Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke was a young woman of a rare, serious kind of beauty, which her very plain clothes somehow made more striking.She was thought remarkably clever, though people liked to add that her younger sister, Celia, had far more common sense.Dorothea longed to give herself to some great and noble purpose, and she cared little for comfort, fashion, or ordinary pleasures.

The two sisters were orphans, and they lived at Tipton Grange with their kind but scatter-brained bachelor uncle, Mr. Brooke.Dorothea was not yet twenty, and her head was full of half-formed plans for helping the poor and rebuilding their cottages.She was open and eager, with no vanity in her at all, and she was quite ready to be a martyr for a cause she believed in.

Her ideas about marriage were as unusual as the rest of her.She did not want a pleasant young husband who simply agreed with everything she said.She dreamed instead of marrying a wise old scholar — a man who could be a kind of father to her, and teach her Greek and Hebrew if she asked.

A handsome young neighbour, Sir James Chettam, was clearly courting her, and everyone but Dorothea could see it.She thought he would do very well for Celia, and she talked to him only about drains and better cottages for the poor.Sir James, who understood almost nothing she said, kept answering “Exactly,” which she found faintly annoying.

Then a guest came to dinner: Mr. Casaubon, a pale, learned clergyman of nearly fifty.He was writing an enormous book called “The Key to All Mythologies,” which he had been working on for many years.As he spoke of his great work, Dorothea listened with shining eyes, certain that she had met a truly great mind.

Celia thought him dull and rather ugly, and privately compared him to a dried-up scholar in a picture book.But Dorothea had already begun to imagine a life spent helping this man finish his masterpiece, and nothing Celia said could touch that dream.