“Middlemarch” (post 4) by George Eliot (post 14): Dorothea converses with seemingly alive portrait of a woman, suggestive of multiple personality

Dorothea, the protagonist, a young, attractive woman, has just returned from her honeymoon in Rome with her much-older husband, Mr. Casaubon, with whom she is becoming disillusioned.

“Dorothea…felt nothing but dreary oppression…walked around the room…her wandering gaze came to the group of miniatures, and…saw something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr Casaubon’s [her husband’s] aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate marriage…Dorothea could fancy that it was alive now…She felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her and could see how she was looking at it. Here was a woman who had known some difficulty about marriage…the face was masculine…The vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she felt herself smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked up as if she were again talking to a figure in front of her. But the smile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said aloud—

‘Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad—how dreadful!

“She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor, with the irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire if she could do anything for him” (1, pp. 258-259).

Comment

Dorothea, who is neither psychotic nor on drugs, visualizes and converses with a woman in a portrait, who is said to have had an unhappy marriage. At first, Dorothea is happy to converse with a woman whose unhappy marriage would make her sympathetic. But then the woman evidently says something to Dorothea that is “cruel” and “dreadful.”

What kind of person could have such a realistic, imaginary dialogue? It could be a fiction writer who is talking with a problematic character, or a person with multiple personality who is talking with an alternate personality whom she sees in a mirror or is otherwise the object of her attention.

In short, the episode suggests that the protagonist of this novel has multiple personality. But if the novel does not intend to suggest multiple personality, per se, and it is not integral to the plot or character development, then it is “gratuitous multiple personality,” meaning it is in the novel only because it reflects the author’s psychology, multiple personality trait.

That the woman from the portrait had a masculine face may be another connection to this author, who used a masculine pseudonym and may have had a masculine nose (according to the cover of the biography by Nancy Henry, noted in a previous post).

1. 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.

Added same day: Is there any other literary or psychological explanation for the above passage?