Brooke, Celia

Dorothea's pretty and proper younger sister. "The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally in favour of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent-looking… Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worna yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?" "But on safe opportunities she had an indirect mode of making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her down from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that people were staring, not listening. Celia was not impulsive; what she had to say could wait, and came from her always with the same quite staccato evenness." Her sense of propriety is often shocked by Dorothea's unconventional views and deeds, and she occasionally has courage to utter her criticisms. She dislikes Mr. Casaubon, to whose blinking and moles she strongly objects. After Dorothea marries Mr. Casaubon, Celia makes a very happy marriage with the correct Sir James Chettam, and feels an affectionate superiority to her sister, as one who has managed her life less well. her real affection for Dorothea does not allow her to be parted from her, even when she greatly disapproves of her second marriage. The original of Celia Brooke was George Eliot's elder sister, Christiana Evans, later Mrs. Edward Clarke, although the character of Celia is not an exact portrait of her sister.

<em>Middlemarch</em>

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