A 21st Century Outlook on Womanhood in the Victorian Age: Intersectionality in "Middlemarch"

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A 21

st

Century Outlook on Womanhood

in the Victorian Age

Intersectionality in Middlemarch

Word count: 21,028

Manon Bobo

Student number: 01680666

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor

A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts: Linguistics and Literature: English-Scandinavian Studies

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A 21

st

Century Outlook on Womanhood in the Victorian Age:

Intersectionality in Middlemarch

Introduction

Subject

The subject of this paper and research is, as the subtitle reveals, intersectionality in

Middlemarch. Middlemarch was written by George Eliot in eight parts between the years 1871 and 1872. The novel was written in the Victorian era and takes place during the era as well, although some might refutethat particular determination since the events of the book happen right before the implementation of the first Reform Bill in 1832, which precedes Queen Victoria’s reign by five years.The Victorian age is also an age where the novel, after a decline in interest from readers and a decline in authors dedicating their time to writing a novel, begins to gain a new kind of popularity.A surge of both female readers and, more importantly, female writers takes place, causing the literary world to become more diverse than it had ever been. This trend created a group of female writers that are now seen as part of the club of the most talented authors in English literature. This popularization has also led to their works now being considered as classics and works that belong to the canon of English Literature. Virginia Woolf describes it as such in her essay “Professions for Women” : “For the road was cut many years ago--by Fanny Burney, [...], by George Eliot--many famous women, and many more unknown and forgotten, have been before me, making the path smooth, and regulating my steps.” (Ritchie and Ronald 2)The influence that women and authors such as George Eliot have is not to be taken lightly and even today, they remain popular topics in media and academics—this paper is a testimony of that. The central premise

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of this paper is to question in what ways intersectionality can be discerned in Middlemarch and what the importance of such a concept can be in analyzing the characters and content. This particular approach will be implemented through several chapters that will focus on different aspects and themes of intersectionality that are relevant for this particular text. Additionally, and based on these aforementioned themes, specific individuals from the novel will receive a more in-depth character analysis. This will be the case both for female

characters as the subject of intersectionality as well as male characters, but this time from the perspective of their treatment of and thoughts about Middlemarch’s female characters.

Previous research

This paper is, in part, a continuation of the research I did to write my bachelor’s dissertation, which was named “Seeking Diversity in a Victorian World: The Concept of Intersectionality in the Work of Charlotte Brontë.” As is apparent from the title, this previous paper considered a similar topic, but it was focused on the work of another author: Charlotte Brontë. Charlotte Brontë is often named alongside George Eliot and there are, not coincidentally, quite some similarities in their personas. Something that the two women have in common, for instance, is that they both regularly published under male pseudonyms: Charlotte Brontë became Currer Bell upon publication and George Eliot is still to this day best know under her male alias; she was actually named Mary Ann Evans. Besides their tendency to use a male name to publish their work, they are both female, Victorian and celebrated authors. This is not a coincidence, like I mentioned before. Prior to embarking on this journey, I particularly wanted a female Victorian author as the subject of this research since it is important to me personally to highlight the few women that are already celebrated even more and, moreover, combining a field such as intersectionality that mainly deals with women’s rights with a work of one of the few well-known, female Victorian authors will hopefully lead to interesting results.

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As for research conducted by other scholars on this particular topic, there is a lot of research that has been carried outon Middlemarch. The book has been around for quite some time, gaining and adding to its status of classic and part of the canon and, in result, becoming a popular topic in academic circles. In the 1970’s especially, a great interest arose with the rise of feminism in the daily life and general opinion. More women attended higher education, became scholars and soon, thanks to these female academicians, feminism would claim its relevance in academics and there would be an opportunity to conduct feministic readings of literary works. Not only female characters were actively put into the limelight tn this movement, but female authors, sometimes forgotten or ignored, received their share of attention as well. A groundbreaking work that embodies this period and movement is Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic, which focuses on female authorship and analyzes characters such as Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre, the titular madwoman.

Such a work for Middlemarch, one that focuses on feminism and the female characters that is, is for example Kathleen Blake’s publication named “Middlemarch and the Woman Question” which was printed in a 1976 issue of Nineteenth-Century Fiction. This particular article, which will also be quoted in this paper, extensively focuses on the so-called woman question and consists of many different aspects that are a part of the female experience. However, even though it is a very thorough article, it is difficult to call this study intersectional. The

reasoning behind this is mainly based on the fact that the term intersectionality was not yet coined at the time of publication; this would only happen thirteen years later. Intersectionality has only in recent years become more widespread and it takes time to gain notoriety in the academic world. The only study or article I came across in my search of sources for this paper that was specifically centered around George Eliot and intersectionality was a recent one. The book chapter was only published in the spring of 2020. The article is named: “Reframing Difference in George Eliot’s Early Fraser’s Magazine Articles after Kimberlé Crenshaw’s

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Intersectionality.” and was written by scholar Cheri Larsen Hoeckley. The focus of this

article, however, is on Eliot’s earlier work and not on her novels. Although this is the case, the article still provided interesting material to work with. Furthermore, considering that

intersectionality consists of many different aspects such as for example class and age, there are quite some sources available that discuss these particular themes in Middlemarch, which can then be used as building blocks for a greater analysis. Many of the previously conducted researches and previously written papers will therefore be mentioned and cited in this particular work as it will attempt to serve as a combination of topics, which then should lead to an intersectional analysis that is as comprehensive as possible.

Aim and relevance

The aim of this paper is, as has been written before, to provide an analysis of Middlemarch through an intersectional lens. One might wonder what the relevance is of a Victorian novel being analyzed with the aid of a modern concept, created in more progressive and

openminded times. By looking at the text with a modern eye, the goal of this paper is more specifically to provide a detailed and cohesive description and something of what life as a woman was like in Middlemarch and, moreover, as the author writing it. Feminism has been a popular topic for many years, with, as previously mentioned, a surge in the 1970’s but

recently, under the guise that equality has been reached or is close to be reached, it has lost some of it relevance or prevalence in academics. This paper would like to emphasize that it continues to be an important topic and that the end goal has not yet been reached. With intersectionality, an evolution has happened that includes more things and people, that makes the studies more diverse and all-encompassing, a new look can be taken at the text. This paper will feature multiple chapters about specific topics that all will be interconnected and show the intricacies of intersectionality and how one must consider as many aspects as possible to truly be able to see the bigger picture. Furthermore, a feministic, or intersectional, analysis

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can still provide relevant information and considerations today and it can provide food for thought, especially as one compares our current society and the current living standards of women across the world to that of those Victorian women; a lot has changed but similarities can still be found. As previously discussed, there are to my knowledge very few studies that choose to focus on this and for this reason, I believe it is important for this study to do exactly that.

