Middlemarch
Middlemarch is a highly unusual novel. Although it is primarily a Victorian novels. Critical reaction to Eliot's masterpiece work was mixed. A common accusation leveled against it was its morbid, depressing tone. Many critics did not like Eliot's habit of scattering obscure literary and scientific allusions throughout the book. In their opinion a woman writer should not be so intellectual. Eliot hated the "silly", women novelists. In the Victorian era, women writers were generally confined to writing the stereotypical fantasies of the conventional romance fiction. Not only did Eliot dislike the constraints imposed on women's writing, she disliked the stories they were expected to produce. Her disdain for the tropes of conventional romance is apparent in her treatment of marriage between Rosamond and Lydgate think of courtship and romance in terms of ideals taken directly from conventional romance. Another problem with such fiction is that marriage marks the end of the novel. Eliot goes through great effort to depict the realistic of marriage.
Morover, Eliot's many critics found Middlemarch to be too depressing for a woman writer. Eliot refused to bow to the conventions of a happy ending. An ill - advised marriage between two people who are inherently incompatible never becomes completely harmonious. In fact, it becomes a yoke. Such us the case in the marriage of Lydgate and Dorothea.Dorothea was saved from living with her mistakes for her whole life because her elderly husband dies of a heart attack, Lydgate and Rosamond, on the other hand, married young.
Two major life choices govern the narrative of Middlemarch. One is marriage and the other is vocation. Eliot takes both choices very seriously. Short, romantic courtship lead to trouble, because both parties entertain unrealistic ideals of each other. They marry without getting to know one another. Marriage based on compatibility work better. Moreover, marriages in which women have a greater say also work better, such as the marriage between Fred and Mary. She tells him she will not marry if he becomes a clergyman. Her condition saves Fred from an unhappy entrapment in an occupation he doesn't like. Dorothea and Causabon struggle continually because Causabon attempts to make her submit to his control. The same applies in the marriage between Lydgate and Rosamond.
The choice of an occupation by which one earns a living is also an important element in the book. Eliot illustrates the consequences of making the wrong choice. she also details at great length the consequences of confining women to the domestic sphere alone. Dorothea's passinate ambition for social reform is never realized. She ends with a happy marriage, but there is some sense that her end as merely a wife and mother is a waste. Rosamond's shrewd capabilitites degenerate into vanity and manipulation. She is restless within the domestic sphere, and her stifled ambitions only result in unhappiness for herself and her husband.
Eliot's refusal to conform to happy endings demonstrates the fact that Middlemarch is not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real life issues, not the fantasy world to which women writers were often confined. Her ambition was to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and quiet moments of dignity. The complexity of her portrait of provincial society is reflected in the complexity of individual characters. The contradictions in the character of the individual person are evident in the shifting sypathies of the reader. One moment, we pity Causabon, the next we judge him critically.
Middlemarch stubbornly refuses to behave like a typical novel. The novel is a collection of relationships between several major players in the drama, but no single one person occupies the center of the action. No one person can represent provincial life. It is necessary to include multiple people. Eliot's book is fairly experimental for its time in form and content, particularly because she was a woman writer.
In George Eliot's time women were thought to be physically as well as mentally inferior to men and intended by nature for child bearing and nurturing. Consequently they were denied opportunities for proper education and independent action outside the domestic sphere. But George Eliot regarded gender differences as complimentary and believed that male and female roles could be adjusted gradually overall to the mutual benefit of both sixes. She contended that the naturalistic demareation of women's function in society was fallacious because woman had a worse share in it's zoological evolution but she had an art which could mend nature in it moral evolution. She liberated herself from the restrictive conventions of her society not only by mastering the advanced thought of her age but also by mastering the advanced thought of her age but also by writing novel after entering into a lifelong partnership with the versatile center of interest in her novels and dramatized their struggle for self fulfillment in man's world with understanding of sympathy.
Celia is an interesting representative of the kind of women who 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 broad , but she may read anything now she's married you know." Woman's reading her public act deepens on the marital status. They are expected to obey and fall in line, as Mary Evans herself was expected the poor tenants raised their voice against their husband. They demanded better condition of life. Mr. Hawley regards Mr.Brook to be a "Damned bad landlord."Their feelings changed though the old order still continue.
Two major life choices govern the narrative of Middlemarch. One is marriage and the other is vocation. Eliot takes both choices very seriously. Short, romantic courtship lead to trouble, because both parties entertain unrealistic ideals of each other. They marry without getting to know one another. Marriage based on compatibility work better. Moreover, marriages in which women have a greater say also work better, such as the marriage between Fred and Mary. She tells him she will not marry if he becomes a clergyman. Her condition saves Fred from an unhappy entrapment in an occupation he doesn't like. Dorothea and Causabon struggle continually because Causabon attempts to make her submit to his control. The same applies in the marriage between Lydgate and Rosamond.
The choice of an occupation by which one earns a living is also an important element in the book. Eliot illustrates the consequences of making the wrong choice. she also details at great length the consequences of confining women to the domestic sphere alone. Dorothea's passinate ambition for social reform is never realized. She ends with a happy marriage, but there is some sense that her end as merely a wife and mother is a waste. Rosamond's shrewd capabilitites degenerate into vanity and manipulation. She is restless within the domestic sphere, and her stifled ambitions only result in unhappiness for herself and her husband.
Eliot's refusal to conform to happy endings demonstrates the fact that Middlemarch is not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real life issues, not the fantasy world to which women writers were often confined. Her ambition was to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and quiet moments of dignity. The complexity of her portrait of provincial society is reflected in the complexity of individual characters. The contradictions in the character of the individual person are evident in the shifting sypathies of the reader. One moment, we pity Causabon, the next we judge him critically.
Middlemarch stubbornly refuses to behave like a typical novel. The novel is a collection of relationships between several major players in the drama, but no single one person occupies the center of the action. No one person can represent provincial life. It is necessary to include multiple people. Eliot's book is fairly experimental for its time in form and content, particularly because she was a woman writer.
In George Eliot's time women were thought to be physically as well as mentally inferior to men and intended by nature for child bearing and nurturing. Consequently they were denied opportunities for proper education and independent action outside the domestic sphere. But George Eliot regarded gender differences as complimentary and believed that male and female roles could be adjusted gradually overall to the mutual benefit of both sixes. She contended that the naturalistic demareation of women's function in society was fallacious because woman had a worse share in it's zoological evolution but she had an art which could mend nature in it moral evolution. She liberated herself from the restrictive conventions of her society not only by mastering the advanced thought of her age but also by mastering the advanced thought of her age but also by writing novel after entering into a lifelong partnership with the versatile center of interest in her novels and dramatized their struggle for self fulfillment in man's world with understanding of sympathy.
Celia is an interesting representative of the kind of women who 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 broad , but she may read anything now she's married you know." Woman's reading her public act deepens on the marital status. They are expected to obey and fall in line, as Mary Evans herself was expected the poor tenants raised their voice against their husband. They demanded better condition of life. Mr. Hawley regards Mr.Brook to be a "Damned bad landlord."Their feelings changed though the old order still continue.
Comments
Post a Comment