Middlemarch
Introduction
During the Victorian age, the realistic novel emerged as the preferred medium for literary expression. Authors, such as George Eliot, emphasized a realistic presentation of everyday life in their novels.The goal was to present “complex life-like characters” to the reader. As she says in her first novel, Adam Bede,
my strongest effort is to . . . to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box, narrating my experience on oath.
Eliot’s most important novel, Middlemarch, we are shown a fictional representation of provincial life during the Victorian era. It is a novel that encapsulates all aspects of Victorian life and its social classes where the working class, middle class and country gentry live and interact in a community. Her story follows the lives and relationships of three main characters: Dorothea Brooke, Tertius Lydgate and Mary Garth. Within each of their story lines, we are exposed to all levels of social class and the intricacies associated with each. Eliot represents familial and social rituals, the clergy and religion and medical issues through her vast array of characters in a factual manner that is true to Victorian life in the 19th century.
Click on the links below for more on how Eliot weaves the historical reality of her time into the fictional world of Middlemarch.
Essay Topics:
Works Cited:
- Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1973.
- Eliot, George. Middlemarch. London: Penguin Classics, 1994.
- Hughes, Kristine. The Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 1998.
- Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Contributor:
Diane Aiken