Intersectionality in Middlemarch

George Eliot

The author of Middlemarch was named George Eliot. She was born in 1819 and died in 1880. In reality, her name was Mary Ann Evans, sometimes spelled Marian Evans, but she chose to write her most famous works and novels such as Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda, and The Mill

on the Floss under her male pseudonym. Besides a novelist, George Eliot was also a

celebrated journalist and poet. (Haight) George Eliot’s reputation among scholars, particularly among those researching feminism in literature is controversial. This essay will commence

with delving into George Eliot as a person and author as it is crucial to the novel and will both affirm but also refute some of the claims that have been made based on Eliot’s authorship. Woman Writer?

Eliot was, by definition, a woman writer as she fulfills both requirements of that term: one must be a woman and a writer. However, the term has long evolved to another place, to one of connotations and implications. Some of those implications are the following: a woman writer struggles with making her voice heard and attempts to find her voice in a male dominated literary world. She actively goes against the common stereotypes and expectations that society

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and, most notably, men have concerning women, one of which can be seen in the following quote out of Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic:

Similarly, John Ruskin affirmed in 1865 that the woman's "power is not for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet orderings" of domesticity.11 Plainly, both writers meant that, enshrined within her home, a Victorian angel-woman should become her husband's holy refuge from the blood and sweat that inevitably accompanies a "life of significant action," as well as, in her "contemplative purity," a living memento of the otherness of the divine.

(Rivkin 816)

A woman writer clearly does not adhere to the requirements described by John Ruskin; she completely ignores what is expected of her. What nowadays has also become synonymous with the woman writer, is that she most likely created a sort of autonomy for herself and with that a resistance to the patriarchal system. A woman writer is a female author that fights for women’s rights through her work and through creating female characters that are strong, inescapable and the center of the story. Here, however, the opinions are divided on whether George Eliot also meets this particular requirement, which will be considered in the following part which focuses on the reaction of feminists to Eliot and her work. To go back to George Eliot and her questionable status as a woman writer, there is one argument I would like to add that will help end the discussion.

Throughout her career, George Eliot received much criticism. Many people, a significant part of those people men, criticized her for writing bleak stories with unhappy endings that feature death, like in The Mill on the Floss for instance, or troubled marriages riddled with misery such is the case in Middlemarch. Those stories were more commonly told by men and stories written by women ended with a happily ever after, more often than not. As mentioned,

Middlemarch has two marriages, originally portrayed as ideal and as unions that fulfilled the requirements and wishes of those who got married, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, respectively. Originally, Eliot intended their tales to be two separate stories called

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Middlemarch and Miss Brooke but due to the similarities, they were joined together to form what is now the novel Middlemarch (Roberts VIII). A famous quote about the novel is as following:“the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” (Woolf) Virginia Woolf defended the book from its critics that were unsatisfied about the course of the story and the ending, emphasizing the realistic nature of what happens and what is written down.

As is shown through the criticism, there is an imbalance present. The scrutiny Eliot received for portraying unhappy marriages would never be outed towards a male writer. Simply because George Eliot is a woman, it is assumed that she must solely write for women and since women must only read happy endings and see happy marriages, woman writers can only write such stories. The sexist and patronizing nature of this requirement is angering and one that has been seen for ages. The duality and injustice of the situation is not lost on me. If a woman were to write about anything else than a novel that ends with a romantic ending, she is held to unfair standards, receives unjust and ungrounded criticism and is told to stick to what she knows and what she does best, that which other women would supposedly want to read. On the other hand, if a female author, because she wants to do so and enjoys it, does write romance, the stereotype that women only write romance and only write books that are to be enjoyed by other women is highlighted and accentuated by critics. This form of fiction has been and is still to this day deemed as less than – literature, qualitative, worthy of one’s time, … It is an age-old paradox women cannot seem to escape from and, in other words, women’s efforts are never valid according to the standards that men, then and still today the dominant groupin the literary world. It is therefore that I would like to claim Eliot is a woman writer, in almost every sense of the term and adhering to almost every requirement that the name has garnered over the years. She is an enriching addition to the group, one that achieved much: “Certainly, much of Eliot's own "story" supports this claim for her personal triumph as a

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woman. She was accorded a veneration by her contemporaries—men and women alike— unequalled by that of any other woman writer in nineteenth-century England.” (55) Whether she can be branded as a feminist according to the scholars, however, remains to be seen in the next section.

Eliot According to the Scholars

“George Eliot occupies a profoundly uneasy position among feminist literary critics.” According to Ellin Ringler (55) The seemingly endless discussions around whether Eliot deserves the appositionof feminist raises an additional question whether a work can ever truly be analyzed without some sort of analysis of the author being involved. How separate are the two entities and does a work automatically follow the personality or beliefs of the author or can it be considered as autonomous? It must perhaps be assumed that if Eliot herself was reluctant or can be attributed the title of feminist, that Middlemarch will not achieve this title either. Through various papers and researches, I will attempt to paint a picture of Eliot’s stance towards feminism and the social struggle towards the equality of men and women.

It seems that Eliot had in fact many qualms with the existence of the feminist movement, which Weddle describes as such:

Nor is Eliot enthusiastic about a movement concerned solely with itself, which ignores the in- justices that plague all humanity, and which is oblivious to the notion that men cripple themselves through subjugation of women. Her feminism argues that women should have equal exposure to culture in order that their minds and souls become greater, thus improving not only their own lot, but that of men as well through the enrichment of all society

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This stance towards the feminist movement and her explicit distancing while other

contemporaries were less explicit about their view caused Eliot troubled reputation, but this denouncement seems unfair towards Eliot. Moreover, George Eliot, in essence, received

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accusations that she was too focused on herself, and that, in the search of reverence and acceptance of male authors, she renounced other female authors and therefore herself as a woman. The choice that Eliot took according to these scholars was one that can be considered self-centered and focused on personal growth without helping other women and the

movement that would become feminism and is considered to be sisterhood. It would imply a total disregard of the world surrounding her and of the implications womanhood carries with it. Showalter, as quoted by Ringler, claims that other female authors "never faltered in their praise of her books, but they felt excluded from, envious of, her world. Her very superiority depressed them." (56) It seems, however, that Eliot’s superiority was not particularly aimed at other women but more generally at the people, a sort of exclusivity around her work and her persona as an author if one were to take into account the following quote: “In a letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1869, Eliot makes it clear that her novels are intended primarily for a select few rather than for a popular multitude” (Thompson and Beer 8)

