Duty and Vocation

Duty and Vocation names a recurring ethical problem in Middlemarch: how people can act responsibly when their livelihood, abilities, desires, and obligations pull in different directions. The idea is tested through Tertius Lydgate’s determination to pursue medical research, Camden Farebrother’s effort to use his clerical office well despite earlier doubts, and Fred Vincy’s fear that financial necessity may push him into the Church. Their different circumstances show that duty is not simply a rule to follow; it must be measured against the work a life actually requires.

Vocation Under Pressure

Lydgate’s professional purpose is scientific and practical. Speaking confidentially with Farebrother, he insists that local hostility will not drive him away: he has found a good opportunity in Middlemarch, expects to earn enough for his household, and wants to return to research into the common origin of bodily tissues. His resolution joins the immediate work of maintaining a medical practice to a larger intellectual ambition. He sees his time as already partly lost and wants to recover it through inquiry.

That confidence does not mean that Lydgate believes he can control how others interpret his conduct. He says he does what comes before him to do and cannot shape his actions around conclusions he cannot anticipate. Farebrother’s advice is more cautious: Lydgate may withstand the town’s hostility if prudent. Their exchange sets two demands beside one another—fidelity to work as one understands it, and attention to the consequences that may follow in a community whose judgments are not under one’s control.

Farebrother’s Duty and the Use of Power

Lydgate describes Farebrother as a gifted preacher and conversationist whose poor living provides a meagre income for himself and the family members who depend on him: his mother, aunt, and sister. Farebrother has wished at times for a wider field than parish work and has interests in natural history and science. His limited means have also led him to play whist for money, a habit that puts him in company Lydgate considers beneath him and, at times, makes him lax. Yet Lydgate judges him, taken as a whole, one of the most blameless men he knows, emphasizing his lack of malice and duplicity rather than a flawless public appearance.

When Dorothea considers the clerical appointment in her gift, Lydgate presents Farebrother’s case as a way to correct an earlier vote that had troubled his conscience. The appointment carries material weight: Farebrother’s existing living is poor, and his household relies on him. Dorothea, however, is not concerned only with the charitable effect of her choice. She recognizes that patronage gives her power, and she feels she ought not let someone else use that power in her place.

Farebrother does not ask to escape responsibility by surrendering his position. He argues that he need not give up St. Botolph’s: if reformers object to pluralism, he can leave most of the income to someone else while retaining the office, and use its power well. Dorothea sees the opposite temptation in herself, observing that renouncing power and money might be easier than holding them responsibly. The exchange makes vocation a question of conduct within an imperfect institution, not merely whether a person possesses authority or gives it away.

Conscience After Circumstance Changes

The prospect of a better-beneficed post changes how Farebrother regards his past. The narrator observes that conscience may become more active when life’s burdens stop pressing so painfully. Farebrother feels ashamed that he has shown lapses from which people without benefices are free. He tells Lydgate that he used to wish he had been something other than a clergyman, but that perhaps he should instead try to make as good a clergyman of himself as he can. The improvement in his circumstances does not erase his doubts; it makes him reconsider what he owes within the profession he already occupies.

For a moment, Farebrother imagines that his share of duty will be easy. The narrative undercuts this expectation by describing Duty as an apparently welcome visitor who breaks a leg inside the house: responsibility arrives in a form that disrupts the person who thought he had understood it. Less than a week later, Fred comes to Farebrother for advice. The abrupt turn from Farebrother’s renewed resolve to Fred’s predicament shows that vocation is not settled by a private decision alone; it is tested by the needs and choices of other people.

Fred’s Choice and the Meaning of Calling

Fred has returned from Omnibus College with a bachelor’s degree and thinks he may have to enter the Church. He tells Farebrother that he can see no other way forward and knows that his father has spent a considerable amount on his education. But Fred does not want clerical life. He dislikes divinity, preaching, and the expectation that a clergyman should appear serious; he prefers riding across country and living as other men do. He insists that he does not mean to be a bad man, distinguishing a lack of taste for the profession from a desire to do wrong.

His alternatives are narrowed by family economics. His father cannot provide capital for farming and has no place for him in the family trade. Beginning a new course of study in law or medicine is also impractical when his father wants him to earn. Fred therefore asks whether entering the Church under these circumstances is blameworthy, not because he has discovered a clerical calling but because he feels he has few usable alternatives.

Farebrother tries to define the moral question without deciding it for Fred. He asks whether Fred has considered doctrinal objections, but Fred says he has no arguments against the Articles and would find it ridiculous to claim theological scruples he does not possess. Farebrother then asks whether Fred might be a fair parish priest without being much of a theologian. Fred says he would try to do his duty if obliged, even though he disliked the work. Farebrother’s answer turns on conscience: the decision depends on how fully Fred has counted the cost and understood what the position will require. He offers his own experience as a warning, acknowledging that he has been too lax and has felt uneasy as a result.

Fred then reveals another consideration: he loves Mary Garth and has loved her since childhood. This disclosure makes his vocational dilemma inseparable from his personal future. The episode does not reduce duty to obedience or desire to selfishness. Instead, it leaves Fred facing the question of whether accepting a life he dislikes would serve his family’s expectations, meet an immediate economic need, or place him in a role whose obligations he may not be prepared to sustain.

The Novel’s Ethical Tension

These linked cases distinguish having a vocation from occupying a profession. Lydgate has a powerful research aim, but it must coexist with earning a living and responding to public suspicion. Farebrother has doubts about his calling, yet his new prospects prompt him to renew his commitment to the work he can do. Fred, by contrast, considers a profession largely because the alternatives seem blocked. Each case makes the moral stakes depend on both inward inclination and outward circumstance.

The discussion also resists easy judgments of character. Farebrother’s financial pressure and his gambling sit beside Lydgate’s estimate of his blamelessness; Fred’s reluctance to become a clergyman sits beside his willingness to try to perform the duties if necessity requires it. Duty is presented as ongoing practice, shaped by imperfect choices and changing responsibilities, rather than a proof of moral purity or a guarantee that a person has found the work best suited to him.