Vocation, marriage and 'the woman question' in George Eliot's 'Middlemarch'

Literary criticism of George Eliot's novels has historically characterized her fiction as moralistic and her narrative voice as the wise "Mutter" of the Victorian era. By the time Middlemarch, her second last novel, was published in 1872, she had a perceived public persona much like the novel's sympathetic narrative voice, sage advisor to many young admirers in an expansive social circle. In Middlemarch's narrative voice, Eliot offers the reader insights---sometimes comic, sometimes reflective---into characters both lovable, like Caleb Garth, and not so lovable, like Casaubon. Through this voice, the author shows us as many sides of each character as she possibly can, revealing the expectations of the characters and of society at large. In fact, the world of Middlemarch can be seen as an experiment in perspective as the narrative texture takes shape with a distinctive use of narrative colloquy, dialogue and free indirect speech---much like interior monologue. The novel's complex narrative combines metaphor with character analysis to create a voice sympathetic to rebellious characters who challenge the norms of Middlemarch society. Through narration, dialogue and free indirect speech, the novel particularly illustrates nineteenth-century notions about the natures of women in order to reveal the flaws inherent in denying women more substantial educations than the ones they receive.;The scientific metaphors associated with each of these three female characters points to Eliot's intention to "count three and no more" in the experiment of Middlemarch (26). In the story of Dorothea Brooke, the microscope on the water-drop metaphor illustrates the demands that people in society make upon a young woman with wealth of her own and prospects for even greater inherited wealth. In the story of Rosamond Vincy, the metaphor of the pier-glass represents the egoism which can emerge from the idealization of a woman's charms. In the story of Mary Garth, the battery metaphor shows how the strength of Dorothea's humanist sympathy has its far-reaching effects on women with the least opportunity, having neither wealth nor great charm. While the protagonist, Dorothea, lives an ordinary married life because of the "common yearning of womanhood" (MM 25), she does have the force of will to marry a man of lower birth and rank - an act far off the beaten path of the social norm.;It is particularly relevant to Eliot's design of a novel about the making of this young woman, that, as the narrator explains, Dorothea felt "that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better" (MM 893). If the "imperfect social state" that Eliot alludes to in the Finale had allowed Dorothea the opportunity to get a better education and to work independently in the outside world, the story would have ended in a more fulfilling role for Dorothea (896). Dorothea's maternal nature, however, which seems much like her author's, reaches out with sympathy for fellowship and finds it in marriage. And just as Dorothea's nature has "an incalculably diffusive" effect on those around her (896), so does Marian Evans'---on her sympathetic readers everywhere. Eliot offers hope to those of her readers sympathetic to "The Woman Question," because Dorothea is out there amongst the ranks of social reformers, if only as a wife and mother. While Eliot shares with her most inquisitive readers a felt need for reform in women's rights, she succeeds in nurturing an entire reading public, both then and now.;In the Prelude to Middlemarch, George Eliot determines the parameters for a specific experiment in "the social lot of women" ( MM 26). While the novel itself is an aesthetic treatment of fictional characters, and is therefore theoretic, the stories of Dorothea Brooke, Rosamond Vincy and Mary Garth are meant to be seen by the reader as specific examples of what Eliot describes as the "inconvenient indefiniteness" of the "natures of women" (MM 26). While this sort of narrative may lend itself toward stereotyping, the novel presents very believable, three-dimensional characters with aspirations and sympathies that reflect the realistic, nineteenth-century provincial British community in which they live. Eliot illustrates the limitations that these similarly discontented young women must accept in a society which sees women as a physically and intellectually feebler species than men. From the painstakingly elucidated, narrow educational and vocational opportunities available to them, all three women choose marriage.