Middle March as a Victorian novel / Positivism.

The Victorian period is one of the most popular eras studied and is well known for

many things, from fashion to inventions, industrial revolution and education.

George Elliot is a brilliant novelist of Victorian England who wrote amazing

harmonious novels, encyclopedias of provincial life. A great narrator, who created

stunning images of heroes, scenes of their lives.

According to Virginia Woolf, Eliot's novel is "one of the few English novels for

grown-up people."

Eliot writes impartially and, at the same time, simply. In her works, the storyline is

not dominant, the main for Eliot are the characters. Middlemarch is a highly

unusual novel. Although it is primarily a Victorian novel, it has many

characteristics typical to modern novels. Middlemarch” is a real multi-volume

encyclopedia of life and mores and provincial. Two major life choices govern the

narrative of Middlemarch. One is marriage and the other is vocation. Eliot takes

both choices very seriously. Middlemarch refuses to behave like a typical novel.

The novel is a collection of relationships between several major characters in the

drama, but no single one person occupies the center of the action. No one person
can represent provincial life. It is necessary to include multiple people. Eliot's book

is fairly experimental, particularly because she was a woman writer.

Middlemarch, fictional English village in which much of the novel’s action is

centered. The novel’s action, however, moves skillfully to nearby Middlemarch as

well as abroad, always returning to Middlemarch as the heart of the tale.

Middlemarch engages three courtship and marriage plots. The courtships of two

couples, Dorothea and Casaubon and Rosamond and Lydgate, explain how the

illusions, impressions, and expectations reached during courtship are shattered by

the day to day familiarity and difficulties of married life.

Dorothea Brooks, a young intelligent woman who makes a serious error in

judgment when she chooses to marry Edward Casaubon, a pompous scholar many

years her senior. Dorothea hopes to be actively involved in his work, but he wants

her to serve as a secretary. Furthermore, Casaubon becomes jealous when she

develops a friendship with Ladislaw, his idealistic cousin. Although disappointed,

Dorothea remains committed to the marriage and tries to be with her husband.

After Casaubon's heart attack, Dorothea is clearly devoted to him, but he bars

Ladislaw from visiting, believing that his cousin will pursue Dorothea when he
dies. After Casaubon's death she delays answering, Dorothea and Ladislaw stay

apart for a long time. However, they ultimately fall in love and marry.

During this time, Lydgate’s story unfolds. He is a young doctor who is passionate

about medicine, especially his research. Soon after arriving in Middlemarch, he

becomes involved with and later marries Rosamond, whom he finds to be

“polished, refined, docile,” all qualities he wants in a wife. Rosamond believes that

marriage to Lydgate, who is a doctor, will improve her social standing. Lydgate

comes to realize that he has made a mistake in choosing Rosamond. She is

uninterested in his work, and her expensive lifestyle forces her husband to the

brink of financial ruin. He seeks a loan from Nicholas Bulstrode, a widely disliked

banker, but is refused. Bulstrode is not without his own problems. He is being

blackmailed by John Raffles, who knows about Bulstrode’s unsavoury past. When

Raffles becomes ill, Bulstrode tends to him and sends for Lydgate. During one of

the doctor’s visits, Bulstrode offers to lend Lydgate the money he had previously

refused, and Lydgate accepts.

For a novelist with such a wide range of works as George Eliot, it is very difficult

to present women in her works. However, it does seem that Eliot's moral Victorian
tone presents most of her female protagonists in a way that shows them to be rather

innocent and simple. One of the most important female characters, Dorothea

Brooks embodies the conventional Victorian heroine. As she is limited by society

to exercise many hopes and desires that live in her heart. As a woman she tolerates

the lifestyle changes that come with marriage. She sees it as her duty to obey what

the society expected to her. These things make her a typical Victorian heroine.

Eliot produced an essentially great novel, with penetrating psychological insights

and moral ambiguity. Virginia Woolf called it “one of the few English novels

written for grown-up people.”