Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

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Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set in an English provincial town between 1829 and 1831; written in 1869-72; published in bimonthly and monthly installments from 1871-72.

SYNOPSIS

The novel traces the fate of high ideals in an English provincial town, as focused in the consciousness of a young woman.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Novel in Focus

Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written

For More Information

George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Anne Evans) was born November 22, 1819, at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, as the third child of land agent Robert Evans and Christiana Evans. The strong evangelical piety inculcated in her during childhood would stay with her until she encountered the ideas of the freethinker Charles Bray and his circle in the 1840s. In 1846 she translated the work of the radical biblical scholar D. F. Strauss and would later translate the works of theologians Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and Baruch Spinoza. Settling in London in 1851, she exercised further intellectual influence as subeditor of The Westminster Review. In 1853 Eliot’s friend Herbert Spencer introduced her to George Henry Lewes, one of the founders of the radical weekly The Leader. A man of liberal views, Lewes lived apart from his wife, who had borne a child by another man; because he had condoned her adultery, he was unable to sue for divorce. George Eliot and Lewes decided to live together openly and maintained a deep commitment to each other until his death in 1878. Two years later, she married an old friend, John Walter Cross, who was 21 years her junior, but died that same year on December 22. Encouraged by Lewes, Eliot had begun to publish fiction in 1857. Middlemarch, the sixth of her seven novels, is often considered her masterpiece because of its scope, variety, and the brilliance of its psychological analysis of provincial English life.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Industrial Revolution and rise of the middle class

The nineteenth century saw the growth of the British middle class. It emerged as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain roughly between the 1760s-80s and concluded with the building of the railways and the advent of heavy industry in the 1840s. During this period, England’s economy changed from one that was agrarian-based and handicraft-oriented, in which workers bought raw materials and produced goods at home in their cottages (“cottage industries”), to one dominated by urban, machine-driven manufacture (the “factory system”). As more factories appeared, two classes of workers began to emerge—the working class whose members produced the goods, and the group that political economist Karl Marx would later describe as “capitalists,” because they possessed the money or capital to buy the machines and buildings. The bankers, bureaucrats, and manufacturers—who comprised the capitalist faction of English society—came to be grouped with middle-class small farmers, shopkeepers, merchants, and skilled artisans, since the wealth of all these groups took the form of money and not land. Given mass production’s dramatic increases in output and sales, the middle class managed to gain considerable wealth and power at the expense of the landed aristocracy and its agricultural concerns.

The increasing importance of the middle class is reflected by a concern in Middlemarch for the choice of vocation of its major characters. Now that society had become more fluid and shifting, relying increasingly on class distinctions rather than those of inherited rank, the choice of a profession gained importance. The experiences of the novel’s Tertius Lydgate, Will Ladislaw, and Fred Vincy all illustrate the challenges experienced by young men of the early nineteenth century in finding an appropriate vocation when their “only capital [is] in their brains” (Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 201).

Along with the middle class’s growing economic power came social power as well. Even the strictly hierarchical social structure of England’s rural areas was affected. At the beginning of the century, the landed aristocracy, old and powerful families with hereditary titles and huge estates, occupied the top of this hierarchy. Ranked next were the local gentry, who had smaller properties that were nonetheless large enough to have tenants. Clergymen, high-ranking military officers, and barristers also belonged to this rank. Next came the yeoman farmers, the independent landowners with their large or small holdings, the bankers, and then the lesser tradesfolk and artisans. At the very bottom were the working poor and farm laborers.

With the arrival of industrialization, some of these rankings began to change. Although the local landed gentry still held the most respected positions in provincial society, families that possessed considerable amounts of capital rather than land were also gaining esteem and influence. In the novel, Mr. Vincy, who manufactures ribbons, and Nicholas Bulstrode, Middlemarch’s banker, belong to this up-and-coming class. They are deemed important enough for Brooke, a member of the landed gentry who wants to run for Parliament, to invite them to dinner in the hopes of winning their political support. The shifting balance of power among the classes is also evident when Peter Featherstone, a gentleman farmer whose social position is one step below that of the landed gentry, accuses his nephew Fred Vincy of preferring his other uncle Mr. Buistrode to himself; the small landowner feels threatened by the power of the capitalist.

