Study of women character in Middlemarch

Topic: Study of Women character in Middle March


Name: Lewade krupali. k
M.A Sem-2
Roll no-12 
Subject-paper No.6
paper Name- Victorian Literature
submitted to - Maharaja krishna kumarsinhji Bhavnagar university

Study of women character in      Middle March :-

Every writer has has own talent of writing if we if we talked about  George Eliot, her talent revealed through her wonderful capacity for characterization. many female novelists offered narrators that described some of the inner-working of their female characters; the descriptions were not so wrought with the complexity of the feminine mind. While it might have sufficed for a Victorian love story’s narrator to relate that a woman had a “ troubled heart “ this observant narrator takes this one step further, describing. Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be allowed to continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence. This hope was not unmixed with the glow of proud delight-the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen. In this novel female characters are prominent so here we discuss female character in George Eliot ‘s Middle March. 

Dorothea Brooke :

             There are a lot of character in middle March, and even more minor ones, but it’s pretty obvious that Dorothea is the heroine. After all, the novel prelude and finale are about Dorothea, and she certainly gets more face time than any of the other major characters. But that’s not the only reason we consider her the heroine : Dorothea is also the moral center of the novel.

              There is no doubt that she has done many mistakes, and we are’nt always 100% behind her decisions; yet we trust her moral sense, even if it occasionally leads her to do stupid things. How can we trust her moral compass if her moral compass leads her to marry a selfish old man who slurps his soup? Dorothea’s religious feeling is complicated and certainly needs exploring. But speaking of her spirituality, what about all the characters who call her a “saint’’ or “angle”, or the “virgin Mary”? Isn’t she a regular woman? Is there is paradox here? Or is Dorothea just too complex a character to wrap our heads around without a little more effort? We are going to have to dig a little deeper….

How does Eliot do it?

         George Eliot was famous for creating complexity in characters that have a lot of psychological depth. In the other words there is a whole lot of surface of what’s being shown by the narrator tells us what’s being shown by the narrator or by the characters action. For example, the narrator tells us that many of Dorothea’s choices are a result of the “ devoted ness which was so necessary a part of her mental life’’. Eliot isn’t just telling us’ “Dorothea was devoted to her lofty ideals.” Instead, the narrator tells the that this “devoted ness ” is part Dorothea’s “mental life” beyond what what we see on the page contributes to the sense that she is a real, thinking, feeling  person, and not just a collection of words and descriptions created by Eliot.

           Eliot’s descriptions of Dorothea often sneak in suggestion like this one that there is a lot more going on under the surface. Great- so Dorothea isn’t just a beautiful and elegant woman: she is got hidden depths. Yhen why do descriptios of her so often compare her to works of art, which are, by definition, all surface and no depth?

The painted lady:

        When Dorothea is visiting Rome with Mr.casaubon on their honeymoon, will Ladislaw and his artist friend, Naumann, see her in the Vatican among a lot of famous classical status. Dorothea is simply dressed in gray and is frozen in thought when the men first see her-she looks like one of the statues.

This is strange: Why would the narrator want us to associate her with statuses, which are made out of stone and have no “mental life’’ of their own? There are a few possible reasons. First, maybe it’s because Eliot doesn’t want us to get carried away with thinking of Dorothea as areal person. She is, after all, just a fictional character in a book, created by Eliot, just as the statues at the Vatican were created by sculptors. Another possible reason is that Eliot wants to show us how other characters, like Naumann doesn’t care about anything except for the surface.

          Naumann isn’t exactly a character to be trusted. He cares more about his art than anything else, so his impression of Dorothea as simply a piece of art should be taken with a grain of salt. We, like will Ladislaw, know better

          But even the narrator occasionally associates Dorothea with works of art. For example, in chapter describing Dorothea at a dinner party, the narrator says, sometimes when Dorothea was in company, there seemed to be as complete an air of repose about her as if she had been a picture of “Santa Barbara’’. When Dorothea is calm, she looks like a picture of saint. What could that imply? Pictures of saints are meant to be revered- they are objects of devotion. They also represents an ideal, rather than a reality. So even the narrator, it seems, occasionally falls into the trap of thinking of Dorothea as an ideal art object- one that should be worshipped, even-rather than as a real person.

