Love and Marriage Middlemarch

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Adriana Hanson
Val Dodd
English Novels
26/11/15
Discuss George Eliot’s Treatment of any One of the Following Themes:
Love and Marriage
“Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending
our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.”1
Eliot attempts to capture the “insignificance” of everyday life in her novel, Middlemarch. In
her book, Adam Bede, she says, “My strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture,
and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my
mind.”2 Throughout Middlemarch, Eliot compares and contrasts several marriages, both
happy and unhappy, and demonstrates for the readers practically what works and what
doesn’t. She cautions against hasty marriages as they often lead to one or both partners
entering the marriage with unrealistic expectations. In this essay, I will attempt to compare
and contrast the two marriages of Dorothea and the marriages of Lydgate and Fred. I will
also attempt to show how social pressure affects these marriages.
The book opens with a description of Dorothea, an opinionated and caring woman.
Dorothea defies standard views of how women should behave and is almost masculine in her
ambitions. Despite her stunning appearance, her moral convictions intimidate potential
suitors.
And how should Dorothea not marry? – a girl so handsome and
with such prospects? Nothing could hinder it but love of
extremes, and her insistence on regulating life according to
notions which might lead her at last to refuse all offers… Such
1George Eliot, “from The Natural History of German Life,” Middlemarch, (New York,
London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977), 520.
2 Eliot, “from Adam Bede,” Middlemarch, 523.

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a wife might awaken you some fine morning with a new
scheme for the application of her income which would interfere
with political economy… a man would naturally think twice
before he risked himself in such fellowship.3
However, Sir James finds this passion in her alluring. He pursues her with no success, even
going so far as to incorporate her plans for cottages on his estate. However, he is no match
for the much older Casaubon. As soon as Casaubon is introduced to Dorothea, she latches on
to him as an intellectual master. Her passion soon incites him to propose to her via a letter
passed on to her by her uncle, Mr. Brookes. Worried about Dorothea marrying such an older
man, but reluctant to forbid her from such an engagement, Mr. Brookes cautions her about
putting herself in the noose. He said,
Life isn’t cast in a mould—not cut out by rule and line, and that
sort of thing. I never married myself, and it will be the better
for you and yours. The fact is, I never loved any one well
enough to put myself into a noose for them. It is a noose, you
know. Temper, now. There is temper. And a husband likes to
be master.4
Dorothea, responds to his concerns by saying,
“I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age…I
should wish to have a husband who was above me in judgment
and in all knowledge… I cannot image myself living without
some opinions, but I should wish to have good reasons for
them, and a wise man could help me see which opinions had
the best foundation, and would help me to live according to
them…I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a
state of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere personal
ease.”5
This whole back and forth reveals to the readers, Dorothea’s expectations of married life. To
her, marriage is a means to educate herself. As described by the narrator, “She had not
reached that point of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied with having a wise
husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise herself.”6 The only way open to Dorothea to gain
3 Eliot, Middlemarch, 6.
5 Eliot, Middlemarch, 26-27.

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this wisdom is through marriage, “for unmarried…there is no way for her to even begin to
find for herself the wisdom she desires.”7
For Casaubon, however, marriage means something drastically different. He is not
looking for a helpmate; rather, he is looking for an adornment to decrease the loneliness of
his last remaining “quadrant.” When they discuss their honeymoon, Casaubon laments over
Dorothea not bringing a companion, “for I shall be constrained to make the utmost use of my
time during our stay in Rome, and I should feel at more liberty if you had a companion.”8
Here he reveals that he does not see her as help, but rather as a burden.
Both Dorothea and Casaubon have their own romantic impressions of what married
life will be and both are greatly disappointed. To Dorothea Casaubon was “a lifeless
embalmment of knowledge,” lacking passion and emotion.9 In fact the marriage becomes a
stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where
everything was done for her and none asked for her aid – where
the sense of connection with a manifold pregnant existence had
to be kept up painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming
from without in claims that would have shaped her energies.10
Neither did Casaubon find “marriage a rapturous state.” In fact, as the marriage continues
Casaubon becomes continuously more insecure around his wife, sensing criticism in her
actions, and “she [Dorothea] was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers; she had not yet
learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened
patiently to his heart-beats, but only felt that her own was beating violently.”11 Both jumped
into marriage quickly and both had unrealistic expectations from the other, and this led to an
unhappy settlement between the two, Casaubon becoming more suspicious and Dorothea
more frustrated.
7 Lee R. Edwards, Women, Energy, and Middlemarch, (Massachusetts: The Massachusetts
Review Inc., 1972), 228.

