Middlemarch

Seeker
Jun 1, 2022
1 min read

Middlemarch stands out when compared to its peers. Societal expectations were that novels written by women during the Victorian era were to be romantic fantasies with happy endings. Middlemarch is a morbid and depressing story that critiques the pain and hardships that come with any marriage. Eliot uses not one relationship, but several to explore ideas of how cruel societal expectations can be, the status of women, the struggle between self-determination and chance, and the very nature of marriage itself. Much like her characters, Eliot refused to give in to expectations of what stories she should write. She wanted Middlemarch to examine real-world issues, not to entertain. In this regard, she succeeded.