“Middlemarch” (post 3) by George Eliot (post 13): Dr. Lydgate, an example of a high-functioning person who may listen to the voices within and have two selves

“Middlemarch originates in two unfinished pieces that Eliot worked on during 1869 and 1870: the novel "Middlemarch" (which focused on the character of Lydgate) and the long story "Miss Brooke" (which focused on the character of Dorothea)” (1).

Chapter I introduced Dorothea. Chapter XV now introduces Mr. Lydgate, Middlemarch’s new doctor. In discussing Lydgate, the narrator makes certain generalizations about human nature and personal psychology:

“Most of us who turn to any subject with love [e.g., medicine] remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love. Something of that sort happened to Lydgate” (2, p. 134).

“He had two selves within him apparently, and they must learn to accommodate each other and bear reciprocal impediments. Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us”, (2, p. 143).

Where did the narrator get such notions? Probably from George Eliot, who listened to the voices within her and had two selves, which she called “double consciousness” (see previous posts).

1. Wikipedia. “Middlemarch.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlemarch

2. George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans). Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life [1872]. Edited with Notes by David Carroll. With an Introduction by David Russell. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019.