Public health reform

Because the rise of railways and factories encouraged the concentration of an urban population, English provincial towns and cities grew rapidly around the time Middlemarch takes place. Between 1821 and 1831 the population of Manchester increased by 44.9 percent, that of Leeds by 47.3 percent, that of Bradford by 65.5 percent, and that of Liverpool by 45.8 percent (Briggs, p. 86). With the rise of cities came overcrowding and unhealthy working and living conditions that led activists to push for reform. Public health and sanitation became priorities in both urban and rural areas. In 1832 the Sadler Committee secured a parliamentary investigation of conditions in the textile factories. The investigation led to the Act of 1833, which limited the hours of employment for women and children in textile work. In 1842 Sir Edwin Chadwick initiated another investigation into the sanitary conditions of factories, and in 1855 Florence Nightingale reported on the state of rural hygiene. This was the nascent age of medical reform, with advances in both medical practice and research. In Eliot’s novel, Tertius Lydgate pushes for rural health reform around 1830—well ahead of Nightingale’s efforts, making him a harbinger of changes soon to come. In real life, even earlier efforts at health reform produced revolutionary results. Edward Jenner, for example, had discovered and administered the first vaccinations in 1798.

TWO FLEDGLING PROFESSIONS

Neither surgeons nor journalists were highly esteemed in earty-nineteenth-century society. In Middlemarch, Tertius Lydgate aspires to elevate his status and influence as a country surgeon by applying his skills as a scientist to his practice. Meanwhile, Mr. Vincy has reservations about his daughter Rosamond’s engagement to Lydgate, since doctors occupied a lower financial status than wealthy manufacturers at the time. Newspaper editors suffered similar circumstances. Even editors of national papers rarely earned a living from full-time occupation in the field. Thus, Will Ladislaw’s relatives are horrified when he agrees to serve as a newspaper editor in Middlemarch. His cousin, Mr. Casaubon, a member of the landed gentry, deems it unfitting for a relative of his to take up such a lowly occupation.

Political unrest and the age of revolution

Nineteenth-century English politics were heavily influenced by the ideology of the French Revolution (1789-93). In 1789, members of the French bourgeoisie called a meeting of the National Assembly and asserted their demands in a “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens.” This was a manifesto that protested noble privilege and hierarchy, but without supporting a democratic or egalitarian society. Although the first article proclaimed that “Men are born and live free and equal under the law,” the Declaration also provided for the existence of social distinctions, for the bourgeoisie considered private property a natural, inalienable, and inviolable right.

The struggle between bourgeois and aristocratic powers continued into the nineteenth century, and in 1830 France was again thrown into turmoil when Charles X tried to curtail the powers fought so hard for in 1789. The July Revolution erupted when the king attempted to dissolve Parliament, abolish freedom of the press, and decrease the voting population. This revolution marked the defeat of the aristocrats by the middle class and ended with the king’s being deposed. The overthrow of the French royal family triggered risings in Belgium (1830) and Poland (1830-31), and agitations in parts of Italy and Germany. Its effects also reached England: “The Reform Act of 1832 corresponds to the July Revolution of 1830 in France, and had indeed been powerfully stimulated by the news from Paris.… [T]his period is probably the only one in modern history when political events in Britain ran parallel with those on the continent, to the point where something not unlike a revolutionary situation might have developed in 1831-2 but for the restraint of both Whig and Tory [political] parties” (Hobsbawm, pp. 110-11).

Reform Bill of 1832

Middlemarch takes place between September 30, 1829, and the end of May 1832, during England’s struggle for political reform, which culminated in the passage of the First Reform Bill in June 1832. As the middle class grew, so did its desire to protect its commercial and industrial interests. This desire was exacerbated by inequalities in parliamentary representation between rural areas and the rapidly growing cities. Even though rural England was more and more thinly populated, rural votes counted towards representation in Parliament, while many of the newer manufacturing cities with large, growing populations were not represented at all. Since the rural areas were for the most part controlled by aristocratic landowners and the cities were controlled by the middle class, its members found their political powers severely limited by the existing laws. Identified with the Whig party, the middle class launched a campaign to press for a bill that would allow them more political representation. At the beginning of the novel, the upper-class Tories—Dunder Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and King George IV—are in control; conservatives, they manage to hold out against the forces of reform. However, with the death of George IV in June 1830 and the assumption of power by the Whigs under Lord Charles Grey as prime minister in November 1830, reform of some kind became inevitable.

