“Middlemarch” by George Eliot

Eliot’s novel depicts the small-town travails of the fictional setting, Middlemarch. It is a quintessential provincial English town of the 1830s, with nosy neighbors high on decorum and stuffy morality. The plot is set against the transformative inclinations of the age, with the Reform Bill of 1832 playing a pivotal role. The landed gentry and the ascending manufacturers vie for prestige and power in local affairs, while the poorer folk gossip about their betters and pick their personal rooting interests. “For in that part of the country, before Reform had done its notable part in developing the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties.” 

Eliot’s story digs deep into the mind of her characters, dealing with their interior lives and thoughts. Her novel stresses the themes of unconsummated love, propriety, as well as the restraining binds of religion, morality, chastity, and proper gender roles. At the heart of the plot is young Miss Dorothea Brooke, a woman strict in her religious belief, with genteel deportment and a pure heart. “Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it.” Proper marriage is a recurring theme in the novel and the story begins with Dorothea’s to a much older clergyman, Casaubon, stodgy and didactic, but from impeccable stock. “‘I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age,’ said Dorothea with grave decision. ‘I should wish to have a husband who was above me in judgment and all knowledge…. I cannot imagine myself living without some opinions, but I should wish to have good reasons for them, and a wise man could help me to see which opinions had the best foundations, and would help me to live according to them.’” Her honeymoon in Rome was not even out, however, before the first pangs of regret seep into her mind. “Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind were replaced by ante-rooms and winding passages which seemed to lead to nowhither?” Dorothea soon becomes reacquainted with her husband’s younger cousin and ward, studying painting in Rome, Will Ladislaw, who, in turn, becomes enraptured by her charms. “He only wanted her to take more emphatic notice of him; he only wanted to be something more special in her remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be. He was rather impatient under that open ardent goodwill, which he saw was her usual state of feeling. The remote worship of a woman throned out of their reach plays a great part in men’s lives, but in most cases the worshipper longs for some queenly recognition, some approving sign by which his soul’s sovereign may cheer him without descending from her high place.” Will and Dorothea are much too mindful of what each owe to Casaubon to act on any of the impulses of their hearts. “Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.” However, this unconsummated bond of affection would weigh heavily, though always unspoken, on both as they travelled their own paths through life. “All their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.” Eliot seeks to show, through her novel, that even the plainest of lives, lived in pure honesty, morality, and propriety, though unknown to the world at large, can still greatly touch all those acquainted with them. “The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”