However, opposed to the stance of the self-centered author Eliot, there are many scholars that describe Eliot’s interest in the combination and overlapping of different fields, such as science and social and the arts and all that those might entail (Tondre 207). She could see a greater connection between fields that were considered as separate and saw this link in real life as well. To her, it manifested in the lives of people. “George Eliot stresses the parallels between individual struggles against social, physical and intellectual limitations, whether heroic actions or unrealized ventures or failures. She creates an emotional climate in which a procession of passionate and frustrated souls of women seems to emerge” (Hirai 42)What Hirai claims in the aforementioned citation would mean that Eliot is in fact aware of intersectional thinking. With “intersectional thinking”, this the specific term of

intersectionality is not meant, as it is far from being coined in 1871. However, this signifies that George Eliot was indeed aware of particular situations and characteristics that influenced

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people, and more specifically women, to encounter a different experience in life. This claim returns in an analysis of Eliot’s earlier articles and essays, written under the name Marian Evans, scholar Cheri Larsen Hoeckley conducted: ““Evans deftly accommodates two possible strands of difference in identity—German ethnicity and provincialism. That being the case, one might be tempted to say that she understands femininity as intersectional.” (100) The presence of this awareness is fascinating but this revelation, however, does not mean that her specific way of thinking is manifested in the novel or that the novel serves as a way to promote or spread this train of thought. Author and novel are not one and one should also consider both separately when conducting research on this topic. The question is not “is

Middlemarch a feminist and intersectional novel?”, this paper aims to highlight the way and

take a look at from an intersectional point of view and to denote what the findings of this research are. How can a modern-day way of thinking influence the reading of a book from two centuries ago and what common ground can be found?

To end this extensive analysis of George Eliot as an author, I will quickly recapitulate was has been previously said. George Eliot, or Mary Ann Evans, was the author of many Victorian classics. Her authorship has received much criticism over the years due to many different reasons. One of those was that her books were too bleak to be written by a woman, which shows the unfair criticism woman writers receive from, mostly male, critics. A second point of criticism or discussion was whether Eliot could be considered a feminist writer, to which some scholars resolutely replied no due to a selfishness that was present in Eliot’s personality and authorship. Even if her personal preferences or stances in her book are not particularly to one’s liking or if the female characters do not represent the characteristics in a woman one, or a feminist scholar, desires to see, Eliot should receive praise where praise is due. We can assume that Eliot was concerned with matters of social justice, and therefore also the rights of women. It was simply the title of feminist she did not want, something that is still very

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common even today. Her awareness of the world around her, which will be further discussed in the next chapter, is unique. However, it is needed to conduct an analysis of the novel itself, of how the female characters are presented, how they are regarded by each other and others, what they say and what is said about them; only then can this paper truly call itself an intersectional analysis.

A Study of Provincial Life

Prior to delving into the promised intersectional analysis of the novel, I would first like to dedicate a small portion of this text to the subtitle of Middlemarch: “A Study of Provincial Life”. The sentence is often overlooked; many editions leave it outfrom their cover and front pages, which is the case with my edition of the book, for instance. However, the importance of the description and its meaning cannot be overlooked. The use of the description “study” for the novel would imply an observation, a registration of actions and events and perhaps even an attempt to demonstrate a sociological way of looking at things. There are no

particular claims made around this, only the presence of the word study would hint towards it, but interestingly enough that seems to suffice. The word study has its own set of implications and meanings and since Middlemarch is “A Study of Provincial Life”, perhaps that means that we, as a reader, can expect the novel to entail some sort objectivity as well as realism and that we should consider the novel in a different manner based on the subtitle and its existence.

She affirms universal laws of human behavior in terms of characters whose specificity and even uniqueness are indicated by the relative completeness of the psychological portraits of each, as well as by assertions by the narrator. Dorothea, Lydgate,

Casaubon, Bulstrode, Fred Vincy, Mary Garth, and the rest are each unique. This fullness of characterization and the accompanying circumstantiality of social detail in Middlemarch have been deservedly admired. They make this novel perhaps the masterwork of Victorian realism.

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This is especially interesting with regards to femininity and the women of the novel, the obstacle for many scholars in the work. If one is to follow this particular train of thought, it could be said that Eliot is simply recording fictitious events as they seemingly took place, which would include the specific way women are treated, behaved and were depicted. Moreover, the influence of a story being recorded and written down and afterward spread to the public cannot be underestimated, even if in this case it is in a work of fiction. By simply documenting, without necessarily providing context oran opinion, a change can be conveyed as well. There is less telling the reader what to think and feel and more of planting certain hints and seeds that can either be used or ignored by the readers. For George Eliot, her strength seems to lie in providing the material to direct readers to a certain reasoning and certain emotions that go along with reading the novel, giving them the opportunity to reflect on their own feelings and their relation to or thoughts about the events of the novel. Weber describes Eliot’s strength in the following manner: “Thus, Eliot calls attention to Dorothea’s expression of pain, a revealing of self to which we necessarily respond—in whatever form: we may comfort, scold, or ignore her—rather than the potentially suspect performance of a feeling.” (499) There is a visible freedom present for the reader to do with the material whatever they please.

Furthermore, the historic aspect of the text, and its importance with it, is often overlooked due to the close proximity of the crucial dates of the novel—there is a mere forty years between the First Reform Bill in 1832, which is when the events of the novel take place, and the publication of Middlemarch between 1871 and 1872.

One plausible way to regard Middlemarch is as a historical novel. Not only is it about the past, but it has that further characteristic we expect of a historical novel of being decidedly and explicitly about the past. It covers a clearly dated period at the time of the first Reform Bill, and quite frequently takes pains to remind us that this period is a separate thing, historically removed.

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Even the novel itself features particular sequences that emphasize the passage of time between the two moments in time, an example of this is the following quote which is used to initiate chapter 19 on page 156: “When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born Dorothea Brooke, had taken her

wedding journey to Rome.” (Eliot)Mason’s view of Middlemarch seems, due to the emphasis put on temporality by Eliot herself, more than plausible, especially the mention that the period is indeed historically removed is crucial to any reader. We should therefore consider

Middlemarch a study of historical provincial life and look past any claims of idealization of subordinate and undeveloped women. Recording the past for a current day population, or today even a futuristic one, can arguably trigger just as much as predicting a progressive near future, which other woman writers might have excelled in. With previous citations and testimonies in the chapter on Eliot herself, such as that of Hoeckley, that mention her interest in sociology as a field of study and that reveal George Eliot’s awareness of the state of the world and how things such as culture and customs influence it, one cannot help but to take all of these aspects seriously and as important to any study of Eliot’s work.