The first great Reform Bill was introduced by Lord John Russell in March 1831. When it passed the second reading by only one vote, Lord Grey asked for a dissolution of Parliament to make his case to the rest of the country. The dissolution, which took place on April 22, marks the end of the last Parliament to be successful in blocking reform, with the reformers eventually winning 90 seats. In the spring of 1832, after passing in the House of Commons, the Reform Bill went to the House of Lords. The House threw out the bill on May 7, 1832, at which point Middlemarch ends. But in a few weeks the same bill would be passed (June 7, 1832) under pressure of near rebellion.

The passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 by Grey’s Whig government proved to be a hallmark in parliamentary reform. Seats were redistributed in favor of growing industrial cities, and qualifications were amended to give the right to vote to smaller property holders and all freeholders who owned at least 10 pounds. The bill disfranchised 56 boroughs, among them the so-called “rotten boroughs,” which had very small populations (or none at all), and those known as “pocket boroughs,” in which the number of representatives had been controlled by aristocratic landowners. It also gave representation to 42 cities and towns that had previously lacked it, among them Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Leeds. On the whole, the bill transferred political power from the landowning aristocrats to the middle class and subordinated the House of Lords to the popular will. It was the first of three major measures in the nineteenth century to liberalize parliamentary representation. Benjamin Disraeli and the Conservatives would pass the Reform Bill of 1867, which enfranchised working men in the towns and more than doubled the electorate, and in 1885 the electorate would again be doubled by enfranchising even more workers and agricultural laborers.

The Novel in Focus

Principal Characters

Dorothea Brooke A well-born, idealistic young woman
Edward Casaubon Her middle-aged husband, an Anglican clergyman and classical scholar
Will Ladislaw Casaubon’s poor relation, who falls in love with Dorothea
Tertius Lydgate A newly arrived young doctor with good family connections
Rosamond Vincy Lydgate’s wife and the daughter of the leading manufacturer in Middlemarch
Fred Vincy Rosamond’s brother, who hopes to inherit property from his uncle, a gentleman farmer
Mary Garth Fred’s childhood sweetheart, the daughter of a struggling land agent
Celia Brooke Dorothea’s younger, more conventional sister
Sir James Chettam Celia’s husband and Dorothea’s former suitor
Brooke Dorothea and Celia’s bachelor uncle and guardian
Nicholas Bulstrode Philanthropic banker who uses his money to further his religious beliefs

Plot summary

Prelude—George Eliot’s Prelude introduces the novel’s narrator as well as its most comprehensive theme: the scarcity of opportunity in the modern world for exceptional individuals to fulfill their promise. The narrator meditates on the life of St. Teresa, who lived 300 years before the novel opens, suggesting that there are “later-born Theresas” who instead of reforming a religious order never accomplished anything great because they are “helped by no coherant social faith and order” (Middlemarch, p. xiii). Eliot’s narrator will guide us through this disappointing world, enfolding its action in compassionate psychological analysis.

Book 1—Miss Brooke. The novel is set in Middlemarch, a town in England’s rural Midlands, and its environs. The heroine Dorothea Brooke and her sister Celia have only recently come to live at Tipton Grange, the estate of their uncle, Mr. Brooke. Beautiful and well-born, Dorothea has intellectual and spiritual ideals and ambitions that distinguish her from other women, most particularly her more conventional sister. “Open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring,” she is “enamoured of intensity and greatness” (Middle-march, pp. 1, 3). Blinded by these ideals, she chooses to marry the elderly scholar and clergyman, Edward Casaubon, rector and owner of the prosperous Lowick estate, naively imagining that he has brilliant scholarly work before him to which she can devote herself.

Dorothea soon meets Casaubon’s second cousin, Will Ladislaw, whose grandmother was disinherited for marrying a Polish political patriot. He is a footloose and artistic young man who refuses to choose a profession. Casaubon dislikes Will because the young man is critical of the scholar’s patient and cautious approach to his work.

At this point, the novel introduces the principle family in town society, the Vincys. Mr. Vincy is the leading manufacturer of Middlemarch. His family is financially comfortable and socially ambitious; they have sent their oldest son, Fred, to Oxford, and their daughter, Rosamond, to a lady’s school, where she can mingle with the children of gentility. Fred has just returned after failing his exams and acquiring the expensive habits of a gentleman. The current hope is that Mrs. Vincy’s brother, Peter Featherstone, an ailing old bachelor gentleman farmer, will make Fred the heir to his land and property at Stone Court. However, Fred is in a quandary because he has a gambling debt that he cannot pay, and the security is being held by Caleb Garth, whose daughter, Mary, is Fred’s childhood sweetheart and present-day love. Caleb, a land agent, is not doing well enough in business for him to lose the money. Aside from her connection to Fred, Mary has another tie to the Vincy family. She nurses and otherwise cares for their uncle Featherstone to help her own family out.

