11 Idolatry - with George Eliot and Dorothea Brooke

The Female Stoic Podcast with Stephanie Poppins

This episode of The Female Stoic podcast looks at idolatry and how we, as stoics in training, should avoid it.

Dorothea attempts to actualize her philanthropic goals through her only plausible outlet: marriage to the middle-aged scholar, Edward Casaubon. However, the relationship that she expects to “deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path” only disappoints her, for Casaubon has no intention to cultivate Dorothea’s personhood. Besides wishing for a husband who would educate her, Dorothea also desires for a partner to converse with her as an equal: “Poor Dorothea before her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she cared most to say.”

However, in the early days of their relationship, Dorothea attempts to adhere to convention and subdue her selfhood in order to assimilate into her husband’s identity.music copyright Jean Miles Carter @neworldbooks

published by Neworld Books