XII explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Ambition and Frustration

  Fred's anxiety about his debts and his uncle's manipulative demand highlights his frustrated ambitions, while Rosamond's detailed fantasies of marrying Lydgate reflect her own ambitious social aspirations.

• Gender Roles and Women's Agency

  Rosamond's active construction of a romantic future with Lydgate shows how women in this society used marriage as their primary avenue for agency and social elevation, while Mary's independence and honesty offer a contrasting model.

• Money and Economic Pressure

  Fred's small debts and his dependence on Featherstone's expectations illustrate the economic pressures that shape the lives of young men in Middlemarch.

Characters to notice

• Fred Vincy

  Fred is anxious about Featherstone's demand to get a certificate from Bulstrode, worried about his debts and his father's displeasure, and feels misanthropic about his limited prospects.

• Rosamond Vincy

  Rosamond meets Lydgate and immediately begins weaving a detailed fantasy of their married life, feeling that this is the great epoch of her life.

• Mary Garth

  Mary is honest and satirical, dismissive of Rosamond's interest in Lydgate, and speaks with a streak of satiric bitterness; she also expresses concern about Fred being called 'unsteady'.

• Tertius Lydgate

  Lydgate meets Rosamond at Featherstone's house, is struck by her appearance, and their eyes meet in a moment of mutual attraction.

• Peter Featherstone

  Featherstone is present during the visit, teasing Fred and praising Rosamond's singing, and is revealed to have invented the story about Bulstrode to torment Fred.

Key passages

• “Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding.”

  Fred felt humiliated by having to ask for certificates at Featherstone's command, knowing he had boasted about inheriting from the old miser.

  Fred's internal shame about his dependence on Featherstone.

• “The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”

  Young men who are self-absorbed cannot truly understand other people.

  Narrator's commentary on Fred's limited self-awareness.

• “She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.”

  Rosamond was so naturally performative that she played her own role without realizing it was a performance.

  Narrator's insight into Rosamond's self-deception and theatricality.

• “And a stranger was absolutely necessary to Rosamond's social romance, which had always turned on a lover and bridegroom who was not a Middlemarcher, and who had no connections at all like her own: of late, indeed, the construction seemed to demand that he should somehow be related to a baronet.”

  Rosamond's romantic fantasies required a suitor from outside Middlemarch, preferably with aristocratic connections.

  Rosamond's social ambition and desire for upward mobility through marriage.

• “For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself.”

  Mary's defining trait was her honesty; she avoided self-deception and could laugh at herself.

  Characterization of Mary Garth's integrity and self-awareness.