Where there's a will: Casauban's death in Middlemarch

Dorothea's terrible and inexplicable decision to marry that nasty pedant Casauban will haunt her even after Casauban's death, as we move into the final third of George Eliot's Middlemarch; Casauban's mean-spirited will contains the clause that Dorothea will forfeit the entire estate if she marries Casauban's cousin Ladislaw: this is a horrible codicil for a number of reasons. First, Dorothea of all people has no particular interest in the inherited wealth except insofar as the money can help her to better the lives of others, such as the tenant farmers in their poor housing (she also wants to support Lydgate's new hospital), but the will implies that she is and can be motivated by greed and self-interest. The will also casts a suspicion on both Dorothea and Ladislaw, implying that they have at the very least been talking about a future marriage; it definitely makes people suspect that they may have been carrying on an affair, which is far from the case. Third,  it makes it impossible for Dorothea and Ladislaw even to be on friendly terms, as there always will be suspicion and whispers around them. Finally, it is like the cold hand of death reaching up from the grave to strangle Dorothea or to touch her heart. What business is it of Casaubon, why should he care, whom Dorothea may or may not marry? D. is tormented by all of these thoughts, and so is L., who is clearly in love with D. - L. decides to leave Middlemarch and pursue a career in law and politics: of all the characters in the novel, he has grown and matured the most, moving from an artistic dilettante to a committed social advocate and reformer, or at least it seems that way. But Dorothea will grow and mature, too, learning from the terrible mistake of her unguided youth - as in all great novels, the characters take a journey, and are not quite the same at the end as they were at the outset. This section contains another great Eliot passage, in which she reflects that if childhood is the season of hope is it hope that elders hold for their children, not that children or youth hold for themselves - and she somehow builds this observation into a reference to the elderly in Peru and their acclimitization to earthquakes - a great example of the quickness and quirkiness of Eliot's mind.