In my second year of university in England, I had one of the smallest rooms on campus but a beautiful view of the university town from the window in front of my desk. There, as the November snow fell outside, I spent hours poring over the great Victorian novels – Middlemarch, Bleak House, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My professors encouraged close reading of the texts rather than paying attention to the critics’ interpretations.
For an essay, I focused on three chapters of George Eliot’s Middlemarch which recount the main character Dorothea’s honeymoon journey to Rome. Despite all the good will in the world, Dorothea and her new husband only succeed in hurting each other by failing to see things from any perspective beyond their own. Dorothea married Mr Casaubon admiring his vocation as a scholar and wanting to help him. But Casaubon has insecurities about his scholarship, and only sees her offer of help in terms of how it wounds his pride.