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Through this marriage, Dorothea learned that “No life could have been possible to
Dorothea which was not filled with emotion.” 12 It is this knowledge that leads Dorothea into
the arms of Casaubon’s cousin, Will Ladislaw. From their meeting in Rome, Will fell hard in
love with Dorothea. His romantic sentiments led him to “worship” her and her “divines.”
Will was “at once exasperated and delighted by the calm freedom with which Dorothea
looked at him and spoke to him, and there was something so exquisite in thinking about her
just as she was.” 13 This freedom she has with him allows her to exert her good will upon
him. She both inspires him and incites him to action. The irony is that this was exactly what
she had hoped Casaubon would do for her. Will’s passion excites her and allows her to feel
cherished, and her moral convictions give him direction. When they finally marry, against the
wishes and will of Casaubon, they move to London and “Will became an ardent public
man…Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband
should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help.” 14
Before Dorothea was ever married, she allowed herself to belief that Casaubon would want
the kind of “wifely help” she could provide him, and, in so doing, would gain wisdom. Her
marriage to Will fulfills that desire. And Will becomes “a social reformer who finds a
vocation which can use his romantic vision when, at the book’s conclusion he is transformed
into “an ardent public man,” and through Dorothea’s adjective, into a version of Dorothea
herself.”15
Neither one of Dorothea’s marriages met with much social approval; her first
marriage to Casaubon was met with intense disdain by Celia, Sir James, and Mrs.
Cadwallder. Celia disliked Casaubon so much that she turned down the offer to travel to
Rome with them on their wedding journey. Sir James, who felt both jilted and protective of
15 Edwards, Women, 230.

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Dorothea, wondered if Casaubon had any “heart,” and pleaded Mr. Cadwallder to convince
Mr. Brooke to put off the wedding until Dorothea was “of age.” He believed that with time
she would come to her senses. Mrs. Cadwallder, the unofficial town matchmaker, was upset
for several reasons and berated Mr. Brooke for allowing Dorothea to marry Casaubon.
Now why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallder have been at all
busy about Miss Brooke’s marriage; and why, when one match
that she like to think she had a hand in was frustrated, should
she have straightway contrived the preliminaries of
another?...with such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting
everything that came near in the form that suited it, how could
Mrs. Cadwallder not feel that the Miss Brookes and their
matrimonial prospects were alien to her? From the first arrival
of the young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea’s
marriage with Sir James, and if it had taken place would have
been quite sure that it was her doing: that it should not take
place after she had preconceived it, cause her an irritation
which every thinker will sympathize with.16
In Dorothea’s second marriage, she meets with similar disdain though for different
reasons. Sir James dislikes Will at least in part due to his reputation. Will, forbidden to see
Dorothea, started spending a great deal of time with Rosamond. This and the knowledge of
Casaubon’s will led to rumors about his decency. He is seen as rash and a predator to married
women. Mrs. Cadwallder determines to remarry Dorothea as soon as possible blaming her
poor decisions on a lack of good choices. “It will be well for her [Dorothea] to marry again as
soon as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people…But I see clearly a husband
is the best thing to keep her in order.”17 None of these social critics or gossip stops Dorothea
however. Her nature calls her to make the right decision no matter what her society tells her
to do. This nature is unchanged even from the beginning of the book. She refuses to do
whatever any one else would have her do, even if it means people will think her insane and
“look out for her.”18 She will carry this social criticism for the rest of her life. Those who
don’t know her will think that she must not be a very nice woman because of her marriages
16 Eliot, Middlemarch, 38-39.

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and those who do, “thought it a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been
absorbed into the life of another, and be known only in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else was in her power she ought rather to have done.”19
Lydgate and Rosamond experience a similar problem in their marriage. Like
Casaubon, Lydgate is looking for an adornment, and, similar to Dorothea, Rosamond holds
romantic notions about Lydgate. He believes that she is “grace itself; she is perfectly lovely
and accomplished. That is what a woman ought to be: she ought to produce the effect of
exquisite music.” 20 Though he did not intend to marry soon, because of his work (much the
same reason Casaubon gives for holding off marrying for so long), he finds himself smitten
with Rosamond, and “when a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he
had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her
resolution rather than on his.” 21 Rosamond believes that the good doctor will be her knight in
shining armor, come to take her away from the dreary Middlemarch town. Rosamond is as
beautiful and graceful as a Disney princess. Mary Garth describes her as “just the sort of
beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in fairy tales.”22 “In Rosamond's romance it
was not necessary to imagine much about the inward life of the hero, or of his serious
business in the world,” what she cared about was how big their future home would be and
who they would invite to dinner.23 “Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived
in a world of which the other knew nothing.”24
Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by Rosamond’s side,
and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her captive—
meaning, all the while, not to be her captive…Rosamond, for
her part…was sure of being admired by some one worth
captivating, and she did not distinguish between flirtation and