Book 2—Old and Young. Another prominent businessman in Middlemarch, the banker Nicholas Bulstrode, uses his position in town to assert his personal religious views. He has just

ELIOT’S “RELIGION OF HUMANITY”

By Elioft’s day, rational philosophy and modern science had made it more and more difficult for thinking people to accept the biblical story of creation and the traditional idea of a transcendent deity. Contrary to the biblical story that man was created in God’s image, Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859) maintained that man and ape possess a common ancestor. Well acquainted with the advances in science and philosophy, George Eliot set out to reinvent meaningful existence in an age in which people were no longer bound together by a common, coherent social faith and order. How do we do our daily duty when God is no longer an accessible myth? How do we reconstruct the bonds of sympathy that were once so prominent in family and village? Middlemarch attempts to replace conventional religion with a so-called religion of humanity, in which faith and morality are to be found in the interdependent web of concerns that exist in the human community, We see a wide range of Anglican clergymen in Middlemarch (the conservative Cadwallader, the liberal Farebrother, and the evangelical Tyke), but none possess the spirituality of the heroine. In Book 8, Chapter 80, when Dorothea emerges from her great moral struggle, she looks out of her window at dawn to see figures moving in the distance: “She was part of that involun-tary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining,” Her sense of “vivid sympathetic experience’’ now returned to her, she goes forth to help save Lydgate’s reputation and marriage (Middlemarch, p. 544).

offered a young doctor, Tertius Lydgate, the position of head superintendent at his new fever hospital in exchange for Lydgate’s support of Bulstrode’s choice for the old infirmary’s chaplain. Unlike Fred, who cannot decide on a profession, Lydgate shows an intellectual passion for his medical practice akin to romantic love. Although he comes from a good family, Lydgate is an orphan whose father was a military man and left little provision for his children. Eager to be a medical and scientific reformer, he hopes that by working in the country he will “keep away from the range of London intrigues, jealousies, and social truckling, and win celebrity, however slowly, as Jenner [the discoverer of the vaccination] had done, by the independent value of his work” (Middlemarch, p. 100). These idealistic views about country politics are soon tested when Lydgate finds himself forced to cast the deciding vote for the infirmary chaplain; according to his bargain, he chooses Bulstrode’s candidate against his friend Reverend Farebrother, identifying himself as one of Bulstrode’s party.

Meanwhile, Dorothea Brooke is on her honeymoon in Rome, where she encounters Will Ladislaw. They soon become friends, and Will, who has fallen in love with Dorothea, decides he will return to England and choose a profession in hopes of winning her approval. Dorothea herself is disappointed with married life. Casaubon, who is much older and dispassionate by nature, is unable or unwilling to educate her about his intellectual pursuits and does not appreciate her affectionate nature. The couple has their first disagreement when Dorothea inadvertently wounds her husband by mentioning that she hopes he will soon begin to write his book.

Book 3—Waiting for Death. Back in Middlemarch, Fred falls ill with typhoid fever, and Rosamond suggests that they contact Lydgate for help. Once Fred is safely out of danger, the illness provides an excuse for Rosamond to flirt with Lydgate, which the neighbors notice. When Lydgate hears rumors of her engagement, however, he tries to avoid the Vincys, only in the end to impulsively engage himself to Rosamond when he sees her cry.

The Casaubons are by this time home from Rome and learn that Celia and the conventional Sir James Chettam have become engaged. Dorothea and Casaubon soon have another disagreement, this time over Will’s visiting them, and Casaubon grows ill. Lydgate, who is called in to doctor the old scholar, warns that Casaubon must not overwork himself and ought to avoid any mental agitation because of his heart. Dorothea asks her uncle to write Ladislaw not to come to Lowick, but Mr. Brooke instead secretly invites Ladislaw to his estate. He hopes that Will can help him with the newspaper he has purchased, the “Middlemarch Pioneer,” to further his political ambitions for a seat in Parliament. Meanwhile, Casaubon is not the only one in his village who is seriously ill. Peter Featherstone’s relatives have gathered around his deathbed, but it is his caretaker, Mary Garth, who is with him when he dies. He commands her to burn one of two wills he has made, but Mary refuses to do so, even if her refusal is likely to harm her sweetheart Fred’s prospects, because burning the will may lay her open to suspicion.

