21 George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Dr. Neeru Tandon

20.1 Introduction
20.2 Relevance of the Title
20.3 Setting of the Novel
20.4 Plot of the Novel
20.5 Character Analysis
20.6 Dorothea Brooke
20.7 Rosamond Vincy
20.8 Tertius Lydgate
20.9 Themes of the Novel
20.10 Test Yourself
20.11 Self-assessment

20.1      Introduction

Amongst the galaxy of female novelists that dominated the literary arena in the Victorian era, George Eliot holds an important place. She used a male pen name which was her effort to be taken seriously as a writer in the male-dominated literary world. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans (Marian). In the hands of George Eliot, novel was not a vehicle for entertainment alone, but rather as a means of revealing the human predicament. Well known for her realism and serious discussion of moral issues, George Eliot is the most philosophical of all the Victorian novelists. Like George Meredith, “she is the embodiment of philosophy in fiction,” as Oscar Wilde remarked in 1897. Virginia Wolfe called Eliot’s Middlemarch “one of the few English novels for grown-up people. She was twelve at the time of the Great Reform Bill (1832), which forms the historical context of Middlemarch.

George Eliot was born in 1819 at Arbory Park in Astley near Coventry and was the gifted daughter of Robert Evans, the Warwickshire estate agent for the Earl of Lonsdale. By his previous marriage Evans had an older daughter and a son. At her mother’s death in 1836, Marian ( Eliot) was the only woman in the house, at which point she became her father’s housekeeper. Politically and socially conservative, Robert Evans advocated outward religious conformity for Marian, who was swept up by Nonconformist thinking, even though he was not particularly religious. Through the influence of her schoolmistress, Marian for a time was an enthusiastic Evangelical who favoured Jean Calvin’s Doctrine of the Elect. Marian’s maternal aunt was a Wesleyan (Methodist) who communicated her belief in good works, a doctrine of personal salvation that contradicts Calvinism. When her father retired in 1841, her brother Isaac was given the agency, and she and her father moved to a house in Coventry. Here she joined a group of intellectuals such as Charles Bray in their historical study of the Bible. Under their influence and through her own reading, Marian grew sceptical. Conflict with her father arose.

when she refused to attend regular Anglican Church worship any longer. However, after some argument she gave in. She faithfully tended house for her father until his death in 1849. Now thirty years old, she was considered long past the normal age for marriage. In her father’s will she received an annuity of £100 which gave her a certain independence. Her religious skepticism was tempered by her recognition that her father had simply been too old to alter his views. But gradually she developed, despite her outward conformity in the 1840s, sympathy with any religion that could offer solace for human sorrows.

In 1850, George Eliot travelled on the Continent for the first time, in company with the Brays. Upon her return to England, she began writing for the prestigious Westminster Review, for which she became assistant editor in 1851. Now a member of a London literary circle that included Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes, she translated Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity from German (1854)–the only book to bear her real name. About this time, she entered into a common-law relationship with her editor, Henry Lewes, whose wife had abandoned him for an extra-marital affair.

Mary Ann’s rejection by her friends and family over her common-law marriage with Lewes is reflected in The Mill on the Floss (1860). Lewes deeply sympathized with Mary Ann’s personal, intellectual, and artistic struggles. It was he who first encouraged her to write fiction: Scenes from Clerical Life, serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine (1857). He provided her with material, and edited her work. He was a ‘Positivist’ — a follower of the philosophy of August Comte, who had postulated that there had been three hierarchical ages (animistic, metaphysical, and positivistic = truth from examination of facts). That a new author of great power had emerged was confirmed by the enormously popular Adam Bede (1859).Her perceptive and pointed criticisms of Austen and Dickens are close to modern attitudes. And yet her literary intentions included appreciation of goodness, perception of reality, and precision of expression (both for herself and her reader). She admired the simple, homely style of the early Flemish painters such as Breughel, a taste which is reflected in such ‘Dutch’ interior scenes as the harvest supper in Adam Bede, Chapter 17, in which she extols the works of the seventeenth-century Dutch masters. She attacked literary conventions in character delineation and typing, stereotypical plotting, and use of setting as mere backdrop.

