Mary Garth's Rebellion In Middlemarch-A Critique Of Bernard Paris' Rereading George Eliot

As the supporting character in Middlemarch,Mary Garth has been ignored in the domestic academe,or highly undervalued overseas.The paper first aims to highlight the importance of Mary,as a more ideal parallel with George Eliot herself,instead of Maggie in The Mill on the Floss,when the autobiographical elements are concerned.Bernard Paris devotes a whole chapter to Mary in his Rereading George Eliot,unduly criticizing that Mary Garth places herself in the danger of “ruining her life”.The paper intends to justify the character of Mary Garth,detailing the misinterpretation and reinterpretation of Mary's characteristics,her dislike for teaching,and Mary-Fred relationship.Traditional criticism on Eliot's heroines focuses on submission or resignation,while it does not work in Mary's case.In contrast,it is Mary's rebellion under the disguise of submission,that explains a series of questions,which Paris raises yet fails to answer in the book.The key to Paris' misinterpretation is his unconsciousness of Mary's rebellion,which may derive from his invalid three stages of moral development,in his maiden work Experiments in Life: George Eliot's Quest for Values.Moreover,Mary is not an exception in rebellion,but a representative of Eliot-like rebellious female characters.Thus,her rebellion also proves Eliot's deep-rooted feminism,and retorts the accusation of “making her heroines so much less venturesome than she was in her own life” by some fervent second-wave feminists.At last,the paper proposes a possibility to add Mary's rebellion as the ultimate stage of moral development which was initially designed by Paris himself.