throbbing light machine

something that I think is important about Middlemarch - Dorothea is appallingly wrongheaded in her goals/means, most evidently in her reasons for marrying Casaubon - but the people in her community who criticize her are additionally and equally wrongheaded, without having even the excuse of youth or passion to cover them. Mrs. Cadwallader is absolutely right that Dorothea ought not to marry Casaubon, but at the same time she displays an almost total ignorance of Dorothea's real character, ethos, and desires for her own life.

Even if they tell you so and it turns out bad, it doesn't mean they were right.