Adam Bede demonstrates Eliot’s belief that art should be modelled on life, not on other works of art. Her theme is that happiness is the reward life gives for tolerance, compassion, and understanding (as it is for Dinah Morris and Adam), and that over-riding ambition, thoughtlessness about the welfare of others, and greed \cannot bring such happiness. Through her plots and characters Eliot preaches that working only for self-gratification- is dangerous to one’s spirit because it precludes learning from experience and developing one’s character. In her stories she studies the impact of environment, including the social environment, on the individual; consequently, she strives to render her settings more realistic and believable through telling details and dialect.

An immense deal of cataclysm and upheaval were prevalent during the Nineteenth century in England. Societal norms were questioned; workers were struggling for their rights, women’s issues intertwined with social understanding of marriage were gaining momentum. As writers reflected the society of their eras, the writers of nineteenth century expressed the attitudes of long suffering wives in this era of change and upheaval. The theme of marriage in the works of writers like George Eliot surpassed the sedate Victorian conventions and anticipated the revision of social attitudes towards marriage.

20.2Relevance of the Title

Commenting upon the relevance of Eliot’s Middlemarch for the grown-up society, Virginia Woolf in The Common Reader suggests it as, a magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. It is a reflection of realistic and vivid portrayal of the provincial life of England. The subtitle of the novel i.e., Study of Provincial Life, reflects England’s changing values regarding social status, medicine, politics, education, philanthropy, and male-female relationships.

Rosemary Ashton in Introduction to Middlemarch remarks that Middlemarch is above all about change and the way individuals and groups adapt to, or resist, change. In their marriages, in their professions, in their family life and their social intercourse, the characters of the novel are shown responding in their various ways to events both public and private.

20.3Setting of the Novel

The action of the novel takes place in Middlemarch or the neighbouring parishes of Tipton, Lowick or Freshet. As Quentin Anderson points out, ―it is a landscape of opinion‖, and not any natural landscape, this is dominant in the novel.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life was published in 1871-2 but was set in the years preceding the Reform Bill of 1832. Eliot’s purpose in setting her novel forty years prior to the time she wrote it was to adopt ―the role of imaginative historian, even scientific investigator…who seeks to analyse recent political and social changes by means of the particular human stories she tells, by weaving ―together several strands in such a way that an individual’s lot is seen to be affected by those historical changes as they happen‖ (Ashton viii).

The pre-Reform Bill era in which Eliot situates her novel was a time of unprecedented social change in England prompted by the violent revolutions that had recently swept across Europe. By setting Middlemarch in the period immediately before the passage of the first Reform Bill, Eliot was able to situate her characters in a time when the changes they experience would have been new and different, perhaps even exciting.

20.4      Plot of the Novel

The novel ―Middlemarch‖ by George Eliot tells the story of life in a small, rural English town in the early nineteenth century. Themes in the novel include the way that people react to change, women’s roles, marriage, and relationships. Although the pace of the novel is leisurely, many scandalous topics are covered including suspected murder, infidelity, secret pasts, gossip, politics, and family feuds. The developing relationships of four couples form the backbone of the novel as these young people learn to relate to each other and the world around them.

Dorothea, who is headstrong and wants to make positive changes in the world around her, is a main character in the novel. She marries Reverend Edward Casaubon, an elderly priest, only to learn he is not the scholar that she had idolized before their marriage. Casaubon is displeased with Dorothea as he believes that she is not only critical of him, but she is believing damaging information about him from his cousin, Will Ladislaw. Casaubon’s jealousy is so strong for Ladislaw that before he dies he writes a codicil to his will stating that if Dorothea marries Ladislaw, she will lose Casaubon’s inheritance.