To conclude, the subtitle of Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life, is far too often overlooked, especially since it uncovers the intentions and the focal point that George Eliot had prior to publishing the novel. The novel was meant to be a study of life and with that description, allusions to a sociological work follow. Middlemarch is a work of fiction, so it cannot literally be considered as a sociological research, but it can be compared to one. While many, as previously shown, might incessantlyclaim that this novel displays severely lacking female characters and promotes an unhealthy environment for women, one should take into account that Eliot herself designated this as a study which would imply a sociological approach and a work of writing where the author records that which happens in a social

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setting as objectively as possible. Eliot records and describes but leaves the reader free in their interpretation and evaluation of the events, which grants the reader freedom to make of the novel what they want. On top of the sociological aspect, there is a historical aspect to be taken into account as well. Even though the dates of the events in the novel and Middlemarch’s publication occur in the same half of the 19th century, the novel is explicitly a historic one, with references to the difference between the time of the book and the time that it is

published. It is possible to try and cause change in the societal status quo in the manner that Eliot wrote and promoted this book, and her interest in social issues and awareness of different topics within this category might help to confirm this claim.

Intersectionality

Origins

The term intersectionality was coined in 1989 by scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. The creation of the word was a reaction to the limited inclusivity of feminism and the patriarchy they fought; the term created the appearance of a communal and identical gender oppression for a woman, while this was not the case. (Patil 847) Intersectionality became a next step, a framework of theory that acknowledges a discrimination and an oppression that is not solely based on gender but that is influenced by a multitude of possible factors, such as race, class and age, and the coexistence of those characteristics within a certain person. The aspects are considered in relation to each other and to other social aspects (Shields 302), with the goal of reaching a comprehensive picture where everything is connected and not one aspect of the self can be seen as separate from the bigger picture.

Initially used by Crenshaw in the field of law, intersectionality became more widespread and became a pillar in sociological thinking and in how gender is researched throughout the

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academic world : “Intersectionality, the mutually constitutive relations among social

identities, has become a central tenet of feminist thinking, one that McCall (2005) and others have suggested is the most important contribution of feminist theory to our present

understanding of gender.” (Shields 301) Although the term has gained popularity,

intersectionality also has its fair share of criticism, mainly focused on the limitations of the framework. Much like the feminism it tried to make more inclusive, intersectionality has problems with claiming to understand and to describe the experience of all women. (McCall 1771)

Application of the Concept

Intersectionality has, from its first and original meaning, grown into a movement that has gained notoriety. A perhaps plausible and partial explanation for the term’s popularity is that it can be considered in many different ways and lead to many different outcomes. For this research, a “modified” version of intersectionality, will be used. With that, I mean to say that the most obvious consideration in intersectionality, which focuses on women of color cannot be used here. In Middlemarch’s case, there are no women of color to write about and since this is not the case, this paper will have to consider other subcategories of womanhood, perhaps even those that are fairly uncommon. The stance of this research and paper will, of course, remain the same: it will be from the more diverse and inclusive, taking into account more aspects of womanhood and what it means to be a woman in the Victorian age and see how some aspects influence the lives of women and their identity. These aspects do not exist separately from each other and will exude a big influence on one another, which is why certain things will be reiterated. I would like to end this chapter with this quote: “A gender critical perspective, and more precisely, a feminist intersectional perspective has proved to be very useful in foregrounding the relationship between power and difference.” (Longman and De Graeve 37).

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Intersectionality is, briefly summarized, a way of looking at oppression that is not solely based on gender but that incorporates different aspects, such as race, age, and class, into a comprehensive analysis and understanding of a highly individualized form of disadvantage one might experience. Introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989, it slowly but surely became a popular point of view while doing research in the academic world, but the framework has its critics and its problems with claiming to be able to understand the

experience of all women. Through this concept, an attempt will be made to consider the life of a Victorian woman, more specifically the life of a Victorian woman in Middlemarch, through new aspects that correlate with her gender.

Class and Society: Rosamond Vincy and Her Place in the World

Middlemarch is centered around a middle-class town. Eliot chose to name the town Middlemarch, which is an allegorical name for its status and already, in part, reveals the atmosphere and setting of the novel; the town is not big nor is it small, it is Middlemarch. The importance of the name is yet again highlighted by the fact that the novel carries the town’s name as its title. The aspects of class and society as a whole both play a big role in the novel; it is, in essence, what the novel is about. Throughout the text’s six hundred and ninety pages, the reader is introduced to many different characters that belong to different families that all have their alliances, struggles and life. The level of detail in Middlemarch aids to encompass the small-town mentality and way of living and all of the intricacies that go along with it. Due to the size of Middlemarch, the town, drama and plot develops differently; sometimes the importance of certain events is, through the group mentality present, emphasized and exaggerated and sometimes this way of living and thinking leads to situations where certain things are swept under the rug, which I will elaborate on later. A small society means that certain aspects of the novel are heightened through this setting and especially the journey of trying to find one’s place in society is perhaps made more difficult as there is less room for

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error. As an individual, discovering where one belongs in society is crucial for the future. One is born into a family, which has a certain class and reputation, and, in most cases, one tries to make a name for oneself, either with the help of that family name or by distancing oneself. The improvement of one’s status and thus class plays a vital part in the narrative that is created around Rosamond Vincy, which is why the majority of this chapter will specifically consider and discuss her journey throughout Middlemarch as it is the epitome of class and society as an intersectional category and the pressure and expectations that go along with it.

Rosamond Vincy is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Vincy. Her father is a businessman with quite a capital garnered and Rosamond lives a more than comfortable life in Middlemarch. The young lady is fairly beloved, accepted and respected in the town; she has a beauty to her that many appreciate. Her name, similarly to how Middlemarch already describes the town, carries a meaning with it. It is an allegory with a duality to it. The first part, Rosa, signifies the aforementioned beauty Rosamond possesses. The second part, mond, can refer to the French word monde which signifies the earth. This meaning implies a worldliness and vanity that belongs to Rosamond. (Hirai 49). An additional characteristic of Rosamond’s that is very intriguing is that she thinks money is beneath her. This can perhaps be seen as a result of her comfortable life: people think they are too dignified to think about matters of money and capital when they have never experienced a shortage of the means, when they have never had to worry about starving orsuffering from the cold. More important than money, in

Rosamond’s eyes, is status. Class and prominence and thinking about how to ameliorate those two are the things she likes to occupy herself with. There is a privilege imbedded in

everything Rosamond has and does throughout the novel and while privilege is not

necessarily a positive word when considering intersectionality, it is fascinating to analyze how Rosamond’s position shifts and morphs throughout Middlemarch.