Book 4—Three Love Problems. Featherstone’s relatives gather to read his will, only to discover that most of the property, including his Stone Court home, has been bequeathed to a Joshua Rigg, an illegitimate son. In other words, his death has not enriched the Vincys. This disappointment makes Mr. Vincy unhappy about Rosamond’s impending marriage to Lydgate, since the young doctor’s practice is not established. Lydgate himself is financially naive and starts to spend beyond his means.

In the countryside, Dorothea’s uncle has the landed gentry in an uproar because of his determination to win a seat in Parliament and support the Reform Bill, although he is notorious throughout the area as “a damned bad landlord” (Middlemarch, p. 247). It is only when Mr. Brooke must talk with an angry tenant who threatens him with the “Rinform” (in other words, “reform”) that he decides to let the land agent Mr. Garth (Mary Garth’s father) have a hand in the management of his estate (Middle-march, p. 274). In the meantime, Ladislaw has accepted a position as editor of the local paper bought by Mr. Brooke to further his political ambitions, a job that Casaubon believes is beneath the family’s dignity. Dorothea proceeds to add fuel to the fire, unintentionally angering Casaubon when she suggests that he give half his inheritance to Will. The book ends as Casaubon, insecure but proud, worries that Dorothea has become critical of his scholarly efforts, and blames Ladislaw for this turn of events. Casaubon also suspects that Ladislaw is scheming to marry Dorothea after his death.

Book 5—The Dead Hand. Dorothea consults Lydgate about her husband’s health. The doctor takes the opportunity to ask her for a contribution to the new hospital. He mentions that jealousy and prejudice among the other practitioners is making support scarce; also, the town is suspicious of Lydgate’s new methods. The young doctor refuses to prescribe unnecessary drugs, which makes him unpopular with the town’s apothecaries. He also supports all kinds of new scientific practices, including autopsies and the improvement of hygiene; patients who prefer tried-and-true methods have become wary of him, and Lydgate’s rival doctors are defensive because his insistence on reform implies a criticism of their established ways. The young doctor receives little sympathy at home, either—Rosamond, his new wife, admits, “1 often wish you had not been a medical man,” adding that his cousins think he has sunk in rank because of his profession (Middlemarch, p. 316).

It seems that the town is more interested in political than medical reform. At least Ladislaw is keeping himself busy, and he has begun to enjoy his work at the paper. Dorothea, however, finds that she does not like the uninspiring tasks that her husband gives her as work. Ever since Casaubon has learned that he could die at any moment, he has become more demanding of her time. When he tries to extract a promise from her that if he dies, she will carry out all his wishes, Dorothea hesitates. In the end, she reluctantly decides to comply, but before she can tell him, she finds him dead. Soon after the funeral, Dorothea discovers that her husband’s will includes a recently added codicil prohibiting her from marrying Ladislaw on pain of losing Casaubon’s property. The news only causes Dorothea to yearn for Ladislaw.

In Middlemarch, the townsmen are more interested in politics than in the landed gentry’s problems. Ladislaw has been busy coaching Dorothea’s uncle Brooke, who nonetheless delivers such a poor speech that it ends his political career. Brooke decides to give up the paper, which prompts Ladislaw to move from political journalism into politics; he predicts that “political writing, political speaking, would get a higher value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking Dorothea to step down to him” (Middlemarch, p. 351). These hopes of moving up socially will soon be dashed, however. Mr. Buistrode, now the owner of Stone Court, has just been paid a visit by an acquaintance from the past, an alcoholic drifter named John Raffles. Raffles demands money to keep quiet about how Bulstrode once prevented a stepdaughter of his (who would later become Ladislaw’s mother) from inheriting some money.

Book 6—The Widow and the Wife. Fred Vincy finally decides on a career; he will learn the land business from Caleb Garth. Fred’s sister, however, has been faring less well. Rosamond has lost the child she was carrying because she disobeyed Lydgate and went riding with one of his upperclass relatives. Lydgate is also worried about their growing debt, but Rosamond shows little sympathy for the problem and only suggests that they ask her father for money or leave Middlemarch for London, which Lydgate refuses to do. Meanwhile, Raffles accosts Ladislaw with information about his mother: she ran away from her family when she found out they were Jewish pawnbrokers. Bulstrode has a guilty conscience because her disappearance made it possible for him to acquire the entire fortune and he made no attempt to contact her. To ease his conscience, he offers Ladislaw money, which the young man rejects as morally tainted because of the association with Jewish pawnbroking. Discouraged by the news concerning his family, he visits Dorothea again. During the conversation, Dorothea realizes that Ladislaw loves her and feels elated, but she keeps her love for him to herself. This part ends with Will leaving Middlemarch.

