The document discusses the novel Middlemarch by George Eliot and how it depicts frustration. It analyzes how the characters of Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate have their idealism destroyed by their environments in Middlemarch. Dorothea's desire to help others and learn is frustrated by her husband Edward Casaubon. Lydgate's plans for improving medicine in Middlemarch are undermined by his wife Rosamond. The document examines how Eliot uses these characters to show how ambition and ideals can be crushed by one's surroundings and associations.

1. Topic: Frustration in Middlemarch
Paper no:6 The Victorian Age(2981)
Prepared by: Arati R.Maheta
Roll No.:3
P.G.Enrollment No.:13101019
Sem:2
Email id: davearati656@gmail.com
Submitted to:Smt.S.B.Gardi
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar

2. ABOUT THE NOVELIST
Mary Ann Evans who wrote
under the pen-name of George
Eliot.
 she was the daughter of a
Warwick shire land agent born
near Nuneaton
She is of great importance in
the history of fiction.
Her serious concern with the
problems of the human
personality &its relation with
forces outside itself.

3. Her most important works
• Felix,Holt
the Radical
• Danial
Deronda
• Middle-
march
Adam
Bede
The Mill
On the
Floss
Silas
Marner
The
Story of
Romola

5. ABOUT THE NOVEL
• Middlemarch is a study of
provincial life.
• Was published in (1871-72)
• By this novel Eliot built up, from
the lives of a great number of
deeply studied characters, the
complex picture of life of a small
town

6. Characters of the novel
 Dorothea
 Rev.Edward Casaubon
 Tertius Lydgate
 Mary Garth
 Mr. Arthur Brook
 Sir James Chettam
 Fred Vincy
 Will ladislaw
 Nicholas Bulstrode
 Rosamond Vincy

7. What is frustration?
• The feeling of being upset or annoyed as a
result of being unable to change or achieve
something.

9. How we can see frustration in this
novel
One need only look to Lydgate to see an
example of idealism being destroyed by the
environment in which it is found. At the start
of the novel, we are introduced to the
"young, poor and ambitious" and most of all
idealistic Doctor Lydgate, who has great plans
for the fever hospital in Middlemarch.

10. By the character of Dorothea
• The second example of the young being
destroyed by the old is that of Dorothea.
• This can be seen by her continuing desire to
"bear a larger part of the world's misery" or to
learn Latin and Greek, both of which are
continually thwarted by Casaubon, though
this ends after his death, with her discovery of
his selfish and suspicious nature, by way of
the codicil.

11. • Dorothea and Lydgate both are not satisfied with
their marriage.
• Lydgate, because of his intense kindness, and his
desire not to hurt anyone has no choice but to
marry Rosamond, as he doesn't want to see her
sad, and she has manoeuvred both herself and him
in such a way that to reject her could only cause
this.

12. EXAMPLE
• Her desire to help the poor, though this is more
often than not frustrated by her surroundings.
The first example is her designs for the cottages;
they are dismissed by her sister as being a
"fad", and by her uncle as being too expensive.
• Dorothea's desire to be useful, and Lydgate's
desire to help are frustrated due to Lydgate's
choice of wife.

13. By the character of
• Bulstrode is another example of a character
that has had his idealism and destroyed,
though not by Middlemarch. He was once a
great and trusted minister, but the lure of
money from the pawn shop, and the
possibility of inheriting all of Ladislaw's
mother's money proved too great for him. He
is no longer the honorable and trusted man,
but something all together darker and more
sinister:

14. conclusion
• To conclude; all the major characters, in some form or another have
their ambitions and ideals crushed and perverted due to a number
of reasons, ranging from the situation in which they find
themselves, to the people with which they associate.
• In all her characters, Eliot, it would seem, shows that this
destruction will lead to something better, though unfortunately not
Lydgate - he cannot overcome his problems, and is in the end
destroyed by them.
• It is almost as if she is writing a tragedy, in which the heroes and
heroines undergo some horrendous cataclysm, and emerge from it,
though scarred. It is as if the novel starts in moral twilight, and goes
through the deepest night, and emerges into the sunlight of a new,
though worse day.

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