'Middlemarch' as a social Document

Topic: - “Middlemarch” as a Social Document

Paper name: The Victorian Age

Paper no. 6

Name: Bhatt Urvi

Roll no. 32

Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja                             Krishnakumarsinhji University

v Introduction:

                   Middlemarch is a study of provincial life and the scene is laid in the provincial town of Middlemarch in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is a love story  principally dealing with the affairs of Dorothea Book and Miss Rosamond Vincy ending in despaired.

 “In Middlemarch, the psychology tends more dearly towards an intuitive idea of mind and consciousness. Her most powerful novel, even if it is not inspired or the most harmoniously constructed, is the last in which the activity of her courageous, ever moving mind has been expressed in terms of scenes and figures familiar to herself, and thus endowed with artistic reality.”

v George Eliot[1819-80]:

                       Mary Ann Evans wrote under the pen-name of George Eliot. She had religious and spiritual speculation. Her novels deals with the tragedy of ordinary lives, unfolded with an intense sympathy and deep insight in to the truth of character. There is little striking incident       in her novels, but her plots are skillfully managed. Behind all her writing there lies a sense of the tragedy of life, in which sin or folly brings its own retribution.

v Setting of the novel:

                              Middlemarch is George Eliot’s sixth novel. The reaction of the novel is mixed one. Contemporary reviewers, in general admired. In Middlemarch the novelist returns once again to the English Midlands in which her girlhood had been passed and which had fertilized her imagination. The location of Middlemarch has been left indeterminate and vague, the setting has not been precisely delineated, as is the case with the other early novels like ‘Adam Bede’, ‘Mill on the Floss’ and ‘Silas Marner’. George Eliot is once again on familiar grounds and Midland scenes and sights have been realistically and feelingly sketched. Middlemarch acquires a symbolic significance, symbolic of English rural life in the 1830’s. Contemporary, political and social problems are harmonized with private and personal life.

v Plot of the novel:

                     The novel’s plot is complicated. It is made up of four different stories.

A] Dorothea-Casaubon-Ladislaw story:

                              Dorothea marries a man twice older to herself. He dies within a year of their marriage. Dorothea inherited Casaubon’s property of she does not marry Ladislaw, Casaubon’s protégée. But in the end of the novel Dorothea takes right decision and marries Will and thus decision Mr. Casaubon’s property. She understood that her first decision was just lofty aspiration.

B] Rosamond-Lydgate story:

                                       Both married each other in false impression. Rosamond wanted to live extravagant life like upper-class people where as Lydgate though was a doctor could not earn that much. Both left Middlemarch. Lydgate died later on Rosamond marries well to do physician and settle elsewhere.

C] Fred Vincy-Mary Garth story:

                                  Their childhood love grows to maturity. Fred becomes a good person marries Mary, inherits his uncle’s previous estate and lives peacefully with his children. He and Mary had to suffer a lot but things ended well.

D] Bulstrode’s episode:

                                        His way of livelihood, the relation of his shady past and its consequences. He was blackmailed for his past deeds.

                                          There is also the story of miser Featherstone who made two wills and thus created fuss. These different stands were interwoven into an organic whole. Middlemarch like other novels have faults. There is also much of superfluous as far as characters and incidents are concerned.

·      Themes in the novel:

                              There is the theme of the noble aspirations frustrated both by a repressive environment-meanness of opportunity-and “the spots of commonness” in the character concerned. Dorothea and Lydgate are the main characters who are frustrated in this way. There is also the theme of Theresa-Complex exemplified through the story of Dorothea who is said to be a self-projection, an externalization of the Theresa-Complex in the novelist herself. Another theme is the clash of the old and the new, a depiction of how the past shapes the future, and how the future is controlled and determined by the present.

·      Crowd of characters:

                                The canvas of Middlemarch is a crowded one. it is a long novel running into over eight hundred minutely printed pages in the Penguin Edition. There is a host character, so many that all of them cannot even be named in the space. The main characters may be divided into four groups. Te first one is Brooks-consisting of Mr. Edward Brook, his two nieces-Dorothea. The elder sister and Celia, the younger one. They reside at Tipton Grange near the town of Middlemarch. Secondly, there are the Vincys-the father and head of the family is Mr. Walter Vincy. The elderson is Fred Vincy, the daughter is Rosamond Vincy and Mrs. Lucy Vincy, wife of Walter Vincy. The third one is the Garth family including Caleb Garth, Mary Garth, Mrs. Garth, Alfred Garth and Christy Garth. The fourth family is of Mr. Edward Casaubon, a clergy and scholar, residing at Lowick Manor, and his cousin Ladislaw.  Other important characters are Peter Featherstone, a rich miser who is the owner of Stoncourt. Joshu Rigg, Nicholas Bulstrode, a rich banker his wife Harriet Bulstrode, sir James Chettan, an amiable Baronet who marries Celia, and Tertius Lydgate a doctor of advanced views, and an outsider in Middlemarch. Of the minor characters, the more important ones are Mr. and Mrs. Cadwallader Reverend. The list is a long one and it is by no means exhaustive or all-inclusive.

·      Title :

                      As the title suggest the novel gives us a realistic, vivid and comprehensive picture of provincial life of England. The picture is such that if there is any hero in the novel it is the society of Middlemarch. The action of the novel takes place in Middlemarch or the neighboring parishes of Tipton, Lowick or Freshet. As Quentin Anderson points out, “it is a landscape of opinion”, and not any natural landscape, which is dominant in the novel. 

·      Woman and the society of Middlemarch:

                            Celia is an interesting representative of the kind of woman who is entirely happy with the feminine, nursery world. Their uncle, as usual, unconsciously expresses the conventional view with perfect exactness when he says to Casaubon, Dorothea’s husband: “Get Dorothea to read few light things, Smollett: Roderick Random, Humphrey Clinker, they are a little brood, bit she may read anything now she’s married, you know.” This society was transitional. The poor tenants raised their voice against their landlords. They demands better conditions of living. Me. Hawley regards Me. Brooke to be a “damned bad landlord”. Their feelings changed, though the old older still continues.

·      Traditional Society:

                               

                     The limited, isolated community has certain well-marketed characteristics. Everything new or transformation is seen with suspension. Class distinctions are taken for granted and every class carries with it, its own privileges. The class to which Mrs. Cadwallader belongs shields her effectively. It never goes away from the mind of Mr. Brooks, or anybody else that his activities in favour of the Reform Bill could work in the direction of reducing his hereditary privileges as a landowner.

·      Conflict in Town:

                           Old and new both existed in Middlemarch. Old was dominant but new was the future. Religion was divided in to two. One is the practical, kindly, undogmatic tradition of which is Mr. Farebrother. The other is vehement and fanatical, is loosely called evangelical. Bulstrode and the older is suspicious of the new.

A.O.J. Cockshut:-  “ The relation between the Evangelicals and the old fashioned, decent traditional Anglicanism is well given in the exchange between Mr. Vincy and Bulstrode at the end of chapter 13.”

                         The novel has some weak points yet it can be called classic.

“The book is full of high feeling, wisdom and acuteness. It contains some of the most moving dramatic scene in our literature.” It gives us a complete, realistic view of English provincial society in 1830’s and this setting is closely integrates four or five which form the plot of the novel.

·      Conclusion:

                             In short, Middlemarch is such a great novel because of the solidity, vividness and truthfulness and comprehensiveness of the picture of provincial life presented in the novel. This makes it a valuable social document which tells us more about the real, day to day, common, provincial life of England in the 1830’s, than any book of history.