Bharat Bhammar

Roll No : 04 Semester : 2 Year : 2014-15

Paper :06:The Victorian Literature

Submitted to: Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English M.K. Bhav. University

‘Middlemarch’ as a social document

• Conflict in Town

• Traditional Society

• Woman and the society of Middlemarch

• Title

Setting of the novel

Plot of the novel

Crowd of characters

Themes in the novel

Setting of the novel

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 unknown and vague; the setting has not been precisely described, as is the case with the other early novels like

‘Adam Bede’, ‘Silas Marner’

‘Mill on the Floss’

Plot of the

novel

Dorothea-Casaubon-Ladislaw

story

Bulstrode’s episode

Fred Vincy-Mary Garth

story

Rosamond-Lydgate

story

Themes in the novel

Social position

Self-discovery

PoliticsMoney

Love

Love keeps people together in Middlemarch we can see in the Middlemarch true love between characters like

Ladislaw

Fred Vincy

Will

Dorothea

Mary Garth

Dorothy

Crowd of Characters

Dorothea Brooke

Celia Brooke

Rosamond Vincy

Mr. Brooke

Edward Casaubon

Dr. Tertius Lydgate

Mrs. Garth

Caleb Garth

Fred Vincy

Mary Garth

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.

Overall, every character in this novel are human; each of them can be liked or disliked according to their personal foibles and flaws. But Eliot's point is that we, like they, are human; we can only judge them as we judge ourselves.

Title

Study of provincial Life

The Society of Middlemarch

Anthropological study of People

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

Major Women Characters in Middlemarch

Mary Garth

Dorothea Brooke

Rosamond Vincy

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.

Traditional Society

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 passionate and fanatical, is loosely called enthusiastic. Bulstrode and the older is suspicious of the new.

A.O.J. Cockshut

“ The relation between the enthusiastic 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 book is full of high feeling, wisdom and acuteness. It contains some of the

most moving dramatic scene in our literature”

Conclusion

Thank You