When a man travels alone, he generally thinks more, and thinks more to the point, than when he is with someone who expects from him a good deal of talk. A woman is by many degrees a more complex being than a man; and when she travels alone she is more full of thought than a man similarly situated; but a woman in society is more than a man — is not so much a person who has his own thought to say, as a focus where other people’s thoughts collect: a person who reflects what other people say, and is reflected by them, and whose own individuality is modified by that endless exchange of light and colour to which women's minds are continually exposed. It follows that when a woman goes wrong she sometimes goes to pieces in a way which makes only a small matter look large, and sometimes she goes on in a way which, to a man, would seem to be an obstinacy of mind impossible to understand.
The town of Middlemarch was sure to be informed that Mr. Bulstrode had decided to go to London on business when the first omnibus was seen to stop at his gate. People make more of a man’s going away than of his presence; it is as if absence helped you to see what a man’s share in your life had been. In small towns, indeed, the movement of a solitary man is a little more important than the movement of his fellows. In such places the inhabitants are knitted together by visible ties; each has a recognised place; each person's motion is a little event to which attention is paid.
Mrs. Cadwallader, who kept a lodging-house in Blackfriars in London, was one of those persons who keep their minds in a condition of steady preparation. She expected visitors every morning; she was ready for visitors at all times; she had a great talent for hospitality, and a strong capacity for remark. She had been used to keep order among lodgers who were not always amenable to order; and she had so much tact that she could contrive to maintain her personal authority without needing to appeal to very severe measures.
Dorothea Brooke, who was going to make a great deal of trouble and a great deal of glory in the quiet town of Middlemarch, had, it must be said at once, more of the conventional meekness of womanhood than of the positive energy which produces scenes. She had large and active mind; but it displayed itself rather in a thorough absorption of whatever she studied than in any noisy assertion of herself. She was a girl of twenty, with a serene face and a look of inward purpose which was always ready to break into an obstinate and hopeful expression.
She had been much with her uncle Mr. Casaubon during the last two months, and more than once she had resolved that Middlemarch, where she had come to live, should not be indifferent to her. The place had its claims on her; she could not be content to be merely a recluse; she meant to show her sympathy with the town’s affairs, and to be of use according to her opportunities. The sense of duty and the love of ideal ends were strong in her, though they often wore the guise of gentle patience rather than of decisive action.