Women's History Month Classics Corner: Middlemarch by George Eliot; George Eliot's Magnum Opus About the Reality of Dashed Dreams and Unhappy Marriages

Women’s History Month Classics Corner: Middlemarch by George Eliot; George Eliot's Magnum Opus About the Reality of Dashed Dreams and Unhappy Marriages

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


Spoilers: I admit I enjoy reading George Eliot after Jane Austen.

If Austen's novels are the frilly romantic girl who gushes over love songs and poems, dreams of Prince Charming (or Mr. Darcy), and wonders why life isn't a rom com, then Eliot's novels would be her prickly older bookworm sister who reminds her about the divorce statistics, is concerned with world issues, and maybe finds a partner but usually while she is building her career or becoming involved in social causes.

That being said, I like George Eliot better. One of my all-time favorite novels by her is undoubtedly her greatest work, her Magnum Opus, Middlemarch. Contrasted with other books written by women at the time, Middlemarch isn't overly concerned with romance. Romance is in it sure, but that isn't the main focus. The focus instead is on unhappy marriages, socioeconomic struggles, academic research, political reform and how various characters of different roles of society get along with each other.

To begin with, let's talk about Middlemarch's author herself, George Eliot (1819-1880).

George Eliot, born Mary Anne Evans, was the fifth child of Robert and Christina Evans. Robert was the manager of an estate. It was at the estate's vast library where Evans, a voracious reader, studied Classics and various languages which would have been forbidden for a girl in her time period. Evans had little formal education and was mostly self-taught by this reading.

While Evans was raised in an Anglican household, beginning in her late teens she made friends with various agnostic freethinkers. She began to question her religion putting herself at odds with her father. She also had arguments with her brothers who received the formal education that she had been deprived of because of her gender. Her animosity towards her brothers may have been the inspiration for her novel, The Mill on the Floss which concerns the rivalry between the cruel, Tom Tulliver and his bookish sister, Maggie.

After her father died, Evans visited Geneva and embarked on a writing career in which she chose the name George Eliot. She chose the pseudonym because of her concerns that she would not be taken seriously as a female author and she wanted to maintain anonymity. Eliot produced several essays, translations, various short stories and poems, and 7 novels. Her novels concerned themselves with social issues, religion, class conflicts, Antisemitism, and gender roles things women normally did not write about at the time.

Besides her writing career, Eliot's personal life was a rebellious one as well. She embarked on an over 20 affair with George Henry Lewes, a married editor. Despite his unhappy marriage and his closeness to Eliot, Lewes did not divorce his wife. Nonetheless, he and Eliot were together until his death in 1870 making the two the subject of much scandal and innuendo.

After Lewes's death, Eliot married the much younger, John Cross. However Cross was deeply troubled and attempted to jump from their hotel to the Grand Canal in Rome while on their honeymoon. He survived but the two returned to England where Eliot died of throat infection and kidney disease in 1870.

Eliot’s life is one of a woman who struggled to find her place in the world and rebelled against the constraints of society’s standards towards women. She was able to take charge of her life and be her own person which is what makes Middlemarch so fascinating.

While Eliot was a rebel to the end, her characters try to be. They try to be more than what 19th century rural England expects from them. The most iconoclastic characters are the two leads: Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate.

Dorothea in particular has an uphill battle becoming her own person. She is one of two sisters who are adopted by their uncle Arthur Brooke. Instead of looking forward to marriage and gushing over pretty jewelry as her sister, Celia does, Dorothea is a well-read intellectual woman who dreams of a life of meaning.
She  wants a life of study and active service to the poor. She designs cottages on her uncle's estate so the poor workers can have better equipped, safer, affordable, and comfortable homes. She reads great works and longs to have someone with which to discuss them.

Dorothea feels stifled by the society around her and is often ridiculed for her plainness and her ambitions. Even her sister is confused by her. Celia mocks her cottage plans as “fads” and wonders why she turned down a proposal from the wealthy but conventional Sir James Chettam. Dorothea is an outsider “a cygnet among the ducklings” Eliot tells us.

Eliot compares her protagonist to Saint Theresa “foundress of nothing, who's loving heartbeats and long after an unattainable goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances instead of hindering in some long-recognizable deed.” In other words, Dorothea is someone who longs to do something greater than what she is brought up to do.

If she lived in modern day, Dorothea would be great as a college professor, or an architect who designs houses for lower income families, or the director of a non profit organization that assists people with housing and education. But alas it is the 19th century and she is only raised to be someone's wife. She is stifled in her role as nothing more than a decorative set piece in a man's life.

So Dorothea becomes engaged to Edward Casaubon, an elderly clergyman who is forever researching The Key to All Mythologies. The marriage is unwise to all but Dorothea. Dorothea hopes to become a helpmate to Casaubon by studying various languages, taking notes, researching and maybe publishing their knowledge to the world. She isn't drawn to him physically so much as she is mentally. She believes that he understands her and longs to be his pupil, secretary, and oh yes wife.

