“Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers”

“Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers” is the narrator’s image for the mingling of motives within feeling. In Rosamond’s attraction to Tertius Lydgate, romantic interest shares space with admiration for his social standing and the future she imagines it might offer her.

The image of a common store

The expression rejects the idea that passions remain separate and pure. Instead, the narrator imagines them bringing their provisions to a common table, where they feed from the same store according to appetite. The metaphor makes emotional mixture ordinary: a feeling can be genuine while also being shaped by other desires and expectations.

Rosamond’s romance and ambition

Rosamond is drawn not only to Lydgate as an individual, but to his relation to her imagined future. His good birth distinguishes him from her other admirers; marriage to him suggests the possibility of rising in rank and moving farther from people she considers vulgar. Her sense that she is in love therefore mingles with social aspiration rather than existing apart from it.

The narrator relates this mixture to Rosamond’s habits of attention. She interprets Lydgate’s looks and words as especially significant because she cares about them, and she works diligently at the appearance, behavior, and accomplishments she believes will make her a fitting object of his admiration. Her romance joins desire for the man to an idealized image of herself as a perfect lady.

Narrative significance

The expression gives the narrator a concise way to explain how social calculation can coexist with romantic feeling without reducing one to the other. Rosamond’s response is not presented as a simple choice between love and ambition: the passions meet at a common table, and her attraction draws nourishment from both.