But we cannot be sure, because Eliot’s novel doesn’t include a pronunciation guide.
He has presumably Englished his Christian name, and it is possible the English ‘coleslaw’ pronunciation of ‘Ladislaw’ is the one the book’s characters use: we’re in England after all, not Poland (the novel is Middlemarch, not Centralnynaród ).
Cadwallader explains Ladislaw’s relationship to Casaubon: ‘his mother’s sister made a bad match-a Pole, I think-lost herself-at any rate was disowned by her family’) and conclude that Will’s name must actually be ‘Wilhelm Ladisław’.
We might assume that it rhymes its final syllable with ‘coleslaw.’ Then again, we could note the clues as to his family provenance that unobtrusively accumulate as the novel proceeds (starting in chapter 8, when Mr. 3 It is up to us, as readers, how we choose to pronounce Will Ladislaw’s surname.
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