Summary

Chapter 56

This chapter focuses on Mr. Garth and Fred Vincy. Mr. Garth is really happy and busy working for Dorothea, because they share a lot of values and an interest in developing technology. Dorothea wants to set up her own estate for the working classes of Lowick, where they can live and work well. Mr. Garth goes out on his own to assess one of her properties that she is thinking of selling.

While visiting the property, Mr. Garth runs across some railway surveyors being threatened by local farm workers. Garth tries to stop the confrontation and succeeds when help comes from a surprising person – Fred Vincy who just happened to be out for a ride on his horse. Once things have calmed down, Fred helps Mr. Garth with some of his work. By the end of the day Fred asks if he could work for him. Fred explains his job and courtship situation with Mary to Mr. Garth, and Mr. Garth appears pleased. He tells Fred that he will consider it overnight and get back to him in the morning.

That night Mr. Garth decides to take Fred on and speaks to his wife about it. The next day, Fred accepts the job and tells his parents. Mr. Vincy is not happy at all, but decides to be passive aggressive about it instead of outright banning Fred from taking the job. Mrs. Vincy is heartbroken. At the end of the chapter we learn that it is not just Fred who has disappointed Mr. Vincy lately: Rosamond and Lydgate have been over-spending and he worries that Rosamond will soon come to him seeking his help with getting out of debt. Mention is made of Rosamond and a baby, but we get very little extra information other than that something happened that ‘disappointed’ her.

Chapter 57

Fred visits the Garth’s home, hoping to see Mary there. Instead he meets most of the rest of the family – Mrs. Garth and the kids. In a private moment, Fred talks to Mrs. Garth about the situation – he tries to reassure her that he won’t be any trouble for Mr. Garth by taking on the job. Mrs. Garth is not pleased with the whole thing but she starts out by simply speaking in general terms and innuendo. However, this soon backfires on her when she basically lets it slip that she believes Fred has messed with Mary’s prospects of gaining a better husband with Mr. Farebrother. Fred is shocked but then goes to visit Mary in her place of work - Mr. Farebrother's new parsonage in Lowick.

Mr. Farebrother is welcoming and even contrives a way for the young pair to have a few minutes alone together to talk. Mary is taken aback when Fred brings Mrs. Garth's suspicions up as she never considered that Mr. Farebrother could have feelings for her. She tells Fred off promptly. At the end of the chapter, we get a view into her mind. She declares to herself that she will remain steadfast to Fred, for several reasons, the last of which is that he has already had so many disappointments in life and he needs to have something stay consistent.

References:

• The epigraph for chapter 56 is a quote from Sir Henry Wotton's 'The Character of a Happy Life' (1651).
• 'In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged...' this is a reference to how the county Middlemarch is in was divided.
• Cholera is mentioned in chapter 56 and it's interesting to note that there was an epidemic of the disease between 1831-32, concurrent to with the latter parts of the novel.
• 'The 'oald King George...' The character, Timothy Cooper is referring to the previous monarch, King George III who was declared insane in 1810. His son, King Geroge IV then became regent and later inherited the throne (in 1820). George IV was the ruling Monarch during the period most of the book is set in.
• 'clemmin his own inside' - this is slang for being hungry or starving.
• The Rights of Man is the name of the pro-French Revolutionary pamphlet by Thomas Paine. By this period of time it was also a byword or general term referring to the ideas of the reform movement.
• The epigraph of chapter 57 refers to a place called 'Tully Veolan', which was a Perthshire estate in 'Waverly' by Sir Walter Scott.
• Richard Porson, 1759-1808, was a classical scholar.
• 'One of the foolish women speaketh' this is a quote from the bible, Job 2:10