Saint Dorothea

               This brings up another important aspect to Dorothea’s character-her spirituality and religious fervor. it’s no accident that so many characters associates her with angles, saints, or the Virgin  Mary. Even the narrator occasionally does it, as we saw in the passage above about the “ picture of Santa Barbara.” Mr.Farebrother says that she “has a heart large enough for the “Virgin Mary”:Naumann wishes to paint her as a “nun” but later decides to paint her as santa clara ;will Ladislaw feels “inclin to fall at the saint’s feet” and considers Naumann’s interference to be “dwsecration”, and even the narrator describes the effect of her white bonnet as looking like “a sort of halo’’ around her head. And of course there’s the prelude and finale chapters, in which Dorothea is compared to saint Theresa, a medieval saint who yearned to do great work in the world, but had to settle for less than she had originally dreamed because of the practical realities of everyday life. Dorothea is even associated with the divine or the sacred through her name: in Greek, Dorothea means “gift of the gods.”

      So everyone- other characters, the narrator, and most readers- consider Dorothea to be somehow more than human. But Eliot wants to reassure us that Dorothea’s intense spirituality is only “one aspect” of her nature, which, oveall, is “ardent, theoretic, and intellectual. In other words, her spirituality and intensely religious feelings aren’t all there is to her.

             But that spirituality does have a strong influence does have a strong influence over her. We’re told that it even “excecise” a “coercion over her life”. Her spirituality is so strong that it is actually the guiding force of her life. This might not might sound like a terrible thing, but Eliot uses the word “coercion,’’ which suggests that her spirituality has too much influence over her actions, and forces her to do things that her sense or intellect might not approve of. Why would this be? Why would her “religious disposition” force her to do things with which her intellect might not agree?

            It is because she is so passionate about everything. Her religious feelings “struggle in the hands of narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled- in maze of small paths that led no whither”. in other words, the education available to her makes her feel like life will always be ruled by “petty”, mundane, everyday concerns, and she feels like she is made for something greater.

                So why doesn’t she go to college? Become a lawyer? Work for social justice? Oh right, because those career option weren`st open  to women in the 1830. In fact, the only career option available to diddle or upper- class women who didn’t marry was teaching {as Mary garth plans to do before her father gets his new job} so Dorothera has all this pent up emotionl and intellectual energy, and her intense spirituality is the only real outlet she has for it.

 Is she only human, after all?

      Dorothea’s intense spirituality and her position as a woman, then, seem to be linked. But then, most aspects of Dorothesa’s character come back to her femininity. People want to idealize her as a work of art because shi’s a beautiful woman, and they want to associate her with saints or the virginmary because she’s a good woman. Even naumann wants to paint her, says that it’s because women “change from moment to moment” {2.19.23}.it’s not thet he has a problem with art in general, it’s the attempt to capture something as changeable or complicated as woman in art that he has a problem with. Will understands dorotheas better than anyone, but he is still tempted to idealize her, rather than think of her as a unique individual. He finds himself  “divided between the inclination to fall at the saint’s feet and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock naumann down while he was adjusting her arm”. in other words, wil feels that there’s a contradiction between Dorothea’s human, physical femininity, and her sanitly otherworldliness.

 Sinner or saint:

       So Dorothea’s complexity comes in part from the narrator’s assertions that she has a “mental life” beneath the surface something that even the narrator can’t fully access-in part from the tension between Dorothea’s physical femininity and her spirituality. This tension gets played out in the way other characters view her, too. Many character idealize her either as a saint or as a work of art, and have trouble thinking of her as a real person, rather than as a spiritual ideal.

Rosamond vincy  

  Rosamond Vincy competes with the Dorothea as the major female character of the novel. Like Dorothea, she is very beautiful, but her beauty is of a different kind. Dorothea is very womanly and maternal, and is frequently compared to a saint. Rosamond, on the other hand, is always described as “infinite”- she’s so blonde and fair that she looks childlike. The contrast between dorothea and rosamond is even played out in their names. “Dorothea means gift of gods and Dorothea means Rose of the world”. Dorothea might seem like a saint, but rosamond is thoroughly human. so when someone admiring middlemarchers “called her an angel”, we have to assume that they’re deceived: Rosamond’s no angle.