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love…She seemed to be sailing with a fair wind just whither she
would go, and her thoughts were much occupied with a
handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped would by-
and-by be vacant…Certainly her thoughts were much engaged
with Lydgate himself; he seemed to her almost perfect.”25
When, Lydgate heard the rumors about his engagement to Rosamond, he withdrew. This left
Rosamond greatly upset so when next Lydgate saw her, she collapses into tears. “Lydgate,
forgetting everything else, completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness at the sudden
belief that this sweet young creature depended on hi for her joy, actually put his arms round
her, folding her gently and protectingly.”26 He leaves her an engaged man. Here the social
gossip almost leads Lydgate into marrying Rosamond. It is then the social pressure of a man
needing to support his wife, to keep her happy, and to keep her out of the finances that leads
to his financial ruin and, subsequently, the ruin of happiness within the marriage. Lydgate’s
pride and “strength” lead him to try to deal with the financial crisis alone. This burden drags
on him and, though inadvertently, affects Rosamond as well. “Lydgate relied much on the
psychological difference between what for the sake of variety I will call goose and gander:
especially on the innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the
strength of the gander.”27 The perfect submission he expected from his wife when he married
her is his delusion.
This does not exonerate Rosamond of guilt, however. When all is revealed,
Rosamond does not try to comfort her husband, rather she worries for herself and her own
private comforts. This selfishness leads Lydgate to become bitter towards his wife. Lydgate,
after confessing his money problems to Rosamond, leaves “feeling bruised and shattered, and
there was a dark line under his eyes which Rosamond had not seen before. She could not bear
to look at him. Tertius had a way of taking things which made them a great deal worse for

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her.”28 More than just her selfishness, but also her inability to let Lydgate’s little bitter jabs
go, no matter how much tenderness precedes or follows them, makes her spiteful. Restless
and angered that Lydgate forbid her to go horseback riding with Captain Lydgate, she goes
anyway, leading to the miscarriage of her baby. Before they were married, Mrs. Vincy told
Rosamond, “A woman must learn to put up with little things [like her brother eating red
herring]. You will be married some day.”29 Rosamond rejects this idea, and, by doing so, sets
the stage for her future unhappiness. Her ability to let the little hurts overshadow the acts of
kindness, make her spiteful and unhappy, and poison her relationship with her husband.
The comparison between Rosamond and Lydgate’s first love, Laure, are not hard to
find. Lydgate idealized both women to such high standards that they never could meet. Both
women search for drama and adventure, and both grow tired of their husbands. Indeed,
“Madame Laure herself reflects on Rosamond, a spiritual rather than a physical murderer,”30
And this “spiritual murder” of their marriage now has to rest between them “And then our
husband—if he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse of his
life…”31 The couple never does achieve any real happiness, however they reach a sort of
peace with one another when Dorothea helps them out of their financial troubles and they
leave Middlemarch:
Rosamond never committed a second compromising
indiscretion. She simply continued to be mild in her temper,
inflexible in her judgment, disposed to admonish her husband,
and able to frustrate him by stratagem. As the years went on he
opposed her less and less, whence Rosamond concluded that he
had learned the value of her opinion; on the other hand, she had
a more thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a
good income.32
30 Edwards, Women, 237.

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Lydgate dies at an early age and Rosamond remarries, all the while talking about how her
current happiness was her “reward,” for which she probably meant putting up with Lydgate.
Lydgate, the character who most appeals to our sympathies, who started the book out
criticizing Dorothea for her clever mind, ends the book praising it. This tells us that he
learned the hard way that to pick a wife merely as decoration is a dangerous practice.
Mrs. Bulstrode is a depiction of what a good, dutiful woman can do to
improve a bad marriage. When she discovers her husband’s deceit, she is heartbroken. Her
friends and relatives would support her leaving him, if she so chose. She goes off to think
about whether she should leave him or not. And this is her decision:
He had married her with that bad past life hidden behind him
and she had no faith left to protest his innocence of the worst
that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature made
the sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any
mortal. But this imperfectly-taught woman…had a loyal spirit
within her. The man whose propensity she had shared nearly
half a life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her—now that
punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any
sense to forsake him.33
When she goes to him, she sees him utterly destroyed, and “a movement of new compassion
and old tenderness went through her like a great wave…He burst out crying and they cried
together, she sitting by his side…His confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness
was silent.”34 Mrs. Bulstrode, despite her husband’s evil deeds, stands by him as he stood by
her. She does not forsake him and in so doing can help him repair. Though she found herself
trapped in a bad marriage, she made the best of it.
The love affair between Mary and Fred however, shows the readers a different way to
have a happy marriage: pick a good man (or woman), and make him settle first. Mary,
despite her intense love for Fred, will not marry him. Several times he approaches her and
begs her to admit she loves him. Several times she tells him that she would not even if she