What Dorothea gets instead is a man who is cruel and abusive. Casaubon hides his research and does very little with it never wanting it to be published or read by the masses that he feels are beneath him including his wife. He verbally abuses Dorothea when she suggests studying under him and mocks her desires to learn and help others. Far from her intellectual savior, instead Casaubon is as close minded as the rest of the society that Dorothea longed to escape from.

Finding no acceptance from her husband, Dorothea finds friendship in Casaubon's cousin, Will Ladislaw, a free thinking artist. While Will is just as brilliant as Dorothea, she isn't just looking for a fellow intellect though that is a bonus. She becomes aware that she is a woman with emotion, desires, and longings. She and Will become enamored with each other.

While Casaubon is usually unemotional, he manages to choke out enough jealousy that he alters his will out of spite by leaving the estate to Dorothea but if she marries Will, she forfeits the estate entirely.

Ironically, it is only after Casaubon's death that Dorothea becomes the woman that she aspired to become by designing cottages and donating money to various causes. However, she can't ignore her feelings for Will and has a tough decision to make.


Another Middlemarch outsider struck with an unhappy marriage is Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor who arrives to shake things up in the village. While he is seeking a typical marriage with a pretty wealthy bride, he longs to do some good by treating the poor, building a hospital, and conducting scientific research.
Many of his views are held under suspicion by a public that is so reactionary that they question anything that is new. Like Dorothea, Tertius wants to become a different person but is hampered by societal restrictions.

These restrictions are caused by his choice of a wife in the beautiful superficial Rosamond Vincy. Their courtship in which Tertius becomes romantically involved with Rosamond despite objections from her family seems almost like a commentary on Austen's work in which contrivances keep the couple apart until the end in which the couple has a fairy tale wedding. Middlemarch however goes beyond the wedding to show that married life is not what they expected and instead of a cutesy in love couple, Tertius and Rosamond are stuck with opposing views and financial struggles.

Like Dorothea, Tertius thought that he was getting the perfect spouse. He wanted a wife to run his home, connect him to Middlemarch society, and provide the seed money for his medical practice. What he got instead was a Narcissist who spends money on furniture, clothing, jewelry and just about anything else she can put her pretty little hands on.

Rosamond is a lot like Dora Spenlow David Copperfield's first wife, a spoiled childlike fool who is completely unprepared for the realities of adulthood and marriage. Like children do, she wants everything in front of her and is not used to being rejected. Her spoiled attitude and tantrums put her at odds with her husband who resorts to gambling and doing business with shady characters to pay off the debts that Rosamond puts him through.

Above all like Dorothea who wanted intellectual satisfaction, but got emotional desolation in her marriage to Casaubon, Tertius has to compromise his values. Instead of helping poor people, he has to treat and charge wealthy people to keep up with Rosamond's spending sprees.

There are several other subplots throughout the book that all carry the themes of aspirations that are dashed by reality. There is Rosamond's feckless brother Fred, an immature wastrel who realizes too late that superficial charm and idiocy can only go so far as he pursues the poor virtuous Mary Garth. Mary works for a dying cantankerous old man, Featherstone whose greedy relatives gather around him waiting for him to die so they can inherit his money. Sir James Chettam's pursuit of Dorothea is ended by her marriage to Casaubon so he settles for Celia almost as a rebound. Casaubon's research into the Key to All Mythologies is hampered by his xenophobic desire to tie everything to Christian doctrine so he ignores any research that doesn't fit his narrow view. Not to mention his discoveries of current findings are prematurely ended because he can't understand German, the language in which the findings are written, and he is too proud to get assistance. Then there is Dorothea and Celia’s Uncle Arthur who is running for Parliament on a Reform platform that gets shouted down and insulted by his constituency.

All of the characters in Middlemarch have dreams and aspirations to be something more or greater than what they are. While some succeed, most are dashed or altered. The characters compromise values, integrity, finances, and their ideals to settle into lives that were far from what they wanted or expected.

Even when characters get married, there is much tongue clicking and questioning about whether it's the right thing or not. This leaves the ending as somewhat ambiguous when the Reader learns that Tertius and Dorothea become shells of the people they wanted to be for the sake of the conventions that they longed to change or fight against but instead have to settle.

While her characters especially Dorothea could be mirrors of Eliot, the contrast between Eliot and her protagonist cannot be ignored. Dorothea might have been Eliot if she wasn't a writer and didn't have a way to express her creative desires. If Eliot didn't have the courage to live her life according to her principles and not other people's standards, she might have become Dorothea trying to find outlets through her marriages but ending up unfulfilled and dissatisfied. Dorothea Brooke went one way and her author, George Eliot thankfully went another.