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BOOK I . MISS BROOKE . CHAPTER I . Since I can do no good because a woman , Reach constantly at something that is near it . — The Maid’s Tragedy : BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER . 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 provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible , — or from one of our elder poets , — in a paragraph of to - day’s newspaper . 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 her sister’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 pride of being ladies had something to do with it : the Brooke connections , though not exactly aristocratic , were unquestionably “ good : ” if you inquired backward for a generation or two , you would not find any yard - measuring or parcel - tying forefathers — anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman ; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell , but afterwards conformed , and managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate . Young women of such birth , living in a quiet country - house , and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor , naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster’s daughter . Then there was well - bred economy , which in those days made show in dress the first item to be deducted from , when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive of rank . Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress , quite apart from religious feeling ; but in Miss Brooke’s case , religion alone would have determined it ; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister’s sentiments , only infusing them with that common - sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation . Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal’s Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart ; and to her the destinies of mankind , seen by the light of Christianity , made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam . She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences , with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery . Her mind was theoretic , and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there ; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness , and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects ; likely to seek martyrdom , to make retractations , and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it .
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