Paper No. - 2
Victorian Literature.
Name :- Dharti makwana
Batch :- 2019-2021
Semester :- M.A. Sem-2
Roll No. :- 5
Enrollment No. :- 2069108420200024
Submitted :- Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English, M.K.Bhavnagar University
Paper No. :- Victorian Literature
Topic :- portrait of Woman in Middlemarch
♧Introduction:-
George Eliot had portrayed "Middlemarch" as a realistic and individualistic novel in 19th century England. It is given the critical observation of a woman's condition and moral idealistic character. Of course, critical observation of social developments affecting the character of a novel. How women have ideals and morality, they represent the class, society, aristocracy and working class. Which is a part of the Victorian Era.
George Eliot had provided a realistic picture of female characters in Victorian society as how they have suffered a lot for freedom and equality and to expand their knowledge. Whereas, George Eliot presented several female characters whose actions and the most of characteristic confound 'Feminist Theory'.Literature of Their Own, Elaine Showalter states in the Chapter IV “Feminine Heroines: Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot" that:
“Women beginning their literary careers in the 1840s were seeking heroines-both professional role-models and fictional ideals-who could combine strength and intelligence with feminine tenderness, tact, and domestic expertise. At the same time, they perceived themselves and their fictional heroines as innovators who would provide role-models for future generations”(Showalter, 2004, p.100).
☆ About George Eliot:-
George Eliot was a prominent figure of the Victorian era. Even today her novels are entertaining and delightful to readers. Mary Ann Evans was also known by her pen name George Eliot. She was born on November 1819 in nuneaton in U.K, Died on 22 December 1880 in U.k.
She escaped the stereotype of the woman's writing limited lighthearted romance and famous for developing psychological analysis. The use of religion and Atheism, faith in humans, consists of the depiction of moral and rational doctrine in woman character which suggests strongly successful themes about relationships of the individual society.
✍Portrait of woman in"Middlemarch"
■ Condition of Victorian Womens :-
In the novel Middlemarch, George Eliot portrayed two different kinds of woman characters as Dorothea and Rosamund examine the humans are compared and contrasted from the man. That's why Victorian women have strong moral values stronger than man. The role of women presented with the boundaries of home.
Men have a fixed position to earn money whereas wives did nothing but consume the earnings of their husbands. It shows the patriarchal social system. Women were bound to use their sense suggestions and sit at home and raise their children. Afterword the norms of lifestyle constantly keep on changing as along with the changes in the social economic structure.
“The economic factors, and the rise of the middle class is which radically alter read the men's of production the politics the customs and culture and literature of a nation"
Constantly people who specifically change in family structure already established rules as a man where they have to work in on money only women had no relation to the working life and they were not attracted towards education politics and a law and always helpmate for men.
"Women were expected to center their lives on home and family; they were expected to conduct themselves, in modesty and propriety; they were expected to find the commands of duty and the delights of service insufficient, in
fact ennobling, boundaries of their lives."
Middle class women spend time with their family but they spent much time in company then middle class women was considered as "the Angel in the house".
“Working class included the men, women and children
who together worked in mines and quarries... cleaning women and the like.”
Whereas on the other side sophisticated women's houses were mostly decorated with the costly materialistic commodities. which is used to shopping for respectability and status in society as Rosamond Vincy represents the same thing in middlemarch. Accordingly unmarried women working class women generally worked in the middle class families and domestic servants as Mary Garth portrait in middlemarch.
Eliot was aware of what was going on with the woman in the Victorian era and she started criticizing the female condition and exclusion of women from the perspective of science, knowledge and legal restraints. She tried to show how women have to change their lives accordingly with the changes with time. She transformed the heroines as a
“A form of evolutionary change, a
world-historical moment in itself.”
George Eliot had provided the evolutionary social changes for women empowerment in male dominant society. Women had a little opportunity to prove themselves.