           But she is not some evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would provide. The line ‘she never thought of money’ suggest that she just doesn’t think at all. She assumes that someone –some vague ‘other people ‘ – will always take care of her to have all the luxuries to which she’s always been accustomed.

     And how did Rosamond get his way? A lot is said at the beginning of the novel about Rosamond’s education at Mrs. Lemon’s school. The chief school in the country, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female-even to extas, such as the getting in and out of a carriage. Mrs lemon herself had always held up Miss vincy as an example: no pupil, she said, exceeded that young lady for mental acquisition and propriety of speech, while her musical execution was exceptional.

             Rosamond rarely lets anyone know what she is really thinking of feeling, because hher “mental life” is carried on below a perfectly polished surface. Even her eyes hide what still giving the impression of something else: Rosamond “hides” her real “meaning” and allows “ingenious beholders’’ to project whatever they like onto her. This is why she’s such a greater perfomer. The narrator tells us, parenthetically, that Rosamond even acts her own personality: she is taught to act superficially so well at Mrs. Lemon’s finishing school, that it’s become an unconscious part of her own personality. The only time that she hasn’t behaved so naturally since she was five years old: This is the first time we’ve seen Rosamond do anything- and we do mean anything- without calculating what effect it will have on the people around her. There’s only one other scene which this happens, and it’s because of Dorothea’s influence. Dorothea’s simple sincerity has the effect of breaking down the shell of Rosamond’s superficial act.

                Rosamonds entire character can be summed up as an artificial, but beautiful, product of Victorian finishing school. The name “Rose of the wolrld” suits her. This woman might beautiful and delicate, but she’s also worldly and superficial.

Mary Garth:

                  Mary has got something that the other two character don’t have: common sense. She’s as intelligent as Dodothea, but without Dorothea’s unrealistic ambitions. She has been educated as either Dorothea or Rosamond, but she doesn’t have Rosamond’s pretentious, artificial veneer. But mary hardly a traditional heroine. She has got a lot going for her in the smarts department, but her family isn’t wealthy, and she is not all that pretty. In fact ,we’re told early on that she looks “generic”, thorough, we don’t mean, “boring.”  In fact, the narrator says that her “plainness” is universal and timless:

                Honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary’s reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behalf, and when she was in a good mood she had humour enough in her to laugh at herself.

             In other words, Mary Garth looks like some kind of universal, every-woman. She is not pretty, but she resembles the everyday women that Rembrandt used to paint. There’s something timeless about her.

             Eliot is fond of toggling between the universal and the individual, and her descriptions of Mary Garth are no Exception. Try reading through this passage, and notice how it moves from the general to the specific.

           Mary doesn’t mind being plain, but it can make her a little bitter, especially when she’s standing next to someone as pretty as Rosamond. During their first meeting together, she says, “what a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy1 you are the most unbecoming companion”.Mary chief fault is that she can be bitter towards people like Rosamond and don’t appreciate her good sense. On the other hand, though, she doesn’t hold grudges and “if you did her a kindness, she would never forget it”.

Minor female character:

Celiia Brooke:

         Celia is Dorothea’s younger sister, but two of them couldn’t be more different. Celia’s not all that complicated of a character, and her primary purpose in the novel is probably to serve as a foil dorethea.

Mrs.Bulstorde

       She is Mr. bulstored’s wife and Mr.vincy’s sister. She is an odd character. She likes wearing bright and fashionable clothes and also tries to incorporate her husband’s strict religious teachimg in her life.

Mrs. Cadwallad:

       She is the town gossip. She is the wife of Mr.cadwallader, who is the celegyman of tiption, where Mr.Brooke and the chettams live.

Mrs. Vincy:

        She is the Rosamond and fred’s mother.

Miss noble:

        She is Mr.Farebrother’s unmarried aunt.

Mrs.Farebrother

         She is elegant and upright older woman.

         
Conclusion:

          In Middlemarch, we are constantly presented with a  contrast between the male and female character. for example Dorothea who appears so strong willed at the bigining of the novel. while we are concluding we can say that miss communication and misinterpretation between the sexes, of emotions, desires, and actions.