Meanwhile, the pretty Rosamond Vincy has set her sights on Teritus Lydgate, the new doctor in town. Like Dorothea, Lydgate is not interested in getting rich. He wants to treat and heal the poor of the town. His fiancée, however, is accustomed to a different way of life. Lydgate soon finds himself deeply in debt. He borrows money from the rich Bulstrode, but the circumstances under which the money is loaned make it look like a bribe to the rest of the people in the town. Relations between Rosamond and Lydgate are also rocky, but Dorothea steps in and tries to help the couple relate to one another by drawing on the experience of her own bad marriage.

Also featured in this story are Mary Garth and Fred Vincy. Mary and Fred have been in love with one another since they were little children. Although Mary knows that there is no one for her but Fred, she waits for him to grow up into the man whom she wants to marry. She waits patiently as he fights his way through a bad debt that he cannot repay, loss of an inheritance that he thought was a certainty, and his struggle to come to terms with his life and find a job that suits him. With a little help from Mary’s father, Fred becomes his apprentice, tending the Tipton Grange and Freshitt estates. With some finagling, Caleb Garth arranges for Fred to live at Stone Court, the property that Fred thought he would inherit one day. Fred farms and tends that property and, eventually, buys it for himself. It is at this point that Mary agrees to marry Fred.

The romance between Dorothea and Will Ladislaw is followed closely throughout the novel. Though Will does not care for Dorothea when he first meets her, he soon grows to admire her. While she had always enjoyed Will’s friendship, it is after Dorothea learns that Casaubon attempted to forbid her from marrying Will after his death that she is drawn to Will even more. Though both of these young people try to hold their feelings for one another in check, they surprise the community by announcing their plans to marry. Dorothea has decided that a chance at love is more valuable than riches.

20.5      Character Analysis

The mature reader’s ability to understand the extensive range of emotions felt by characters in fiction stems from the reader’s own life experiences, as George Eliot was well aware when writingMiddlemarch. According to Virginia Wolfe, Eliot’s novel is “one of the few English novels for grown-up people.” Middlemarch has characters disillusioned by the self-deception and deception of others that they see around them. Middlemarch is about the process of understanding the experiences and perceptions of others, and of suffering through self-deception and disillusionment, social positioning, class consciousness, and the ambition for self-improvement with its concomitants: education and money.

Several scholars praise Eliot’s novel because of the realistic characters that allow her readers sympathetic identification and participation. Huge Witemeyer says, for example, “The variety of meanings it [Middlemarch] can encompass, from the moral and psychological to the historical and sociological, makes Eliot’s literary portraiture richer than that of any earlier novelist in English” (1). Although characters within her novel may engage in deceit or suffer disillusionment, Eliot’s focusing on their human condition allows readers to connect with each character’s situation. This attachment, this connection between the reader and the character, enables Eliot to present a convincingly real world and enables her novel to convey the essential truths about human nature. For example, the women in Eliot’s novel, though fictional, are faced with the same life decisions and responsibilities as the women in Victorian society.

20.6      Dorothea Brooke

Upper-middle and upper-class Victorian women, for example, were expected to “marry money,” stay home to raise the family, and be responsible for the management of domestic affairs. As a result, women, who lacked the opportunity for the kind of education men had, were praised chiefly for their ability to act properly towards their husbands. Dorothea Brooke is an intelligent and independent young woman, who differs from the conventional woman of the Victorian Age. While other Victorian ladies worried about fashion and marriage, Dorothea concerns herself with issues of philosophy, spirituality, and service. Eliot points out Dorothea’s genuine beauty in describing her physical appearance:

Miss Brooke had the 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. 

Eliot, who emphasizes the plainness of Dorothea’s clothing, alludes to paintings of the Virgin Mary to describe her, thereby accentuating Dorothea’s dignity and purity (Chen 1). Because Dorothea does not concern herself with fashion, most people in Middelemarch perceive her to be odd, and “sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them” (9). Eliot mocks the social norm by praising the purity of the young and “inexperienced” Miss Brooke.