■ Various woman characters in the novel
George Eliot has been described as the most influential character which represents the major effects of women in the Victorian era. Eliot deals with the three major women character
- Dorothea Brooke
- Rosamond Vincy
- Mary Garth
dealing with the most of issues of women as she felt and focuses on the represented individuals of social status within marriage status and relationship. She belongs to the aristocracy whose members were highly educated with occupied high positions in society such as a rector of a town, doctor, lawyer and scholar.
1.Dorothea Brook
Dorothea Brook is the oldest of two sisters. She was raised by her fostered uncle Mr.Brook. Dorothea is an excessively religious woman and devoted girl to the extent that Dorothea withdraws from the activities. Although she is fairly well educated, she is native to the outside world.
Basically the novel does not revolves around any particular character but Dorothea is closest the novel gets to the protagonist. She is a passionate woman who has dreams of doing some great work in the world. At first she wanted to improve the cottage of the farmers who work for her uncle's cottage in the novel.
"They are lovely said Dorothea, slipping the Ring and Bracelet on her finely turned figure and wrist and holding them towards the window on a level with her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colours by merging them in her".
That means see is not much interested in materialistic things. As compared to men with women not that too much given change to develop themselves intellectually.
George Eliot had a portrait character of Dorothea different from the other woman in the novel that could only arrange meeting wizards and receptions to keep them busy and it comes out within character of the Dorothea book.
Dorothea Brook has a highly moral values, enthusiasm and curiosity for learning and refined taste. Which set over her apart from another woman of middlemarch as in the novel dorothea is a
“Genuine creation and a most
remarkable one when we consider the delicate material in which she is wrought.”14
There upon she introduced in the novel with your beauty with Innocence and planes and garments with simplicity of living her life which is a remarkable thing in her character. she is resembles to" the blessed virgin" and Dorothea
“seeks to know more than her meagre education has so far allowed her, and
thereby to do more than her society designates as appropriate to her.”19
She has a high aspirations of self improvement through the she can help the betterment of the society and improve the cottages of the farmers. who works for her uncle's estate in this way reflected in the very beginning of the novel. She is willing to achieve something that for the world is stated.
She is trying to find a great way to make the necessary self sacrifices. Dorothea does not know what that cause is. What she craves to achieve but she doesn't know what and how to do it well, which Idea reflects in all the women of the Victorian era. They had a lack of opportunity to fulfill what they expected and what they wanted.
Society was against women's beliefs and people could not accept womens ideas as valuable. That's why Dorothea was clashing between society's notions and moral values. She decides to marry a scholar who is much older than her and she thinks or imagens as he has some sort of a genius. Actually he only wants an assistant who helps him in research and dorothea will be his helpmeet. Hence that has known Greek and Latin for that she could help him in his research.
2.Rosamond Vincy:-
Rosamond Vincy is the eldest daughter of Mr and Mrs Walter vincy. He is the mayor of middlemarch and manufacturer. She is always praised by people for her extraordinary beauty and practicality. Every man in middlemarch is in love with her. She also knows Music as she is a talented musician.
Rosamond always prefers costly things and gives importance to her beauty, money and status. Constantly she is representative of the middle class women. She is helped up as the best example of her class by her school teacher because she has developed herself in terms of social graces and manners.
She always gives much importance to furniture, trinkets, clothes, jewellery and other lots of ornaments. Rosamond desires to live in a romantic world. She is waiting for the right man to come and she is ready to marry with doctor Tertius Lydgate. She has a good family connection. Even after marriage she needs constant affection of male suitors and she enjoys being flattered. Afterward she knows that Lydgate is a poor person. There upon Rosamund is a product of Victoria bourgeois society.
