Soru

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which, by the side of her sister's, recalled the puritan decencies even of senatorial families. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from Dorothea's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared.

The junketing of their provincial society was bitted and bridled by a sense of connection with fine old families who threw double-gilt splendor over departments of life where simple papering or whitewashing would have been more respectable. But there were sub-precedents in the world of Middlemarch which, though not written down, were none the less powerful, and one of these was that dress should be plain, and that a lady's taste should be shown in her choosing such things as would not make her look like a publican's wife. Dorothea, indeed, was expected to have some peculiarities of opinion, since she was of a family where there was a hereditary trait of some eccentricity; but her uncle's eccentricity was of a safe, neutral character, consisting of an extreme preference for general ideas and a reluctance to run into any dangerous course. He had been a member of Parliament, but had never spoken; and his house was full of books which he had never read.

Dorothea's mind was of a different order; she was warm-hearted, she had a strong sense of duty, and she lived in the midst of a world where it was difficult to reconcile her high religious ideals with the daily habits of her neighbors. She was open, ardent, and not easily discouraged by the absence of encouragement. She longed for some work which would combine the religious devotion of a saint with the practical utility of a modern reformer. But Middlemarch was a place where such longings were regarded as either foolish or dangerous, and where a young woman of family was expected to find sufficient occupation in embroidery, sketching, and the modest supervision of her uncle’s household. To Dorothea, these occupations were like trying to breathe in a vacuum, yet she felt the constant, quiet pressure of the social expectations that hemmed her in on every side.

In the passage, the conflict between Dorothea’s personal aspirations and the "sub-precedents" of Middlemarch society primarily serves to illustrate which of the following?