Casaubon, Reverend Edward
Title
Casaubon, Reverend Edward
Description
A pedantic, middle-aged scholar, intensely self-centred and jealous. "Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic; it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness
into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be
known; it was that proud, narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples; he was capable of severe self-restraint; resolute he was in being a man of honour according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized opinion . . . the difficulty of making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his mind . . . even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key to all Mythologies." He marries Dorothea Brooke, who has idealized him, and soon proves himself selfishly blind to her claims, and incapable of responding to her devotion. His ambition is centred in his projected masterpiece, "Key to all Mythologies," but he lacks the ability necessary to carry it to completion. Because Dorothea manifests a friendly interest in his young kinsman, Will Ladislaw, he becomes unreasonably jealous, and when he dies some two years after his marriage, he leaves a codicil to his will depriving Dorothea of his property in case she marries Ladislaw. It has been claimed by some that the Reverend Mark pattison, Rector of Lincoln, was the original of Mr. Casaubon, while others have indignantly denied this. Mark Pattison was a visitor at George Eliot's home, and it is possible that she may, unconsciously, have copied some of his superficial characteristics. This, together with the name--Mark Pattison's best known work was his life of Isaac Casaubon--may have given rise to the report that he was the original. (See article by Lord Acton in Nineteenth Century, vol. 17, p. 480; Morley, Critical Miscellanies, vol. 3, p. 165; chapter by Mrs. Lynn Lynton, in Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, p. 100; article in Academy, 9th August, 1884.)
into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be
known; it was that proud, narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples; he was capable of severe self-restraint; resolute he was in being a man of honour according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized opinion . . . the difficulty of making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his mind . . . even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key to all Mythologies." He marries Dorothea Brooke, who has idealized him, and soon proves himself selfishly blind to her claims, and incapable of responding to her devotion. His ambition is centred in his projected masterpiece, "Key to all Mythologies," but he lacks the ability necessary to carry it to completion. Because Dorothea manifests a friendly interest in his young kinsman, Will Ladislaw, he becomes unreasonably jealous, and when he dies some two years after his marriage, he leaves a codicil to his will depriving Dorothea of his property in case she marries Ladislaw. It has been claimed by some that the Reverend Mark pattison, Rector of Lincoln, was the original of Mr. Casaubon, while others have indignantly denied this. Mark Pattison was a visitor at George Eliot's home, and it is possible that she may, unconsciously, have copied some of his superficial characteristics. This, together with the name--Mark Pattison's best known work was his life of Isaac Casaubon--may have given rise to the report that he was the original. (See article by Lord Acton in Nineteenth Century, vol. 17, p. 480; Morley, Critical Miscellanies, vol. 3, p. 165; chapter by Mrs. Lynn Lynton, in Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, p. 100; article in Academy, 9th August, 1884.)
Source
<em>Middlemarch</em>
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Type
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