George Eliot - Middlemarch: Relationships and the Struggle for Self

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George Eliot - Middlemarch
The Name of the Class (Course)
Professor (Tutor)
The Name of the School (University)
The City and State
The Date

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Question 3:
George Eliot is a famous novelist of the 18th century, and her novel Middlemarch is
unique as it talks about contemporary historical developments as well as presents the
characters from a psychological point of view. There is a deep sense of moral vision and
compassion in her novel as Eliot analyses how people, in particular, men and women, can
either support or harm each other, in the “struggle towards some better self, which is
achieved, revealed, and defined by the quality of one’s response to others”. The paper
discusses the relationships between the characters of Dorothea Brooke and Will Ladislaw and
Rosamond Vincy and Tertius Lydgate to assess how supportive or destructive they are.
One of the great obsessions of Middlemarch is education for women, and the novel
shows how undereducated women of the novel suffer because of social and economic
boundaries (Coit 2010, p. 223). The female characters of the novel marry for love or to get
what is beyond their reach and are illusioned about life. Some are able to view people
realistically while others are not able to do so when choosing their partners (Çiçek 2013, p
41). The relationships between Dorothea Brooke and Edward Casaubon and Rosamond
Vincy and Tertius Lydgate show how men and women can support or harm each other.
Dorothea Brooke and Edward Casaubon
Dorothea’s sole intention is to marry only a suitable husband for comfort. In her
marriage, she seeks to fulfill the occupational and educational inadequacies of her life. She
has naive feelings about a husband and marriage (Çiçek 2013, p 88). It is interesting to see
how Dorothea develops as a character and how her ideas about marriage and romance change
after her marriage to Edward Casaubon. When she first becomes enamored of him, it is
because she looks at him at an intellectually superior position in the relationship.

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“Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace of this conception. Here
was something beyond the shallows of ladies’ school literature: here was a living Bossuet,
whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a modern
Augustine who united the glories of doctor and saint”. (Eliot 31).
Dorothea fell in love with the idea of raising her position in society by marrying
Casaubon. As she says”
‘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 in all
knowledge.’ (Eliot 54).
When Dorothea Brooke meets Casaubon, she looks at him as a man of supreme
wisdom and intelligence. Her only desire is to find better purposes in life under his influence.
It is interesting to note that instead of courtship and face to face communication, the marriage
between the two gets finalized through letters. Casaubon is so busy with his studies and
projects that he ignores Casaubon or her adulations for him. For him, Dorothea is just an
object and pays little attention to her or the efforts she makes. Casaubon’s insensitivity and
selfish nature prevent him from loving Dorothea romantically. He writes flattering letters to
Dorothea just to satisfy her cerebral qualities and devotedness towards him. Those letters
could be seen as an employment contract for a secretary, but for Dorothea, they meant a lot
more than the profession of love.
“How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it critically as a profession
of love? Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her:
she was a neophyte about to enter on a higher grade of initiation”. (Eliot 59).