement about what all humans must feel in a certain situation. But this passage cuts the reader off – the narrator is "very sorry for" Casaubon, but she doesn't say that "we" all are, or even that "we" should be. This could be part of the lesson Eliot is teaching us about sympathizing with others. She wants us to know that she, "for [her] part," does feel pity for Casaubon, in order to let us know that, if we were good people, we would too.

Yet another passage about Dorothea's relationship with Casaubon. Lydgate is recalling his impressions of her when she was helping to take care of her husband after his heart attack: she seemed as though she wanted to suppress her own desires and "impulse[s]" so that she would only act on the "yearnings of faithfulness and compassion." So, after Casaubon's heart attack, Dorothea was able to move beyond her earlier feelings of self-pity to feel sympathy for what her husband was feeling. Sympathy's a good thing, yes, but is it good for Dorothea to suppress "every impulse in her" except for sympathy and compassion?