Criticism
Monahan has a Ph.D. in English and operates an editing service, The Inkwell Works. In the following essay, Monahan explores how Eliot's parable of the pier glass explains the limitation of characters' points of view and implies those limitations can be surpassed.
George Eliot's Middlemarch has as its title the name of a fictional town in the English Midlands; the novel presents a picture of provincial life during a little less than three years, from September 30, 1829, to May 1832. This broad subject is narrowed by Eliot's focus on characters whose romantic and professional lives are interconnected. Four courtships (two of which involve the main character, Dorothea Brooke) are dramatized, along with the professional struggles of the newcomer Dr. Lydgate and the sudden disgrace of the well-established banker, Nicholas Bulstrode. These plots show various angles on several themes, chief among which perhaps is the way that egoism (self-interest or an inflated sense of self-importance) affects characters' actions. Given the limited omniscient point of view, readers see the action through the characters' subjective perceptions, their thoughts, their interpretations, and their interests, and they also see through the lens of the narrator (the voice in the text that relates the story as distinct from George Eliot the author). The narrator frequently stops relating the story in order to analyze it by pointing out discrepancies and contradicting evidence and by contrasting characters' views of particular events. In this way, the narrator shows repeatedly how subjective human understanding is and how likely that understanding is to be limited by self-interest or personal motive. Characters are distinguished by their different interpretations and by their actions, which express their motives and beliefs. In the world of this novel, it may be safe to say that most people act out of self-interest, but some individuals are able to see beyond themselves and act on behalf of others. Individual gestures of kindness, especially those which require some form of personal sacrifice, constitute for Eliot true heroic acts; however small or seemingly inconsequential, these moral actions in incremental degrees improve the world this novel depicts.
Egoism is the belief that self-interest determines a person's actions. The idea here is that people value themselves (and their own drives and goals) over others, and self-interest determines how they interpret their circumstances and choose to act. Of the main characters, the highly egoistic are Rosamond Vincy, Edward Casaubon, and Nicholas Bulstrode, and to a lesser extent Tertius Lydgate. By contrast, those who are able to see beyond personal desire and act on behalf of others, even when it requires personal sacrifice or going against public opinion, are Dorothea Brooke, Reverend Farebrother, Mary Garth, and Caleb Garth, along with the minor characters Humphrey Cadwallader and Henrietta Noble.
In the key passage about the pier glass, Eliot employs a scientific illustration as an analogy (or comparison) in order to explain how the egoist sees the world. The narrator describes something empirical (that can be tested through material means) in order to explain something psychological (in this case, how self-interest affects interpretation). This passage appears at the beginning of Chapter XXVII:
Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel … will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle … and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement…. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and...
(This entire section contains 1669 words.)
Unlock this Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
the candle is the egoism of any person.
The surface patina of a rubbed pier glass (a large mirror on a wall, often placed between two windows) or polished steel is covered with tiny scratches that go in every direction. When a lighted candle is brought close to the surface, its scratches appear to take on a concentric organization because only concentric scratches catch the light. The illusion of concentricity exists despite the "demonstrable" fact that the scratches go "everywhere impartially." The narrator then explains the analogy: "The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person." This scientific illustration is meant to explain how an inflated sense of self-importance causes a person to see events as having a flattering order and meaning, whereas in fact that order is superimposed by his own wishes or interests. The character that most engages in this self-serving distortion is Rosamond Vincy, daughter of an indulgent mother and graduate of a typical female finishing school, who has been conditioned to believe her physical beauty and social refinement are sufficient to garner her a rich husband and speedy transit to a class above that of her birth family.
The pier glass illustration suggests that a person who wants to see beyond the blind spots of egoism can learn about the world by testing immediate impressions against impartial empirical evidence. The reliance on empirical evidence is in line with Victorian thought of Eliot's own day, a time in which scientists and enthusiastic amateurs engaged in scientific experimentation and data collecting. That Mr. Farebrother, for example, shows his personal collection of insects and other found objects to a visitor to his home and is interested in Dr. Lydgate's formal experiments reflects a quite widespread, middle-class interest in the empirical world. Moreover, Mr. Farebrother's decision to seek information from Mary Garth about her feelings for Fred Vincy before Mr. Farebrother expresses his own interest in her shows how a person can act considerately in the wider realm despite personal longing. The conceited and willful Rosamond assumes she is a star and all else orbits her. When contrary evidence presents itself (for example, Lydgate's inability to pay his debts), Rosamond disregards it, relying on tears and deliberate manipulation to pursue her social-climbing aspirations.
Similar self-delusion can confound even a person trained in objective analysis. For example, during courtship the infatuated Dr. Lydgate misreads the nature and intention of Rosamond Vincy: Lydgate's ability for "inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in a dish … and other incidents of scientific inquiry" is not sufficient to correct the distortions generated by sexual attraction and "poetic love." Lydgate is charmed by Rosamond's demure manner, her sweet voice, and her taste for fine things. He assumes these attributes will soothe him after a long day of work, and he completely misconstrues as love for him her statement rejecting her father's objection to their engagement. If he could see more objectively, he would recognize as ominous her admission that she never gives up anything she decides to do. But he thinks he is superior and she submissive; thus, he misconstrues her obstinacy as devotion to him.
In contrast to these egoistic characters, some characters are more able to see from others' perspectives and are good to others as a result. Their altruism (the unselfish regard for and commitment to the welfare of others) affects their interpretation of events and their behavior. The leading person in this group is Dorothea Brooke, whom the Prelude suggests is one of "[m]any Theresas," saintly women who try "to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement." Dorothea explains the belief behind her kind actions this way:
[B]y desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.
Dorothea acts on this belief as soon as she understands what to do. For example, she overrides her great disappointment in the apparent romantic involvement of Will Ladislaw with Mrs. Rosamond Lydgate in order to affirm her confidence and trust in Dr. Lydgate. Dorothea is quick to defend Lydgate, and when Sir James Chettem and Mr. Brooke urge her to remain uninvolved, Dorothea responds: "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?" When Lydgate benefits from her generosity he concludes that Dorothea has "a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary," and he calls her "a fountain of friendship towards men." Dorothea is willing to put her money and her faith in Lydgate, despite the townspeople's belief that his risk of bankruptcy comprised his ethics in dealings with Bulstrode and in the treatment of Raffles. Given what happens to both the doctor and the banker, the townspeople may be understood as more correct than Dorothea.
Readers may ask what is the sum of Dorothea's achievement or in the larger scheme of things what effect does her kind action have. The answer near at hand is given in the scene in which Mr. Farebrother acts altruistically toward Fred Vincy. The narrator explains that such "a fine act … produces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes one feel ready to begin a new life." Rosamond is permanently affected by Dorothea's kindness: Rosamond "never uttered a word in depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life." Thus, Eliot might assert, the tiny increments of good assist in the slow evolution of human community. However, whether those increments are sufficient to identify a latter-day saint, the novel does not explicitly affirm.
Art that depicts human kindness can serve the high moral purpose of "enlarg[ing] men's sympathies," Eliot explained in a letter to Charles Bray. The small acts of characters in a fiction serve to direct attention to the importance of seeing beyond egoism to the world as it is and making efforts to do good in that world. Eliot put her faith in gradual amelioration (slow improvement), and Middlemarch, while it dramatizes the narrow field of human egoism and altruism, brings its readership to contemplate the wider ways in which the enlightenment of the incremental good mitigates, however imperceptibly, the darkness of self-interest.
Source: Melodie Monahan, Critical Essay on Middlemarch, in Novels for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.