![]() It means: he would act like a sanctimonious hypocrite bachelor who pretended (hence the sanctimonious attitude) he did not expect to "get the best one": i.e., woman, here, the second sister. The "who" refers to the antecedent: bachelors. Saying "A man" makes it possible to express an opinion with saying "I", which, in any case, doesn't work in third person narration.įrom "he felt" to "expect it", we are in Sir James mind. Often, at the time, people might speak in generalities by saying things like: A man likes to ride a good mount, when he can. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it. He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. The narrator says that Sir James thought the second sister was the better one then the author has Sir James thinking to himself: Do they refer to them "man" of the previous sentence? In this case the meaning would be: A man would be hypocritical if he pretended not to expect his choice to be the superior one.ĪCTING LIKE, not being like. I am not sure to whom the marked words "he" and "who" refer. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.Īccording to OED Mawworm is "a hypocritical pretender to sanctity". Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the elder sister. Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook himself to Celia, and talked to her about her sister spoke of a house in town, and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London. ![]() However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr. Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of way, as for a clergyman of some distinction. ![]() He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had looked up at Mr. The following are the last two paragraphs of the second chapter of George Eliot's Middlemarch: ![]()
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