Dorothea is almost too perfect, but she evolves from her immaculate persona after she goes astray and marries Edward Casaubon. Dorothea’s feelings for him are influenced by his supposed wisdom and her hopes that it will allow her to “become educated, to have her curiosity nurtured, and to be of constant usefulness to a man of sixty who really needed her nineteen year old eyes for reading” (Thompson 1). Bernard J. Paris sees Dorothea as a mimetic character whose desire for intensity, greatness, an epic life are not manifestations of spiritual grandeur but of a compulsive search for glory. Her craving for “illimitable satisfaction” is an expression of insatiable compensatory needs, and her “self-despair” results from hopelessness about actualizing her idealized image of herself as a person of world-historical importance. She misperceives Casaubon because “her need for glory leads her to idealize him” (31-32). Dorothea realizes “the fault of her own spiritual poverty” (192), and is “sobbing bitterly” when she is left alone by Mr. Casaubon, who goes to work alone at the Vatican on their honeymoon.

20.7      Rosamond Vincy

In Middlemarch education and money “greatly determine” the characters’ lives and opportunities, and Eliot takes as her central topic the unfit preparation of women for life. This theme is as crucial for understanding Rosamond Vincy as it is for understanding Dorothea (Beer 159). Rosamond comes from a family familiar with the comfortable lifestyle of middle-class society. Her egocentric character does not adapt to the sacrifices or adjustments in one’s style of living necessary when money is scarce. In contrast to Dorothea’s, Rosy’s marital vocation does not include “the inward life of a hero, or his serious business in the world”; rather, she just wants to climb the social ladder and find a seat among the aristocracy (Thompson 3). Eliot reveals Rosamond’s egotistical nature when she describes how the young girl wishes her father would invite Lydgate to a dinner party:

She was tired of the faces and figures she had always been use to — the various irregular profiles and gaits and turns of phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had always known as boys. She had been at school [Mrs. Lemon’s establishment] with other girls of higher position, whose brothers, she felt sure, it would have been possible for her to be more interested in, than in these inevitable Middlemarch companions. [97]

Rosamond wants to meet Lydgate, “the new aspiring doctor,” because she is utterly disappointed with the eligible bachelors in her immediate community. Eliot utilizes Rosamond’s character to reveal her attitude towards provincial middle-class society by describing Rosamond’s social circle as “inevitable Middlemarch companions.” Rosamond knows what she wants out of life: to become a member of the aristocracy, but her marriage to Lydgate is not what she expects. Her upbringing and education do not prepare her for the hardships all married couples experience. Eliot uses her — as a foil to Dorothea — as an example of the misfortunes of shallow women. Or, she may be highlighting the importance of seeing reality instead of appearance.

20.8      Tertius Lydgate

Lydgate exemplifies the desires of an epic life, as Dorothea does, but unlike her he finds his vocation in the study of medicine, who works hard for success in his medical practice. Eliot’s introduction of Lydgate, however, hints at his coming failure:

For surely all must admit that a man may be puffed and be lauded, envied, ridiculed, counted upon as a tool and fallen in love with, or at least selected as a future husband, and yet remain virtually unknown–known merely as a cluster of signs for his neighbours’ false suppositions. There was a general impression, however, that Lydgate was not altogether a common country doctor, and in Middlemarch at that time such an impression was significant of great things being expected from him. [142]

Lydgate has the drive and ambition to make a difference in the world by advancing studies in the medical field. He is aware of the risk that such an unknown field of study poses because the common people would have no proof that newly discovered cures would work. On the other hand, Lydgate’s belief that there is a vast field for discovery and improvement in medicine makes him persevere. Lydgate’s plan for his future is “to do good work for.