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In short, Rosamond is looking for a class journey; she dreams of rising in the ranks of

Middlemarchian society but the only way to do such a thing as a woman is to find a man with an impeccable reputation and class and to marry him. Since she has many virtues, her youth and beauty among the best, Rosamond has the possibility of many eligible bachelors in Middlemarch. Someone from Middlemarch, however, is not what she desires. Rosamond wants someone from out of the Middlemarch society and when young and attractive doctor Tertius Lydgate arrives in town, Rosamond Vincy is immediately taken by his persona and she decides that it is Lydgate she wants to marry, regardless of his lack of immediatewealth. Lydgate is taken by the ideal woman Rosamond seems to be and after quite a complicated courtship, if one can call it that, Rosamond and Lydgate become engaged and soon after, married. It rapidly becomes clear that Rosamond, mistakenly as is shown as the novel progresses, thinks that Tertius has stature through wealthy relatives and that, through them, she will attain her goal of rising in rank. What Rosamond expects to be a fairly easy climb in society, however, winds up being quite the opposite: Dr. Lydgate ends up in dire financial trouble, which is partially caused by Rosamond's expensive way of living. It seems that this is a classic example of someone living beyond their means; Rosamond continues to hold out hope that their rise might happen and maintains a high standard of living to both fool

everyone in Middlemarch’s society into thinking they far more well off than they are and also to be prepared in case that they do suddenly rise to a new station. Their critical financial situation, however, causes Rosamond to not focus on Middlemarch anymore, but to aim her attention elsewhere. Many times, does she suggest moving away from Middlemarch, but the proposition is still very much rooted in selfishness and in reaching her goal; Rosamond thinks that their new residence might present opportunities and possibilities for a social climb. Eventually, the motivation behind the suggestion shifts from making a name and rising ranks,

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to moving away from Middlemarch to avoid the judgmental small society one finds there and the insidious gossip that is being spread about Lydgate.

At a certain point, Rosamond is forced to think about and to handle monetary matters as she sets out to find someone that will lend her money. She asks multiple people for a loan, without the knowledge of her husband, including her own father but she does not succeed in finding anyone who will lend to her. Besides the real financial risk of loaning money to someone, notably a couple that is almost penniless, the fact that Rosamond is a woman changes the situation as well. It is perceived by the other characters as if it is in fact Lydgate himself who desires the loan but that he is too afraid to ask and that he lets his wife do his heavy work. Another explanation that might seem plausible to the townspeople is that Lydgate asked his wife because the men might perhaps be more favorable to accepting the request of a beautiful woman. There is no mention of a marriage that might simply be an equal one and no mention of a situation where a woman can think enough for herself to ask on her own accord without knowledge or permission of her husband. It must be mentioned that Rosamond most likely would have, or should have, discussed the matter with her husband in a truly equal marriage. Rosamond Vincy is a good example of a character that is blinded by social structures and lets them determine her every move. A side note I must make is that it of course is not bad to have aspirations as a person or as a woman, but Rosamond lets them overtake her entire being, but the question remains whether she can be blamed for her

aspirations. Her entire life she has adhered to what society expects from her, what her teachers at her finishing school expects from her. There is a helplessness present is her behavior that can mostly be seen in women, since most of their changes in life are tied to a man. At that moment, the only way for her to convey a change is to marry, which is what Rosamond does. She spends Lydgate’s money but there is no other option as lady of the house without a capital or possibility to capital of her own.

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In the latter part of the novel, Rosamond is with child, a situation that is less than ideal for two people who are on the verge of destitute. The baby, however, is never born seeing that

Rosamond suffers a miscarriage. In the most common reading of this scene, it is branded as a form of punishment for her behavior, either for her shallowness and ambition or for her

disobedience when going behind her husband’s back to search a loan. However, more recently there are scholars that suggest that Middlemarch actually features an abortion and that

Rosamond’s miscarriage was not an accident but that it was deliberately caused. There is a scene where Rosamond goes horseback riding while pregnant and soon after she loses the child.

The deliberate interpretation of Rosamond’s miscarriage in terms of Victorian abortion discourse changes our understanding of the distribution of social or hierarchical power among the Middlemarch characters and improves our ability to assess the degree of control that Rosamond assumes over her reproductive system at a time when that control was supposed to be her husband’s prerogative.

(Thierauf 480)

I follow the reasoning that Thierauf offers since the miscarriage, or abortion, can be seen as an attempt from Rosamond to have some kind of control over her life that is riddled with society’s expectations and where there is very little room for deviation from the traditional plan. After adhering to what is required for so many years, Rosamond comes to the

conclusion that the life that was promised to her and that she expected was not at all what it was made out to be, and after being a proper woman for so many years, she turns to an act of rebellion to out her frustrations. The act, however, is one purely for herself; she is the only who would have known that the miscarriage was wanted. Abortion, and even family planning, was very much still something that was not spoken about. (Thierauf 479)

Rosamond Vincy is, of course, not the only character that depends on the treatment of Middlemarch society and whose life is altered by the structure. I will now briefly discuss another instance where gender, class and societal life coincide by mentioning Dorothea

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Brooke, on whom the following chapter concerning autonomy will digress and provide additional information. In this instance, the reader can explicitly see and discern the power in the novel that the society holds over her as a woman and the duality of the situation; the differences between being a man and a woman are palpable and accentuate the inequality between the genders.

Dorothea is a married to Edward Casaubon and her reputation is almost tarnished by the Middlemarch society as suspicions of an affair arise. Her husband’s younger cousin Will Ladislaw becomes intertwined with the life of Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon. Edward is far from fond of his cousin, Will is in many ways a better version of himself, and Casaubon can see the genuine fondness between the two individuals. It is true that Dorothea and Will get along well but it is all in a proper, Victorian manner. This to no avail, however, since Casaubon suspects that his wife might be cheating on him with his cousin. Along with the growing suspicion of unfaithfulness that Casaubon has concerninghis wife, and perhaps in part fueled and

augmented by Edward’s distrust, the rumors and the whispers of an affair travel through the small town. If it has not happened yet, Casaubon understands that it will, once he has died, which leads to the clause in his will that disowns Dorothea of all of his assets if she were to marry Will after his death. Eventually this toxic situation is juxtaposed with the events after the death of Peter Featherstone. After the death of Mr. Featherstone, it is revealed that he has an illegitimate son called Joshua Rigg. There is no criticism uttered about the late Mr.

Featherstone about the existence of an extramarital son. More so, Joshua Rigg is easily introduced into society, proudly accepting his father’s name and becoming Joshua Rigg Featherstone, and he is both accepted in society and becomes a key figure of Middlemarch, All the while, no bad words are spoken about Featherstone or his legacy, but Dorothea is almost shunned from Middlemarch for an alleged affair.

