How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"St. Paul says as plain as can be in another place, 'I will that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully'; and then 'two are better than one'; and that holds good with marriage as well as with other things. For we should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Dinah. We both serve the same Master, and are striving after the same gifts; and I'd never be the husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out, to give you more liberty—more than you can have now, for you've got to get your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both." (3.4)
Although Dinah resists marriage, Seth argues that family life would give her exactly what she needs. She would have more independence to serve the needy, and she would be answering the will of God as set forth in the Bible. And Seth would get to do a lot of housework. Honestly, Seth, think this through. You want to do housework?
Quote #2
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah, so like our mother's!—averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage—the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand—galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence. (4.3)
Eliot's narrator depicts family life as a mixed blessing—and we do mean mixed. It's a combination of extreme positives and extreme negatives. Even individual family members can combine the best traits of a family with weaknesses and poor judgment. There's a little Jekyll and Hyde in all of us.
Quote #3
Arthur knew the rector too well to suppose that a clever invention would be of any use, so he said, with his accustomed frankness, "No, I went to look at the pretty butter-maker Hetty Sorrel. She's a perfect Hebe; and if I were an artist, I would paint her. It's amazing what pretty girls one sees among the farmers' daughters, when the men are such clowns. That common, round, red face one sees sometimes in the men—all cheek and no features, like Martin Poyser's—comes out in the women of the family as the most charming phiz imaginable." (9.8)
After his encounter with Hetty, Arthur offers some comical ideas about the local farming families. His distinctions—pretty women, clownish men—should be taken with a grain of salt. Yet his humorous discussion of farmers' daughters could conceal his budding affection for "the pretty butter-maker." Also, he uses the word "phiz," short for "physiognomy." C'mon, Arthur. Stop trying to make "phiz" happen. It's not going to happen.