Summary

“Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs. Glegg’s thoughts,” Mrs. Pullet finds it easy to convince her that the money should be left with Tulliver. Mrs. Glegg predicts a dim future for the Tulliver family, but she intends “to set an example in every respect.”

Unfortunately, Mrs. Tulliver, through her “irrepressible hopefulness,” has told her husband that “sister Pullet was gone to try and make everything up with sister Glegg, so that he needn’t think about paying in the money.” Tulliver immediately writes to Mrs. Glegg saying that he will have the money paid by the next month.

The letter convinces Mrs. Glegg that Tulliver’s “state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to contemplate it for a moment.” Tulliver’s promptness also leads him, against his resolve, to borrow the money from a client of his old enemy Wakem.

Analysis

The chapter title refers to the metaphor noted in Chapter 8.

The essence of the Dodson correctness, and its orientation toward death, is clear in Mrs. Glegg’s decision not to alter her will despite Tulliver’s stupidity. “No one must be able to say of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness among her own kin . . . .”

A single paragraph at the end of the chapter is devoted to the source of the money with which Mr. Tulliver repays his debt, an item of great importance in the plot. This is typical of the author’s technique. The plot develops skillfully, but briefly, while the concentration is on development of character analysis of the society.