Middlemarch (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
However grotesque it appears, the choice is implicit in Dorothea's nature. In the first chapter, she shows a taste for righteous self-denial, a streak of ascetic Puritanism. When she and Celia divide up their late mother's jewelry, Dorothea tries to "justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy." She loves riding horses but "felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it." Obviously she is avoiding the sensual, and by...
