Student Question
How does George Eliot's Middlemarch represent a Victorian novel?
Quick answer:
Middlemarch by George Eliot is a representation of a Victorian novel as it critiques two key aspects of Victorian life: patriarchy and hypocrisy. The novel portrays the life of a Victorian small town, highlighting the unfair power dynamics in marriages and the societal expectations of women. It also criticizes the moral double standards of the wealthy, who often preached morality but lived by a different set of rules.
Middlemarch depicts the entire life—or "web"—of a Victorian small town community, and in doing so, critiques (at least) two aspects of Victorian life: patriarchy and hypocrisy.
In the novel, Dorothea Brooke marries the much older Casaubon, a clergyman she reveres as a genius. She idealistically hopes to help him with his great scholarly work but soon realizes he has a dull mind and will never complete his supposed magnus opus. Because he is so mediocre, he belittles Dorothea and can't see past her gender, which he considers inferior to his own, to discern her true worth. She is smarter than he is but caught in a loveless marriage and expected to defer to him. Casaubon's conventionality and narrow-mindedness are so intense that he even alters his will to disinherit her should she marry Will Ladislaw. The novel critiques the power a lesser man has over a more talented women just...
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because he is a man and she a woman.
Another critique of patriarchy comes through Rosamund. This beautiful young woman has been raised to be vain, shallow, and to expect, like a child, that her husband will take care of her. Her pettiness and demands bring down Lydgate, who has aspirations of being a great doctor but feels forced by her demands to sell out and serve wealthy clients. Eliot criticizes a society that does not bring its women up to be good helpmeets to their spouses.
Eliot critiques Victorian hypocrisy through the figure of Bulstrode, the town's wealthy banker. He poses as an exemplar of moral goodness and religious faith, but underneath the facade is a rotten core. He cheated Will Ladislaw's mother out of her money, and his business is based on shady practices. Eliot also shows that Bulstrode gives generously to good causes but says this is not enough to whitewash his past. Bulstrode was like many Victorian men with money and power who preached and imposed harsh morality on the weaker and poorer but lived by a different set of rules.