Book 7—Two Temptations. Lydgate’s money troubles have worsened. His attempts to discuss economizing with Rosamond only alienate her from him. Rosamond arranges everything as she pleases, countermanding Lydgate’s efforts to find a buyer for their house and writing to Sir Godwin Lydgate, Tertius’s well-to-do uncle, for money. In desperation, Lydgate finally asks Bulstrode for the money. The banker complies, but the deed will come back to haunt Lydgate. Raffles has become very ill from an attack of alcohol poisoning, and Bulstrode decides to loan Lydgate money to put him under obligation in case Raffles says something incriminating about Bulstrode to Dr. Lydgate. Also Bulstrode neglects to tell Raffles’s attendant about the doctor’s orders not to let Raffles take alcohol, which anyway was a controversial prescription for the time. Raffles dies. Bulstrode believes that his secret is now safe, but rumors have already spread among the townspeople. They ostracize Bulstrode and also Lydgate, whom they believe has been bribed to keep silent.

Book 8—Sunset and Sunrise. When Rosamond finds out about the scandal, she remains unsympathetic and fantasizes about falling in love with Ladislaw. Only Dorothea tells Lydgate that she believes he is innocent, and Lydgate is touched. The two commiserate, and she sympathetically asserts, “There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that—to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail” (Middlemarch, p. 527). All her life she has had the ambition to accomplish something that would help others less fortunate than herself, but she has not been able to find out how to do so. She offers to help him with the hospital. But Lydgate confesses that his wife does not want to stay in Middlemarch, and he is having trouble communicating with her anyway. Dorothea then offers to speak with Rosamond.

JEWS IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND

Toward the end of the novel, Middlemarch discovers that young Will Ladislaw has, in the words of one of its Inhabitants, “a queer genealogy” that includes “a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker’’ (Middlemarch, p. 497). During this period, Jews in England were still primarily dependent on the finance trades. The wealthiest of Jewish families worked as stock brokers, merchant bankers, and large-scale merchants. Most Jewish families, however, did not possess anywhere near the kind of wealth that Ladislaw’s grandparents had achieved; the vast majority were immigrants from Central Europe who were struggling to make ends meet (Lipman, pp. 27-34).

Uneasiness with minorities in nineteenth-century England is evident in the novel The clergyman who mentions this news about Ladislaw’s heritage goes on to observe that “there’s no knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand. Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify/’ while another townsman expresses his hostility towards “[a]ny cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy” (Middlemarch, p. 497). Discrimination moreover was legally condoned. Jews could not legally carry on retail trade in the city of London until 1830, and professing Jews could not exercise the parliamentary franchise until 1835. Only with the Jewish Relief Act of 1858 did the House of Commons finally dispense with the Christian words of the admission oath, thus allowing Jews to hold seats in Parliament.

After Lydgate leaves, Dorothea forms a plan to loan him the money he borrowed from Buistrode and to deliver the check when she visits Rosamond. When she visits Rosamond the next day, however, she finds Ladislaw holding Rosamond’s hands and assumes the worst, although Ladislaw visits Rosamond only because he is friends with Lydgate and enjoys playing music with her. Ladislaw is horrified and Dorothea leaves immediately in shock and humiliation. After a night of great moral struggle, however, she decides that it is her duty to go back and offer Rosamond her sympathy about Lydgate’s disgrace. Touched by Dorothea’s generosity, and in a rare moment of unselfishness, Rosamond tells Dorothea how innocent her relationship with Ladislaw really is. When Ladislaw comes to see Dorothea again, the two decide that they love each other so much that they will get married in spite of his parentage, his poverty, and what Middlemarch thinks.

Finale. Mr. Bulstrode gives Stone Court to his wife, and she decides to ask Mr. Garth to adopt his original plan with respect to having Fred help manage the property. Fred Vincy becomes a successful farmer, and Mary publishes a children’s book. The Lydgates move to London where the doctor builds a successful medical practice among the rich, but he dies when he is only 50, having “always regarded himself as a failure” because he never realized his scientific ambitions. (Middlemarch, p. 575). Although Dorothea is happily married to Ladislaw, who becomes a member of Parliament, “Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better” (Middlemarch, p. 575). Despite these disappointments, the novel ends by affirming the incalculably diffusive effect of the unhistoric acts of goodness by people like Dorothea, who “lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs” (Middlemarch, p. 578).

