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"Middlemarch" as a Social Document
1. 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
2. • 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
3. 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’
5. Themes in the novel
Social
position
Self-
discovery
PoliticsMoney
Love
6. Love keeps people together in Middlemarch we can see in
the Middlemarch true love between characters like
Ladislaw
Fred Vincy
Will
Dorothea
Mary Garth
Dorothea
7. Crowd of Characters
Dorothea Brooke
Celia Brooke
Rosamond Vincy
Mr. Brooke
Edward Casaubon
Dr. Tertius Lydgate
Mrs. Garth
Caleb Garth
Fred Vincy
Mary Garth
8. 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.
10. 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.
11. Woman and the Society of Middlemarch
Major Women Characters in
Middlemarch
Mary
Garth
Dorothea
Brooke
Rosamond
Vincy
12. 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
13. 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.”
14. “The book is full of high feeling, wisdom
and acuteness. It contains some of the
most moving dramatic scene in our
literature”
Conclusion