Through the character of Rosamond we come to know that her reader traces how a Society affects an individual. As Marx and Eagle state
"The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour . . . we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at corporeal man, rather we proceed from the real, active man . . . Consciousness does not determine life: life determines consciousness.23"
3. Celia Brook:-
Celia Brooke is the youngest one in two sisters and Mr. Brooke's niece and Dorothea's sister. The first chapter introduces the character She and her sister Celia are orphans in the care of their uncle, Mr. Brooke. She is a very kind, innocent and cheerful girl.
As compared to Dorothea she is less intelligent than her sister, whom she struggles to understand. Celia always finds out the easy to conform to the ideal of womanhood upheld in Middlemarch, and indeed enjoys living her life in this way.
Therefore she aspires to nothing more than marriage and motherhood because she has no mother, she is totally contrasted to Dorothea for her common sense about life. Celia knows that Sir James chattham wishes to marry Dorothea and believes that Casaubon is old, boring, and ugly.
For her part, Dorothea thinks that Sir James is silly. Dorothea informs Celia of her engagement to Casaubon. Celia reacts with anxiety and sadness at the news. After the refusal of Dorothea to marry with Chatham, She happily married Sir James Chettham, the neighboring squire.
Another thing is that Celia is very attracted towards materialistic commodities. It shows her rich and aristocratic status. She works up the courage to ask Dorothea to divide their late mother's jewelry because she wanted to wear it. She fears that Dorothea will think her request is vain and frivolous.
Innocently, Celia asks whether Dorothea will wear the ring and bracelet in company. Celia knows that Sir James wishes to marry Dorothea and believes that Casaubon is old, boring, and ugly. For her part, Dorothea thinks that Sir James is silly.Dorothea informs Celia of her engagement to Casaubon. Celia reacts with anxiety and sadness at the news.
4. Mary Garth :-
Mary Garth is the oldest of several Garth children and daughter of the Garth family from working class. She has attractive personality traits, especially her being fair, which are mentioned frequently in the novel. Mary Garth is intelligent, principled and independent like her parents, but more sharp-tongued. She is only twenty two years old, and single.
She gives all her earnings to her family. That's why she is representative of the working class women as George Eliot had portrayed in Middlemarch. She is not pretty, but nevertheless, she has two suitors—Farebrother and her childhood sweetheart, Fred Vincy. She has an ordinary appearance, with “a broad face and square brow, well-marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her glance which her mouth keeps the secret of”. When angry
“she would not raise her voice, but would probably say one of the bitterest things you have ever tasted the flavor of”
When she encounters a kindness “she would never forget it.”24 With these examples, her personality traits are revealed. She is not as ambitious as Rosamond; rather, she is a plain girl of humble expectations. She works to support her family financially. Mary and Her family have the moral virtues that the middle class people lack. They are honest, fair,
and hardworking.
She is very hard on Fred and will not accept him till he becomes responsible. Through this attitude her responsible character comes out from the novel. She is a foil to Fred’s pretty but featherbrained sister, Rosamond. It is clear she is Fred’s guiding light, and he is willing to change because he knows he is nothing without her.
To sum up :-
In short, George Eliot has given the various woman characters which provide the portrait of Victorian Womans and there were representatives of class. Mary is supportive in hard times, whereas Rosamond prefers to avoid being with losers in life. In such cases, she reveals her actual self: an egoistic woman. Characters such as Rosamond, Casaubon, and Bulstrode are the victims of their egos.
Their perceptions are flawed because of egocentrism. In short, Eliot gives the reader a chance to compare and contrast the values of three different women from the main classes of the society. As an aristocratic woman, Dorothea is moderate; the middle class woman. Rosamond represents the immoral characteristics of her class, and working class woman Mary is perfectly moral in her behaviour.
Citations
Fredericksen, Erik. "Sense and Sensibility Themes: Love and Marriage." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 3 Mar 2014. Web. 8 Mar 2020
Razack, Javed. “Inheritance and Succession, Rights of Women and Daughters under Personal Laws.” LexOrates, 20 Dec. 2013,
Maheta, Riju. “Business News.” The Economic Times, 29 July 2019
