Middlemarch

Summary: The novel is set in and around the provincial town of Middlemarch, a growing commercial center of the countryside that surrounds it. If beautiful country scenes are what we expect, the novel is a disappointment, for its landscape is primarily human. George Eliot fills us in on the dense hierarchy of the town—with its mayor, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, and even its auctioneer. Encircling the town is the country, with its own hierarchy, from the landowners and vicars down to the tenant farmers. The novelist catches them all on the threshold of a great change—the social churning to be brought about by the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867. These two legislations symbolized first, the struggle of the middle classes to unseat the landed gentry and then that of the working class seeking a share of the benefits. Yet, Middlemarch is not a political novel. All these currents serve only to enrich and fill out the complex web of provincial life, which the novelist weaves. At the height of her intellectual and artistic powers, George Eliot consciously took on the challenge of a panoramic "English Novel". Against its densely populated backdrop emerge four main stories: that of Dorothea Brooke, young, beautiful and impetuous, aching to be a modern day St. Theresa, who can dedicate her life to a great cause; Tertius Lydgate, a brilliant, young doctor, who is equally ardent about devoting his life to medicine, hoping to pioneer great discoveries in biology; Mary Garth and Fred Vincy—a pair comprising a plain, bright and sensible girl matched with a pampered, good-looking rich boy with no plan to work; and Bulstrode—an apparent pillar of the community whose past catches up with him. There is love, marriage, disillusionment, and a quest for fulfillment for each of the youthful characters. Yet, this is not the standard "romantic novel". Marriage is not the ultimate for George Eliot’s heroes or heroines.