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It is clear that society, and especially society in a town such as Middlemarch reinforces the stereotypes and harmful assumptions and tendencies regarding women. It is ever so clear that Middlemarch is small minded and that the conservative voices are prevalent. By the end of the novel, the general consensus in Middlemarch is that Dorothea is not a likable woman after her marriage to Ladislaw. It can be said with almost absolute certainty that the whole affair, or lack thereof, heavily influenced the image the town had of Dorothea and that the fact she then married Will seems like reason enough for the town to be assured of her misbehavior.

Dorothea should be granted peace; she should not be watched with narrowed eyes and blamed of things she has not done just because she is a woman. It is disheartening to see so clearly that a man with proof of adultery is spoken about kindlier than a woman where the rumors of adultery are far from substantial. The double standards are laid bare; men are applauded and praised for doing the bare minimum, or in this case not even that seeing that Featherstone was not faithful to his wife, while women’s reputations are being tarnished for absolutely nothing. To briefly summarize this section of this paper: class is a major factor in a person’s life, determining one’s entire future. It is therefore also a vital component of intersectional studies and research that attempts to analyze literary works through this perspective. Considering that

Middlemarch is “A Study of Provincial Life”, it can be expected that community and

communal life play a big factor in the story. In the provincial town of Middlemarch, the privileged Rosamond Vincy is perhaps the character most concerned with her position in society and most determined to alter where she stands in life. She has a dream of rising in class and the only way to do so is by marrying someone with connections and ties. To Rosamond, that is Dr. Tertius Lydgate, but the man is not what he appears to be and their marriage quickly deteriorates. The couple nears bankruptcy due to an imbalance of what they have and what is spent, mostly by Rosamond. The urge to rise in class is deeply imbedded into Rosamond by society. She attempts to change their critical situation but is disregarded or

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denied in everything she attempts. It unravels a helplessness women encounter; in order to go somewhere in life or to become someone, they have to rely on men as women were not expectedto even think for themselves. There is a possible reading of Middlemarch where Rosamond takes back some of her own agency by bringing about a miscarriage. This act of rebellion can be seen as Rosamond choosing to not adhere to society’s expectations and requirements. The societal influence on a woman’s life in Middlemarch but also in general is further discussed with a comparison of two particular situations that occur in the book. On the one hand, there is the reveal of Mr. Featherstone’s illegitimate child and therefore

simultaneously his extramarital relation, which leads to the welcoming of the young man into Middlemarch by the entire town. On the other hand, accusations are whispered against Dorothea for untoward behavior and a possible affair with Will Ladislaw. While completely untrue, these claims almost ruin Dorothea’s standing in the town and cause a somewhat hostile behavior towards her. In the comparison of these two situations, it becomes clear how disadvantaged women are. There is a vulnerability that women have in society and their reputations are difficult to build, which Rosamond’s struggles and journey demonstrates, and very easily torn down again, such is almost the case with Dorothea’s reputation.

Autonomy: Dorothea Brooke in Search of Vocation

Autonomy and independence are important for women because for a very long time, neither were present in woman’s life and everything depended on a woman’s husband. As the title already suggests, this chapter will be looking at Dorothea Brooke. This choice has been made as the theme seems to be mainly woven through her narrative and her storyline throughout the novel. Based on the concept of autonomy, this chapter will explore Dorothea’s story and will also take a look her character, as there has been much criticism uttered about her persona.

At nineteen years old, Dorothea Brooke is on the verge of taking the step of marrying one of the men in Middlemarch. Generally considered an otherworldly beauty, Dorothea has her pick

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of men, which is why her eventual choice surprises and confounds many of those around her and in the general Middlemarch society. She chooses to marry Edward Casaubon, an older, rather sickly scholar. An explanation for her unusual choice can be found in the following quote:

This view of marriage is the ideal—cultural and religious—that is offered to her, as a woman, as the means to fulfillment. Frustrated by her own lack of experience and education, yet struggling to do something purposeful with her life, Dorothea

internalizes the idea of wifely duty, looking to marriage as a way out of ignorance and into meaningful existence.

(Weber 507)

It is clear that Dorothea wants something to do. The bright and young woman has aspirations and is ambitiously searching for something to fill her time with, for something that will make her feel as if she is useful and doing things that make a difference. Similarly to how

Rosamond had to rely on a man to achieve her goal, so does Dorothea. She views marriage as a step that will change her life for the better and picks Casaubon as he, according to her, presents the most possibilities for this to happen and for her to help the world with advancing and evolving. Again, we can speak of a character that is blinded by something, in this case her innate desire to do good.

The image of Dorothea presented at the book's beginning is, to borrow a phrase from Simone de Beauvoir, apparently transcendent […] With her ardent nature, her

intelligence, her desire not simply to be good but to discover what might be good in order to use the fruits of this discovery to change the world, Dorothea seems to be a woman whose like had not been Actively recorded in 1871 and whose imaginary history still does not exist.

(Edwards 232)

The general consensus among the townspeople, however, is that she chose wrongly and that she should not have been able to choose her own partner. “It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her,” (Eliot 236) Sir James Chettam notes about Dorothea’s choice of her own husband. The commentary of Sir James on

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the freedom received while picking a partner for her coming nuptials, already betrays some of the thoughts and opinions men might have on the freedom of choice of women and all of the rights that come along with it. In part, his bitterness can be attributed to his desire for

Dorothea and her hand in marriage and is a result of her not picking him, who to many seemed a more suitable and younger partner than her eventual choice Edward Casaubon. It can also be interpreted as a complaint towards the autonomy women have indeed received where they are no longer forced to marry any man that presents himself as a candidate or is deemed agreeable to the girl’s family, but allows the girl to have some say in who she is to marry. It is true that Dorothea did indeed have free agency to pick a husband between her suitors and had no particular pressure from her uncle and guardian, Mr. Brooke. It is well known that her choice is not ideal, both to the other townspeople as well as to the readers, however Dorothea seems content with her choice. Initial cracks begin to form in the marriage while the couple is on their honeymoon in Rome, Italy, where it becomes apparent her

husband Edward does not agree with her aspirations and had imagined their marriage quite differently than Dorothea had; for him, Dorothea could serve as a secretary to aid him, but he refuses to teach her or to let her actively work alongside him, which hinders Dorothea in her search for autonomy. Moreover, Casaubon becomes hostile as soon as she displays too much autonomy or attempts to discuss the matter with her husband. Dorothea is silenced and the marriage is not what she expected it to be and she finds herself yet again overpowered and influenced by someone.

