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Sir James Chettam
When we are first introduced to him, Rev. Edward Casaubon is a 45-year-old bachelor. He is wealthy and high-ranking, but socially awkward and dull. He is also described as ugly and “dry;” when Sir James Chettam hears that Dorothea is engaged to him, he laments that Casaubon is “no better than a mummy.” His house, Lowick Manor, is described as correspondingly dark and dreary. Casaubon has spent several decades of his life on a work of theological scholarship called The Key to All Mythologies. He praises patience and diligent work as the keys to success, but over the course of the novel it becomes clear that he is paralyzed by insecurity and that the project will likely never be finished. Casaubon’s cousin Will Ladislaw also reveals that because Casaubon doesn’t read German, he has not been able to keep abreast of the latest developments in theological scholarship and that his project will not be taken seriously (if it is ever published at all). Casaubon suffers from ill health and dies only a few years after marrying Dorothea. Toward the end of his life he becomes intensely suspicious of Will’s feelings about Dorothea, and thus stipulates in his will that if Dorothea marries Will she will lose all the property she inherited from him.
Rev. Edward Casaubon Quotes in Middlemarch
The Middlemarch quotes below are all either spoken by Rev. Edward Casaubon or refer to Rev. Edward Casaubon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 4, Chapter 42
Quotes
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least of all against those which came from Dorothea. And he had begun now to frame possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt on before.
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Book 5, Chapter 48
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And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past - nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past the lonely labour, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him! And had she not wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labour? - But she had thought the work was to be something greater, which she could serve in devoutly for its own sake. Was it right, even to soothe his grief - would it be possible, even if she promised - to work as in a treadmill fruitlessly?
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Book 8, Chapter 72
Quotes
“And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.”
Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.
“Well, I mean about babies and those things,” explained Celia. “I should not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do to Mr Casaubon.”
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Rev. Edward Casaubon Quotes in Middlemarch
The Middlemarch quotes below are all either spoken by Rev. Edward Casaubon or refer to Rev. Edward Casaubon. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 4, Chapter 42
Quotes
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least of all against those which came from Dorothea. And he had begun now to frame possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt on before.
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Book 5, Chapter 48
Quotes
And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past - nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past the lonely labour, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him! And had she not wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labour? - But she had thought the work was to be something greater, which she could serve in devoutly for its own sake. Was it right, even to soothe his grief - would it be possible, even if she promised - to work as in a treadmill fruitlessly?
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Book 8, Chapter 72
Quotes
“And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.”
Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.
“Well, I mean about babies and those things,” explained Celia. “I should not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do to Mr Casaubon.”
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Explanation and Analysis:
