The Victorian literature
Study (Analysis ) of Middle March
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Name : Parmar Darshna V.
Roll No : 5
Year : 2017-2019
M. A. : Sem - 2
Paper Name : 6 Victorian literature
Email ID : parmardarshana1997@gmail.com
Enrollment No : 20691084201800
Topic : Study (analysis )of Middle March
Submitted by : Smt. S. B.. Gardi
Department of English
M. K. Bhavnagar University
Middle March
George Eliot
Author, journalist (1819-1880)
Born -In South farm, Arbury Hall, Numeaton ,warwickshire,
The United Kingdom November 22, 1819
Died - December 22 , 1880
About this author :-
George Eliot - 1819 -1880
George Eliot was the English novelist, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. George Eliot was also known by her pen name "Mary Anne Evans ", she was born on 22, November 1819 and died on 22, December 1880. Her father, Robert Evans, was an overseer at the Arbury Hall estate, and Eliot kept house for him after her mother died in 1836. Her father remarried and Mary Ann had a good relationship with her two stepbrothers.
Her first novel “Adam Bede “and was a great success. She used a male pen name to ensure her works were taken seriously in an era when female authors were usually associated with romantic novels.
The novels of the first period deal with life in the countryside in which she was brought up; the society is depicted as a strong and stable one. Eliot called them "natural history" or "history incarnate" and not fiction.
Introduction :-.
Middlemarch” is written by George Eliot who was born on November 22, 1819. Eliot chose to write her novels under a male pseudonym Mary Anne Evans. This is a highly unusual novel. Though it is primarily a Victorian novel it has many characteristics typical to modern novels. The subtitle of this novel is “A study of provincial life.” This means the Middlemarch represents the lives of ordinary people, not the grand adventures of princes and kings. Middlemarch represents the spirit of nineteenth century England through the unknown, historically unremarkable common people.
His major works :-
- Adam Bede (1859),
- The Mill on the Floss (1860),
- Silas Marner (1861),
- Middlemarch (1871–72),
- Daniel Deronda(1876).
' A critical study (Analysis) of Middle March '
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch, thought to be based on Coventry, during the period 1830–32. It has multiple plots with a large cast of characters, and in addition to its distinct though interlocking narratives it pursues a number of underlying themes, including the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. The pace is leisurely, the tone is mildly didactic , and the canvas is very broad.
Although it has some comical elements and comically named characters. Middlemarch is a work of realism. Through the voices and opinions of different characters we become aware of various issues of the day: the Great Reform Bill, the beginnings of the railways, the death of King George IV, and the succession of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. We learn something of the state of contemporary medical science. We also encounter the deeply reactionary mindset within a settled community facing the prospect of what to many is unwelcome change.
Middlemarch is a novel of epic proportions, but it transforms the notion of an epic. Epics usually narrate the tale of one important hero who experiences grand adventure, and they usually interpret events according to a grand design of fate. Every event has immediate, grand consequences. Kings and dynasties are made and unmade in epic tales.
Middlemarch's subtitle is "A Study of Provincial Life." This means that Middlemarch represents the lives of ordinary people, not the grand adventures of princes and kings. Middlemarch represents the spirit of nineteenth-century England through the unknown, historically unremarkable common people. The small community of Middlemarch is thrown into relief against the background of larger social transformations, rather than the other way around.
England is the process of rapid industrialization. Social mobility is growing rapidly. With the rise of the merchant middle class, one's birth no longer necessarily determines one's social class for life. Chance occurrences can make or break a person's success. Moreover, there is no single coherent religious order. Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and Anglicans live side by side. As a result, religious conflicts abound in the novel, particularly those centering on the rise of Evangelical Protestantism, a primarily middle-class religion that created heated doctrinal controversy.
Middlemarch readers will be astonished by the novel's amazingly complex social world. Eliot continually uses the metaphor of a web to describe the town's social relations. She intricately weaves together the disparate life experiences of a large cast of characters. Many characters subscribe to a world-view; others want to find a world-view to organize their lives. The absence of a single, triumphant world-view to organize all life is the basic design of Middlemarch. No one occupies the center of the novel as the most important or influential person. Middlemarch social relations are indeed like a web, but the web has no center. Each individual occupies a point in the web, affecting and affected by the other points. Eliot's admirable effort to represent this web in great detail makes her novel epic in length and scope. Unlike in an epic, however, no single point in the web and no single world-view reign triumphant.
Major themes of Middle March
Responsibility
This is a major theme of Fred’s story, and he must become responsible for his finance and his choices. Bothe men must learn how to rely on themselves, not infringe upon others. He also must learn how to become independent in many ways. Bestrode tries to give him money to repent for hiding his existence from his grandmother. He refuses the money because he knows it come through thievery. He worships Dorothea. He doesn’t care for money and loves everything that is beautiful.
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The imperfection of Marriage:
Most character in novel “Middlemarch” Marry for love rather than obligation, yet marriage still appears negative and unromantic. Marriage and the pursuit of it are central concerns in Middlemarch. In many novels of the time, Marriage is not considered the ultimate source of happiness. As none of the marriage reach a perfect fairy tale ending. ‘Middlemarch’ offers a clear critique of the usual portrayal of marriage as romantic and unproblematic.
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Stubbornness:
In Novel a big issue of character Rosamond is extremely stubborn. The meaning of this sentence is that if things aren’t done her way, she will go behind other people’s backs to do things the way she thinks they should be done. Societal stubbornness is responsible for Lydgate’s failure with his medical practice.
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Prejudice:
This theme that Lydgate and Ladislaw can’t seem to beat. People in Middlemarch dislike anyone who is not from Middlemarch or anyone whose reputation seems questionable. Ladislaw and Lydgate are both good people, but it is initial prejudice. Sometimes based on invalid or circumstantial reasons, those mean that they are never liked or accepted in Middlemarch.
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Conformity:
An issue that is related to societal expectation but it is somewhat different. People are supposed to conform to certain social ideas and norms. Dorothea is supposed to be a proper wife and then a proper widow, and follow society’s set guidelines about how to fill each position.
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Love:
Love keeps people together, or the drift apart. Those who are truly in love like Ladislaw and Dorothea, Mary and Fred are bound together by it. They are very alike in temperament and outlook. Those who lake it like Lydgate and Rosamond, Casaubon and Dorothea are ill-suited to each other in marriage and they are very disappointed by their unions. Will is the grandson of Casaubon’s disinherited aunt Bestrode tries to give him money to repent for hiding his existence from his grandmother. He refuses the money because he knows it came through thievery.
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Vanity:
Especially relevant to Rosamond and her suitors. Rosamond s is exceptionally vain about her charm and her appearances. So much her so that it is a shock to her when her friend Ladislaw says he doesn’t love her. Her unsuccessful suitors are all equally vain, and blame Lydgate rather than Rosamond’s lack of interest, when she will not return their favor.
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Money:
Money is the root of many evils but much good, in the novel. Lydgate get desperate for want of it, Fred despairs when he has little, Dorothea becomes generous when she carefully since their money is limited. Money has a profound effect on character within the novel.
The moral standards and centre of the novel -The Garth family
As a matter of fact, even “Middlemarch”, an imaginary provincial town, has a symbolical not a topical significance. It is provincial, because it is bereft of the glamour of heroic adventure and passionate dedication to high ideals; and this not because the characters are no longer capable of dedication, but because the time for uncommon fits is forever gone. Those who still crave for them look quixotically ridiculous and helpless. Provincial, because intellectual enterprise no longer leads to momentous scientific systems and discoveries but only to provisional results and diminutive steps in collectively undertaken projects.
If the Dorothea and the Lydgate plots unfold as twin studies in defeated aspirations it is not because they lack natural endowments or noble cravings, but because bourgeois existence was so monotonous and science so empirically mediocre. There was no more opportunity for either religious or speculative quests in the post-industrial and post-metaphysical age. A modest sort of happiness is still possible, according to Eliot, Swinburne (Songs before Sunrise), Meredith or Hardy, through a careful avoidance of romantic idealism, egotistic self-absorption. There is one family that would seem to be the moral standard and centre of the novel - the Garth family. Mrs Garth is introduced to us teaching Latin to the children while cooking dinner.
This is portrayed as being a very worthwhile activity, and is contrasted with the somewhat silly parenting attitude of both Celia and the Vincy's. Mary Garth's insistence that Fred find a worthy profession before she will marry him is also held in high esteem - she is putting the good of others above her own desires. The only trouble that the Garth family goes through is a result of their virtue rather than their vice; Caleb, out of kindness and of love, backs Fred, and so when the reditors want their money, the future of one of the Garth children is put in jeopardy .
The Garth family, providing the moral centre of the novel, are prudentially steering a middle course between idealistic aspirations and the disenchanted realism nourished by an age of material prosperity. There is something enduring and substantial in the things they value or accomplish. Whereas the ladies of the time are instructed in the graceful way of getting into and out of a carriage and in the rank flavour of speech (tone of voice, accent, use of particular phrases), emulating manners before morals, Mrs. Garth instructs her children in English grammar or Roman history.
She finds such accompaniment to her cooking in the kitchen as proper as having taught before marriage. With them, the absolutes are tamed, and the religious notions recast in human terms. Caleb knows values well, the value of practical achievement, his idea of the devil being a slack workman, but also some higher notion about a sort of Kantian self-legislating will. Even if God winked at Bulstrode's evil past, he would not work for him any more.So many critics, following the misleading Prelude, take Dorothea to be the moral centre of the novel. The Garth family are the only major characters in Middlemarch who are not educated by experience, they do not change. This is because they are already in possession of the moral education that matters by the time the novel opens.