Middlemarch, and great work for the world” (149). But he remains “virtually unknown” in his because of his passion for women. He becomes enamored of Laure when he sees her on stage while he is a student in Paris, but he is in love with her “as a man is in love with a woman whom he never expects to speak to” (152). He does speak to her, though, but only after she murders on stage her husband who plays the part of her lover. Lydgate is convinced of her innocence until she confesses to him that she “meant to do it” because her husband had wearied her by being “too fond” (153). Lydgate realizes that his passion will lead to his own destruction, so he returns to his studies, convinced that he will not make such a mistake again (Paris 65). Inevitably Lydgate’s passion resurfaces when he meets Rosamond, and his emotional neediness leads to an impulsive proposal.

Lydgate’s descent into debt makes Rosamond very unhappy, and his busy career makes her and other characters believe she is neglected. After dinner Mrs. Vincy sympathetically tells the other ladies around them: “It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company” (642). Rosamond is used to having company in a “cheerful house” which is “very different from a husband out at odd hours, and never knowing when he will come home” (642). Her unhappiness is encouraged by those around her. Perhaps Lydgate’s willingness to sacrifice his own interests to ensure her happiness could have been appreciated by another wife. Instead, he sacrifices himself without any real hope of reciprocated affection. Although Lydgate accepts his own doom, he still has the ambition to make something in the world better, and that is his marriage. These are only a few examples of the wide range of characters in Middlemarch with whom readers can either identify with or understand. While representing an entire community, George Eliot invites her readers to become a part of Middlemarch, allowing them to enter into her characters’ lives because she gives readers access to the characters’ thoughts throughout the novel.

Mr. Bambridge – Bambridge is a Middlemarch horse dealer. Fred Vincy sinks into his debt; Raffles meets him at a horse-fair and tells him everything about Bulstrode’s past.

Arthur Brooke-Brooke is Dorothea and Celia’s bachelor uncle. He is a bumbling man who can never stick to an opinion, always wanting to please everyone. He hires Will Ladislaw to write for his paper, the Pioneer. He runs for a seat in Parliament on the Reform platform, but he lets his own tenants live in poverty and squalor. The scandal resulting from his hypocrisy prompts him to improve conditions on his own estate, Tipton Grange.

Nicholas Bulstrode – Nicholas Bulstrode is a wealthy Middlemarch banker. He is married to Walter Vincy’s sister. Bulstrode professes to be a deeply religious Evangelical Protestant, but he has a dark past: he made his fortune as a pawnbroker selling stolen goods. He married Will Ladislaw’s grandmother after her first husband died. Her daughter had run away years before, and she insisted that Bulstrode find her daughter before she re-married, because she wanted to leave her wealth to her only surviving child. Bulstrode located the daughter and her child, Will Ladislaw, but he kept her existence a secret. He bribed the man he hired to find her, John Raffles, to keep quiet. John Raffles blackmails him with this information. When Raffles becomes ill, Bulstrode cares for him. However, he disobeys Lydgate’s medical advice, and Raffles dies as a result. When the scandal about his past and the circumstances of Raffles’s death become known, Bulstrode leaves Middlemarch in shame. He purchases Stone Court from Joshua Rigg Featherstone.

Elinor Cadwallader – Elinor Cadwallader is the wife of the Rector at Tipton Grange, Brooke’s estate. She was born to a good family, but she married down and angered her friends and families. She is a practical woman who is forever trying to play matchmaker to unmarried young people, including Dorothea, Celia, and Sir James.

Edward Casaubon – Edward Casaubon owns a large estate called Lowick. He is a scholarly clergyman. His lifelong ambition is to write the Key to all Mythologies, but he is insecure and uncertain about his own abilities. He marries Dorothea because he thinks she is completely submissive and worshipful. Her stubborn independence frustrates him, and he mistakenly believes that she is constantly criticizing him. Casaubon is Will Ladislaw’s cousin. His mother’s sister was disowned by her family for running away to marry a man they didn’t like. Her own daughter, Will’s mother, also ran away to marry. Casaubon offers financial support to Will because he feels obligated to make amends for his aunt’s disinheritance. He becomes jealous of Will’s relationship with Dorothea. He includes an addendum in his will stating that Dorothea will lose his wealth and property if she ever marries Will Ladislaw. He dies before finishing his Key.

