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Message: <blockquote data-quote="roguerouge" data-source="post: 3925863" data-attributes="member: 13855">Keeping up appearances:A family is being driven under by the debts accrued by a wastrel son.A family is isolated by the shame of the alcoholism of its patriarch.A husband and wife, perfectly respectable, despise each other, but struggle not to express it in public and ruin their perfect image. Whispers have already started.A lady has married for love beneath her station, only to discover that the match was a poor one due to the man's inconstancy and temper.A lady has married for station, improving her lot, only to realize she can barely stand the impossible boor in declining health.Middlemarch: A lady has married the local vicar for the intellectual stimulation, to be a part of his masterwork scholarship, and to be taught a world of literature, ideas, and art. On their honeymoon, she discovers it will be hard to consummate their marriage due to his various infirmities and over-intellectualism. Then, to her horror, his lessons reveal that his life-long project, a book, is on an impossibly narrow topic of interest to no one.</blockquote>