Middlemarch
SynopsisPlot
Dorothea Brooke is a beautiful and idealistic young woman set on filling her life with good deeds. She pursues the pompous Edward Casuabon, convinced that he embodies these principles, and becomes trapped in an unhappy marriage. Then there is Tertius Lydgate, an anguished progressive whose determination to bring modern medicine to the provinces is muddied by unrequited love. They, and a multitude of other brilliantly drawn characters, reside in the town Middlemarch – the background to George Eliot’s incomparable portrait of Victorian life.
Story
About this book
Middlemarch is set in a fictional English Midlands town during the years 1830 to 1832, a period of political and social change in Britain. George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, built the novel around several interlocking storylines that follow residents of the town as they face questions of marriage, ambition, religion, and reform. The result is a detailed portrait of provincial life shaped by both personal choices and wider social pressure.
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman driven by idealism and a wish to do meaningful work, marries the older scholar Edward Casaubon, believing his intellectual pursuits match her own values. She soon finds herself confined in a disappointing marriage. Tertius Lydgate, a doctor determined to bring modern medicine to the provinces, meets local resistance and unreturned affection. Around them, Eliot places a wide cast whose fortunes intersect through money, politics, family ties, and town talk.
The novel first appeared in eight instalments between 1871 and 1872, more than a generation after the years it describes. Its stated concerns include the position of women, social expectation and hypocrisy, religion, education, and political reform, all observed at the scale of one town rather than a capital city.