This is a significant clue. The Dorothea-Casaubon story and its aftermath, and the Lydgate-Rosamond story, are of course more important in the pattern of the novel’s action than the Mary-Fred story or than anything which involves the Garth family, but the Garth family establishes the criteria to which most other actions are referred.H.J.Harvey: “The Garths are the one solidly happy family in the book and as such provide a standard whereby the failings fo the other marriages can be measured. Apart from the devious contrasts with the Casaubons and he Lydgates, the Garths relate especially – because of Fred – to the Vincy household. The different relationships of parents to children is especially well illustrated. The different ractions of Mrs. Garth and Mrs. Vincy to the news of Fred’s decision to work for Caleb illustrate George Eliot’s mature control over that difficult and complex area of human experience where likeness and unlikeness merge into each other. Comparison and contrst always involve a fine sense of psychological and moral discrimination.”
Middle March chart :-
Middle March as a subtle and Rich study of females
George Eliot exhibited a rare insight in the presentation of female characters and her female figures have a feminine attitude towards life. They are all vividly and convincingly drawn. Nearly always, the subject is studied from the woman’s point of view; the women are so vastly superior to their lovers that it is difficult for the reader to appreciate all that it means for them. Main aim of Eliot is to study the psychological of people and individual that how they dominated by nature. Outwardly, women did not have power in nineteenth-century society, or even much respect or recognition. However, they still had “soul hunger,” even if they had no outlet for their spiritual yearning as St. Theresa did (see Prelude).
Following the French positivist philosopher, Auguste Comte (the father of sociology), Eliot believed that it was women who held society together and guided its progress altruistically, from behind the scenes. She did not advocate working for political “rights” because a woman’s power and goodness were profoundly subtle. Sympathy was the antidote to competition, and women have this quality in abundance. They are the ones who encourage it in others and who use love and sympathy to ameliorate the harshness of the world.
MIDDLEMARCH EXPLORED THE WAYS IN WHICH SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL ENERGY CAN BE FRUSTRATED
I do not believe that it is sufficient to say that Middlemarch explores the ways in which social and spiritual energy can be frustrated; it would be more appropriate to say that Middlemarch explores the ways in which social and spiritual energies (ideals if you will) are completely destroyed and perverted. One need only look to Lydgate to see an example of idealism being destroyed by the environment in which it is found. At the start of the novel, we are introduced to the "young, poor and ambitious" and most of all idealistic Doctor Lydgate, who has great plans for the fever hospital in Middlemarch. Throughout the novel, however, we see his plans frustrated by the designs of others, though primarily the hypocritical desires of Nicholas Bulstrode. The second example of the idealism of the young being destroyed by the old is that of Dorothea. This can be seen by her continuing desire to "bear a larger part of the world's misery" or to learn Latin and Greek, both of which are continually thwarted by Casaubon, though this ends after his death, with her discovery of his selfish and suspicious nature, by way of the codicil.
The character who has their ambitions and ideals brought most obviously low is Lydgate. The earliest example is when he has to make the choice between Fairbrother and Tyke. Both of these characters are rather poor examples of the clergy (Fairbrother because of his gambling, and Tyke because of his rather lazy attitude). Our sympathies are clearly with Fairbrother for a number of reasons; he doesn't gamble because he wants to, but because the wage he receives from running his parish alone is too small to support him and the various members of his family that rely on him. Lydgate has to make the choice between some one he likes as a person (Fairbrother) and someone who he needs help from (Bulstrode). It is clear that Lydgate is very similar to Fairbrother in a number of ways; both are scientists, and both have great hopes for the future. It would therefore seem to be the case that Lydgate would automatically support Fairbrother.
However, Bulstrode uses his money and his influence to ensure Tyke's success. Bulstrode is another example of a character that has had his idealism and destroyed, though not by Middlemarch. He was once a great and trusted minister, but the lure of money from the pawn shop, and the possibility of inheriting all of Ladislaw's mother's money proved too great for him. He is no longer the honourable and trusted man, but something all together darker and more sinister: There are many coarse hypocrites who consciously affect beliefs … for the sake of guilling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. He does not lie to others, but to himself; he continues to try and justify his desires, though puts them in such ways that they appear to be morally sound and justifiable.
Conclusion
According to the learned critic, the obvious moral of Dorothea’s story is “that the describe thing is to your work well in the position to which providence has assigned you and not to bother about ideals at all. Such a moral seems satiric at the end of a story which is to give us a Modern Theresa.” Thus Dorothea is becomes an ironical portraits of young ladies with lofty ideals and noble aspirations.
Middlemarch has retained its popularity and status as one of the masterpieces of English fiction, although some reviewers have expressed dissatisfaction at the destiny recorded for Dorothea. In separate centuries, Florence Nightingale and Kate Millett both remarked on the eventual subordination of Dorothea's own dreams to those of her admirer, Ladislaw. However, in the epilogue George Eliot herself acknowledges the regrettable waste of Dorothea's potential, blaming social conditions. Virginia Woolf gave the book unstinting praise, describing Middlemarch as "the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". Martin Amis and Julian Barnes have cited it as probably the greatest novel in the English language.
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