Her uncle Mr. Brooke, who is her guardian, her admirer Sir James Chettam, even Celia herself – all feel they have to ‘protect’ Dorothea as ‘innocent’ and unworldly, lacking common sense. To them, she is an admirable, queer child, clever yet ignorant, to be treated with affection and indulgence so long as she does not try to escape their influence. Dorothy is frustrated and wants to take control of her life.

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Dorothea has been surrounded by people who want to protect her for their own gain all of her life, resulting in unbalanced and forcedrelationships where she is constantly coddled and underestimated, which must result in frustration on Dorothea’s part. Dorothea even receives outright criticism from the overt narrator, which can be seen in the following excerpt: “Miss Brooke was certainly very naïve with all her alleged cleverness.” (Eliot 52) The use of alleged clearly states thatthe narrator believes Dorothea is behaving like she is anything but clever and while there are definitely instances in the novel where her behavior does not deserve the adjective clever, Dorothea’s intellect and spirit keep being overlooked and dismissed due to the continuous focus on other sides of her personality such as her naiveté or her search for goodness.

Although I must agree that Dorothea’s potential is not explored to the fullest, the claims of certain scholars that Dorothea, as well as the other female characters, is useless due to this particular innocence and ignorance are not completely grounded and this is also said by Lee R. Edwards. “

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t is the force of this last character's imagination, her questing nature and desire to be both wise and useful, that illuminates the book. This illumination, arising from the rare portrayal of energy and intellectual force conjoined in an admirable female character causes Middlemarch to be a kind of talisman for many young women.” (223) This energy leads Dorothea to explore other paths. By being aware of the shortcomings and limitations of being a woman in Victorian society, she searches for ways to make her ideas come to fruition and does this by asking men for help. Her desire for reform philanthropy has to be enacted through men. The cottage being built is a good example of this: she convinces Sir James to fund and realize the project she has in mind. Dorothea knows her worth but is also aware of the limitations that being a woman bring. Within these restrictions, she uses her assets, including her kindness and naiveite, to enlist the help of those with power in order to achieve as much as possible. There is a misconception in earlier feminist studies that states that every

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woman should be a strong, independent woman without any flaws or weaknesses that does not have to rely on men for anything. She cannot be overly emotional, kind, or any other characteristics that are associated with the nurturing stereotype women encounter and have been branded as. Dorothea Brooke is not that and this way of thinking can perhaps explain the aversion towards Dorothea as a character. Her strength lies in her vulnerability and while it is difficult to claim that her naiveté is a strength, it aids her in some respects and helps her achieve a form of autonomy, while it is still not the autonomy she desires. She has power, a silent strength, especially mentally. The previous chapter mentioned the scrutiny she received for her friendship with Will Ladislaw. She then chooses to marry him, even though that means she will not receive Casaubon’s money and she refuses to finish Casaubon’s work, which is a very clear example of her defiance, since one of the reasons she married Casaubon was to be able to learn and help him to write his magnum opus.

In short, the desire for autonomy and independence stems from a time where the woman is subordinate to the man and therefore reliant on him for almost everything in life. Only the household was hers to run and even there, restrictions were present. In Middlemarch, the character that struggles the most with this particular role as a woman and a wife is Dorothea Brooke. She marries scholar Edward Casaubon and their relationship is one with a large age gap that confounds many people and leads to criticism on the fact that Dorothea was allowed to pick her partner herself. Dorothea mistakenly believes that becoming Casaubon’s wife will give her opportunity to work alongside him and form an equal partnership. However, this is not the image of marriage Casaubon had in mind and her aspirations are painfully quenched and reduced to a secretary role. Most of the characters close to Dorothea attempt to protect and control her and seems to be possible thanks to her naiveté. Critics therefore write off Dorothea as a weak protagonist and woman and condemn the precedence this sets. Some formulations in the novel itself even suggest that she is not worthy of being described as

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clever. This chapter attempts to counter this claim by highlighting the energy and ambition Dorothea possesses and the awareness she gains about her position and her possibilities as a woman. Dorothea knows men have more power and she uses them to gain more autonomy and to bring about change; her goodness convinces Sir James to help her with her cottage project. Dorothea Brooke is a flawed woman, but that does not make her a bad woman.

Beauty of the Body and the Soul: Mary Garth as the Everyday Woman of Middlemarch

The role that beauty has in the process of determining the worth or relevance of someone is often overlooked, especially in academic studies that concentrate on feminism. There is a certain stigma attached to beauty and to how the concept should be utilized as it is often considered as something lightweight, something trivial, the opposite of what academic research should aspire to be. A second reason might have something to do with the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover”. The sentence is ingrained in everyone’s mind, teaching us to avoid being superficial by fixating on the look of someone and encouraging us to look at what lies beneath. To, after this lesson, focus on beauty and redistribute importance to the quality again can feel like a confirmation of superficiality. However, physical beauty, determines quite a lot in one's life and it should therefore be explicitly mentioned in intersectional research and be incorporated in more papers, even if people are afraid to acknowledge and discuss it and maybe just for that reason. Far too often, a harmful and persistentthoughtthat a woman’s value is determined by her beauty is perpetuated in society. It is used as an excuse to demean women and brand them as worthless when they are not pretty enough or when they do not conform to the traditional conventions of beauty. These expectations of how a woman should look vary over time and place but the Eurocentric aspect

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is almost always present. For this specific novel, the term Eurocentric is less relevant as all of the subjects that will be examined inherently adhere to the standards that are implied by the term and there is no subject that is not European, but the term had to be mentioned as it does, in part, define beauty in a broader and more intersectional sense. In intersectional research, beauty is perhaps also a partially still uncovered consideration but as the following chapter will try to prove, it is a crucial determining factor of a woman’s experience in the world. I have also included beauty of the soul as it is also a relevant distinction in this chapter, but more on that shortly.