20.9 Themes of the Novel

(A) Imperfect Marriage and Repressed Sexuality

Dorothea’s marriage to Casaubon, ―a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father‖ (837), is a mismatch, an unconsummated union. Her husband, her sexual companion, is much older than she is, and he seems least interested in any sort of physical aspect of their marriage.

Casaubon’s disinterest can be seen during their honeymoon in Rome. He is mostly involved researching his ―Key to all Mythologies‖ in the Vatican library, rather than enjoying the company of his new, young bride. As a result of this, she recognizes her sexuality not by herself or her husband but by Ladislaw, Casaubon’s cousin. Will Ladislaw is present in Rome studying art, and it is there that he gets attracted towards Dorothea.

Will give the appearance ―of sunny brightness‖ while ―Mr. Casaubon, on the contrary, stood rayless‖ (209). Trotter notes that this direct contrast is Eliot‟s use of form ―to be extraordinarily frank in assessing the prospects of the two men who want to marry Dorothea Brooke. Mr. Casaubon… ―as a man, has no distinctive shape… He does not stand out‖ (40). This, Trotter argues, signifies Casaubon’s inability or unwillingness to ―reproduce himself‖; thus he ―does not stand a chance against Will Ladislaw‖ (40).

Dorothea’s desire for Will also increases during her marriage to Casaubon, but she is unaware of it until long after his death. She longs to see him when not in his company – she imagines his face in that of his grandmother’s portrait that hangs in her boudoir and her mood is instantly elevated, and she insists that he remain in Middlemarch when he is offered an opportunity by Mr. Brooke to do so and acknowledges that she gave her response ―without thinking of anything else than my own feeling‖ (368).

Unlike her marriage to Casaubon, her union with Will is consummated, as they both give birth to a son. Her husband Will does what Casaubon could not do, recognizes her sexuality and allows her to recognize it for herself as well.

(B) Defiance of Middlemarch Society: Social Hierarchy as Futile

Will and Casaubon are not on equal on social ground. Will’s grandmother disinherited because ―she made what they called a mésalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread‖ (365). This disgraced heritage makes Will suspect in Middlemarch society, an object of scorn. His marriage to Dorothea ―upsets the conventional economy of marriage and the distribution of property in Middlemarch‖ (Miller 147).

Marrying Will, Dorothea emphatically renounces her inheritance as she and Will declare their love for each other: ―I don’t mind about poverty – I hate my wealth…We could live quite well on my own fortune – it is too much – seven hundred-a-year – I want so little – no new clothes – and I will learn what everything costs‖ (812-3). Thereby, marrying Will, She defies all of Middlemarch society. She doesn’t disregard Will’s heritage rather seems to revel in it.

Reference

1. Ashton, Rosemary. Introduction. Middlemarch. By George Eliot. London: Penguin, 1994.
2. Beer, Gillian. “The Woman Question.” George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Ed. John Peck. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
3. Chen, Shang-Lin. “Dorothea Brooke, Victorian Anti-Heroine.” 20 March 2004. PDF/ Adobe Acrobat. August 26, 1999. [shangril.freeshell.org]
4. Eliot, George. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. London: Penguin, 2003.
5. Kelly, Katherine Marie. “George Eliot’s Middlemarch: The Making of a Modern Marriage” (2010). University of New Orleans Theses andDissertations. Paper 1173.
6. Miller, J. Hillis. “A Conclusion in Which Nothing is Concluded: Middlemarch’s Finale.” Middlemarch in the 21st Century. Ed. Karen Chase. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 
7. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Middlemarch.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 18 Jul. 2015.
8. Trotter, David.  “Space,  Movement,  and  Sexual  Feeling  in  Middlemarch.”  Middlemarch in the21st Century. Ed. Karen Chase. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.