Gender and class

In Middlemarch, conventional attitudes about gender roles and class identity lead to poor marital choices. As an unmarried woman not yet in control of her property, Dorothea longs “for the time when she would be of age and have some command of money for generous schemes” (Middlemarch, p. 2). She realizes that her sphere for doing good is limited to that of the home, but she hopes to circumvent these limitations by serving as a helpmate to a man who does the kind of work in which she believes. Dorothea chooses Edward Casaubon as her husband because, compared to the other potential suitors available to her in her small social circle, he comes closest to caring for the spiritual and intellectual matters most important to her. Having unsuccessfully searched for a purpose to her life, she rejoices that “[n]ow she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence” (Middlemarch, p. 28).

Dorothea soon discovers that her idealism is misplaced. Casaubon is trying to write a religious history, the “Key to All Mythologies,” which proves “that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally revealed” (Middle-march, p. 14). As Will Ladislaw points out to Dorothea, Casaubon’s efforts are hopelessly wasted “as so much English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world”—he is referring to new German scholarship with which Eliot herself was familiar (Middlemarch, p. 144). Casaubon himself holds conventional views about women; he marries Dorothea because he deems her intelligent enough to help him with his studies and to admire him, but not knowledgeable enough to make him feel insecure.

Likewise, Lydgate’s conventional views of women cause him to marry Rosamond Vincy; he prefers women that he believes to be passive and helpless, and finds he does not care for the more intellectual Dorothea initially because “it is troublesome to talk to such women” (Middlemarch, p. 63). He assumes that if a woman does not express her thoughts, she cannot possess any complicated ones. Little does he know that Rosamond only pretends to be passive in order to get what she desires. Lydgate does not realize that she is attracted to him primarily because of her aspirations to become part of the landed gentry, with which he is associated because of his heritage. She feels ashamed of being middle class. “Rosamond felt that she might have been happier if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer. She disliked anything which reminded her that her mother’s father had been an innkeeper” (Middlemarch, p. 69). When Lydgate finds that they are in debt and tries to economize, Rosamond refuses to cooperate because she does not want to lose her dreams of social position. But the way she resists is not by arguing with him—her supposed passivity allows her to not have to communicate; she simply ignores his orders and does as she pleases. Yet, even well after Lydgate realizes this about her, he cannot help treating her as weaker than himself: “He wished to excuse everything in her if he could but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an animal of another and feebler species.” Nevertheless, “she had mastered him” (Middle-march, p. 461).

Sources and literary context

The origins of Middlemarch date from early in 1869 when Eliot began writing a story about Tertius Lydgate confronting the fictional town of the novel. Set during the years of Eliot’s childhood in Coventry and the surrounding Warwickshire of England’s midlands near where she was raised, much of the depiction of town and country life belongs to the writer’s own personal memories. The character Caleb Garth, for example, holds the same occupation as Eliot’s own father, that of a land agent. However, Eliot also did considerable research in areas she was less familiar with, scientific and medical reform as well as political history, as evidenced in a small notebook titled Quarry for “Middlemarch” that she used while writing the novel. She learned about late-eighteenth-century French scientists such as the pathologist Francois Bichat, the physician and surgeon Francois Broussais, the chemist Francois Raspail, and the physician Rene Laennec from the English translation of Renouard’s History of Medicine (1856) and from J. R. Russell’s History and Heroes of the Art of Medicine (1861). Eliot also read The Lancet, a medical journal, as well as specific articles dealing with medical issues, to follow the controversies and developments that interested the scientific community of her day. Work, however, progressed slowly and in December 1870 she began to write another story called “Miss Brooke.” This story grew in complexity and length, and in the spring of 1871, Eliot decided to merge the two tales into a novel, which became so long that George Lewes decided it could not be sold as a “triple-decker” novel, the three-part form typical of the Victorian novel. Instead he published it in eight parts, dividing the novel into small, affordable installments.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Was Written

Post-reform malaise

Middlemarch reflects the atmosphere of malaise felt by many people, particularly intellectuals, as they contemplated the reforming zeal of the 1820s and 1830s to produce a significantly better society. In 1859 John Stuart Mill had published On Liberty, a work that expresses the political philosopher’s anxieties about the rise of democratic individualism. Such a society will be better for the average person, he argues, but not for the person of extraordinary talent. The “tyranny of public opinion” that Mill feared would rule modern democracy finds a parallel in the ascendance of mediocrity in Middlemarch society. At the end of Middlemarch, we learn that neither Dorothea nor Lydgate realize their ambitions or abilities. This is the result perhaps of circumstances in Eliot’s own time. The 1820s and 1830s were a period of great optimism, but the period in which George Eliot wrote the novel was not.