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did (this by the way is not a denial that she does merely a statement that she won’t say it).
When asked to give her reasons she says that “I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man
who must always be hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him.”35
Again, this is not a statement denying her feelings rather saying that she would be ashamed
of herself to say it. Fred is an idle gambler and wastes all his money on whist and horse races.
He accrues so much debt that he has to take out a loan and he gets Mary’s father Caleb Garth
to vouch for him. When Fred cannot pay off his loan, the Garth’s, including Mary, have to
pay off the loan, causing great harm to their son’s education opportunities. When Fred goes
to see Mary to beg her forgiveness they again get into an argument. He tells her “It is not
generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any power over him, I think you
might try and use it to make him better; but that is what you never do.” 36 When Caleb visits
her shortly afterwards he advises her not to trust Fred.
Well, well, nobody’s perfect, but…what must it be for a wife
when she’s never sure of her husband, when he hasn’t got a
principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong
thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That’s the
long and the short if it, Mary. Young folks may get find of each
other before they know what life is, and they may think it all
holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into
working-day, my dear. However, you have more sense than
most, and you haven’t been kept in cotton-wool.37
Mary responds to her father by saying, “Don’t fear for me, father…Fred has always been
very good to me; he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-
indulgence. But I will never engage myself to one who has not manly independence... You
and mother have taught me too much pride for that.”38 Here we learn that Mary has been
raised to have far more pride and sense (she was not kept in “cotton-wool”) than Rosamond.

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Though she dearly loves Fred, she will not marry him unless he becomes the man she
deserves. Her romantic notions do not blind her.
When Marry tells Farebrother, after he confesses his own love for her, “I will tell you
that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for anyone else…It has taken such a
deep root in me—my gratitude to him for always loving me best…I cannot imagine a new
feeling coming to make that weaker. I should like better than anything to see him worthy of
every one’s respect.”39 It is shortly after this that Fred does honestly become the man she
knows he can be. Throughout, Mary asserts that goodness in a man should come before the
love of a woman, and by sticking to this statement, she ends by marrying a responsible man
whom she loves. They never become rich, but they end their days happily at Stone Court.
Fred “was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife, especially for
Mr. Farebrother. ‘He was ten times worthier of you than I was,’ Fred could now say
magnanimously. ‘To be sure he was,’ Mary answered, ‘and for that reason he could do better
without me. But you—I shudder to think what you would have been.’”40
In this case, the social pressure applied to the couple, actually benefitted both parties.
Farebrother’s threat that if Fred did not stop gambling that he (Farebrother) would court
Mary himself, made Fred promise to stop. Caleb Garth’s discussion with his daughter
strengthened her resolve, and her obvious affection for Fred made Garth more eager to give
Fred a job and take him under his wing. Though the pressure from Fred’s father to go into the
church would have hurt Fred’s chances with Mary, Fred had a great number of people who
cared for him enough to push him in the right direction, and Fred cared enough about them to
listen.
In Middlemarch, Eliot emphasizes how rashness and naiveté ruin marriages. “There is
something even awful in the nearness [this marriage] brings. Even if we loved some one else

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better than—than those we were married to, it would be no use…marriage drinks up all our
power of giving and getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very
dear—but it murders our marriage—and then the marriage stays with us like a murder—
everything else is gone.”41 In order to prevent such a tragic state, it is important to choose
one’s spouse carefully. “Although erotic love, that ‘passion sung by the Troubadours,’
continues to play a role in the novel, it persists chiefly as a demonic presence, a ‘catastrophe’
that wrecks the more valuable marriages.”42 Long gone are the days of Romeo and Juliet and
of passionate but tragic romance, “time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it
is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation.”43
42 Alan Mintz, Middlemarch: The Romance of Vocation, (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1978), 64.

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Works Cited
Primary sources
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977.
Eliot, George. “from Amos Barton,” Middlemarch. New York, London: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1977.
Eliot, George. “from Adam Bede,” Middlemarch. New York, London: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1977.
Eliot, George. “from The Natural History of German Life,” Middlemarch. New York,
London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977.
Secondary sources
Edwards, Lee R. Women, Energy, and Middlemarch. Massachusetts: The Massachusetts
Review Inc., 1972.
Mintz, Alan. Middlemarch: The Romance of Vocation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1978.

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