The “Woman Question.”

George Eliot wrote Middlemarch in 1869-71, at a time when women were beginning to write and publish their work for money in increasing numbers. Among other English female writers of the day were Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Charlotte and Emily Bronte (see Wuihering Heights , also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times). It was also the period in which the controversy over “The Woman Question,” the political and economic rights of women, gained a new intensity. In 1869, political economist John Stuart Mill wrote The Subjection of Women, which warns of the dangers of not allowing women more opportunity. The next year, 1870, saw the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act, which removed some of the legal inequalities between the sexes in Britain. But work for women outside the home remained an exception in the Victorian era. Mainstream Victorian society believed women and men must occupy separate spheres because they have distinct natures, distinct capacities, and hence distinct tasks. The traditional ideal required that a woman be admired for skills that made her an agreeable hostess and an effective housewife and mother.

Thus, considerable disagreement among even literary men developed when an increasing number of women chose to write and publish fiction. Opinions ranged from the poet Robert Southey’s discouraging advice to Charlotte Bronte that “literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be,” to the enthusiastic support of literary critic and biographer G. H. Lewes, the man who would soon become George Eliot’s life companion (Southey in Gay, p. 330). In an essay entitled “The Lady Novelists” Lewes argues that “the advent of female literature promises woman’s view of life, woman’s experience; in other words, a new element” because of her “greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth of emotional experience” (Lewes in Gay, pp. 331-32). This comment obviously reflects another stereotype of the day, albeit a positive one: accepting the belief that the sexes belong in separate spheres because they possess different but complementary natural capacities, Lewes asserts that a woman’s special emotional sensitivity should make her a worthy writer of fiction.

Eliot, who did not personally experience much of the criticism that Victorian society directed at women writers, nevertheless wrote essays on women’s rights and women writers. In 1855, a sympathetic essay on Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft (see A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , also in WLAIT 3: British and Irish Literature and Its Times) praises the two writers for bringing attention to “the fact, that, while men have a horror of such faculty or culture in the other sex as tends to place it on a level with their own, they are really in a state of subjection to ignorant and feeble-minded women” (Eliot, Essays, pp. 203-204).

However, in her essay on “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” in 1856, Eliot ridicules the unrealistically beautiful, gifted, and religious heroines so common in women’s fiction for living in a society that presents no serious problems for its inhabitants. Instead, she encourages woman writers to keep to higher literary standards, asserting that “women can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest” (Eliot, Essays, pp. 323-24).

Like many of the women writers of her day, George Eliot chose to publish her fiction under a male pseudonym even though she did not need to do so for the same reasons that other women did; by the time she wrote her first works of fiction, she was already well respected as an intellectual and did not have to worry that male reviewers would slight her work because she was a woman. Rather, it was Lewes, who also served as Eliot’s literary agent, who thought that the mystery of a pen name might be helpful for both critical and marketing purposes.

Reception

Middlemarch was a commercial success, and praise was unanimous. The Telegraph reported it “almost profane to speak of ordinary novels in the same breath with George Eliot’s” and there were favourable reviews by the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly, the Fortnightly, the Spectator, and the Athenaeum (Haight, p. 444). Given the breadth of topics covered in the novel, the reasons for the acclaim also tended to vary considerably. In his review for the Fortnightly from January 19, 1873, Sidney Colvin was impressed by “a medical habit in the writer” (Colvin in Hornback, p. 651). Edith Simcox wrote in the Academy of the “perfect realistic truth to a profoundly imaginative psychological study” (Simcox in Haight, p. 444). The flaws perceived in the book were also diverse. Many found the novel pessimistic. Probably the most famous criticism of the book came from the young Henry James, writing in The Galaxy in March, 1873: in his eyes the novel was “a treasure-house of detail, but … an indifferent whole” (James in Hornback, p. 652). In particular, critics challenged the ending, especially the passages in the penultimate paragraph in which the narrator appears to blame society for Dorothea’s difficulties (Eliot removed much of the passage from her subsequent editions). However, some 30 years later in 1919, writer Virginia Woolf would praise rather than criticize this seriousness, calling Middlemarch “one of the few English novels written for grownup people” (Woolf, p. 168).

—Junehee Chung