For the relevance of beauty in Middlemarch, I will primarily consider it from the perspective of a character that has not been mentioned before: Mary Garth. She is the daughter of Caleb and Mrs. Garth. Her father is known for his kind soul, but he is therefore also easily

manipulated. The Garth family can be described as a close and everyday family. Mary herself has a long and tight friendship with Fred Vincy, Rosamond’s brother. One of the most

striking sentences uttered about Mary in the novel is said by Fred’s mother, Mary’s future mother-in-law. “And I must say I think Mary Garth a dreadful plain girl—more fit for a governess.” (Eliot 84) In the sentence, one can see how Mary Garth is disregarded by her future mother-in-law in terms of looks, deeming her only fit for a governess. Becoming a governess to tend to and tutor children of families who could afford one, was one of the few options for women of lower birth and specifically who not possess an extraordinary amount of beauty for a relatively wealthy man to ignore all opposition to her status simply because she is so stunning. There is an implication present that ends up being quite ironic since Mary does end up marrying Mrs. Vincy own son. Implied in Mrs. Vincy’s words is the following: due to her plainness, it would take Mary a long time to find someone who would want to marry her, as it is suggested for her to work in the meantime to not be a burden to her parents. Mrs. Vincy is not content with Mary’s current employment, thinking it unfair to the poor and dying

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Mr. Featherstone Earlier on in the paragraph “And I have no ill-will towards Mary Garth, but there’s justice to be thought of.” (Eliot 84)

These quotes are very hurtful towards Mary Garth and unfairly so; they make it seem as if there is something wrong with her which is far from being true. Mary Garth has one of the most outspoken voices in the novel. She is not featured as much as the other characters but when she is featured and receives dialogue, the reader gets the impression of a young lady that is witty and bright, someone that knows what and who she wants. Mary’s family does not possess as much fortune as the Vincy family does for instance, but she has received an education that is in no way inferior to that of Dorothea or Rosamond. She is, however, not beautiful as the other women are and that causes a big influence on her life. Even

Middlemarch’s narrator comments on Mary’s looks. The narrator divulges onwhat the use of “plain” as an adjective now specifically means for someone like Mary. She is ordinary.

If you want to know more particularly how Mary looked, ten to one you will see a face like hers in the crowded street to-morrow, if you are there on the watch: she will not be among those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretched-out necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her.

(Eliot 336)

Out of this citation, one can deduce that Mary is not a hideous person; she is simply not as beautiful as other young ladies in town, such as Dorothea Brooke and Rosamond Vincy. It is striking to learn that just by looking normal, Mary is disadvantaged in life. Mary carries a slight sharpness with her due to this particular manner she is treated and the awareness of her deprivation. The difference also becomes clear in interactions between Rosamond, another beautiful woman in Middlemarch and a popular young lady : “I did not tell you that Mr. Lydgate was haughty; but il y en a pour tous les goûts, as little Mamselle used to say, and if any girl can choose the particular sort of conceit she would like, I should think it is you,

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Rosy.” (Eliot 94) Mary’s sharpness grows into frustration when people, such as Rosamond for instance, simply cannot look past her plainness, by continuously bringing up the subject or by having a look of remorse on their while interacting with her. Additionally, her lack of wealth and funds also limits her life. It would have been possible that with money, people would be able to ignore her plainness, or at least not call her plainness out so openly.

Although beauty brings about certain advantages: when one is beautiful things are easier to obtain, people are kinder, one is less quickly dismissed, Mary does not let this stop her. She proactively lives her life and tries to remedy any disadvantages she might have. One can consider this an act of rebellion towards expectations that are had when it comes to plain girls of her station. Mary is anything but plain; she is intelligent, funny, and aware of the world, whereas Dorothea and Rosamond, Middlemarch’s beauties, are mainly focused on particular aspects of their lives, that have been discussed. While the young ladies do work hard to achieve their goals which the previous chapters show, Rosamond and Dorothea mostly wait for a solution to be handed to them for most of the novel as they are used to receiving things thanks to both their class and their beauty. Mary is different and relies solely on herself. Another characteristic of Mary’s is that she is more down-to-earth and therefore more realistic than both of them and perhaps even than the both of them combined, which makes it so that the reader can more easily sympathize and like Mary. “Wendy Steiner argues that “the unlinking of beauty from virtue was an important goal in the creation of aesthetic and human sympathy” for both Brontë and Eliot.” (Mitchell 308)

A specific example of Mary’s assertiveness happens when Fred Vincy asks the Garth family for a loan. He cannot repay it, thus using his relationship to Mary to selfishly acquire capital, while knowing the reimbursement would be near to impossible and that it would cause trouble for the family. Mary holds him accountable and dares to challenge Fred, at a point of time where they are not yet married; they are only friends. Neither Rosamond, nor Dorothea dare

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to directly confront their husbands in times of trouble and conflict. Continuing the comparison between Mary on the one hand, and Dorothea and Rosamond on the other hand, I would briefly like to mention “beauty of the soul” and the relationship between Fred and Mary. Of the three women described, Mary is the only one who marries her future spouse simply because she loves him, without expecting anything but love in return. In Dorothea’s case she expects knowledge and academic prominencefrom her union with Edward Casaubon and Rosamond sees wealth and grandeur among the advantages of marrying Tertius Lydgate. There is therefore a certain shallowness present in their choices and in their husbands’ choices as well, since they were mostly interested in having a beautiful wife. Even in Dorothea’s second marriage, that is often used to be juxtaposed to her first, there is a sort of admiration present that causes Dorothea to be seen as this work of art, as something static, not to be touched only to be admired. Prior to their marriage, Will calls Dorothea a poem on page 186 and she tells him about her yearning to make the world more beautiful as well as can be read in the following quote: “I should like to make life beautiful—I mean everybody’s life. And then all this immense expanse of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from it” (Eliot 182) Her naiveté is what is often criticized and discussed and in this instance, her search for beauty does emphasize the impression of

shallowness that some of her statements convey with the reader, especially when compared to a character such as Mary Garth.

Lastly, Middlemarch features some notable quotes on the subject of beauty, one of the most striking concerning Lydgate. The doctor is described as having the following thoughts: “Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.” (Eliot 77)This immediately determines the worth of plain women to Lydgate, and perhaps even Middlemarch as a whole. The thesis here is that plain women

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should be an object of study since there must be something wrong with them. A study that would be so extensive, it would require the combination of philosophy, perhaps with questions such as “why do plain women exist” and “what is their use?” with science and experiments. This excerpt serves perfectly as a way to further question the intersection of beauty and gender. Plain men are barely mentioned and deliberatelyleft out of this narrative and questioning. Casaubon, for instance, would most likely be considered a plain man as the descriptions of him being sickly and old do not fit well with attractiveness, but he remains out of the spotlight. Plain men are not be investigated and one must not mull upon their existence because men of course have more purpose than being beautiful while a woman’s entire

existence should only be that. Men have their brains to be useful, while women, following this process of thought and considering the mystifying nature of plain women to many, must not have the possibility to be smart. This subject, intelligence and education will be further discussed in the following chapter.

A summary of beauty as an intersectional aspect and the importance of beauty in

Middlemarch. Mary Garth is described as a plain woman by both the narrator and those that are close to her. Mary is aware of the fact that she can hardly competewith the other ladies in Middlemarch, including Dorothea and Rosamond and senses the disadvantages she faces due to her everyday appearance and, on top of that, her lack of capital.In both Dorothea and Rosamond’s cases, their beauty brings forth a sort of shallowness and spoiled nature, as things are often handed to them and they have the privilege of focusing on specific parts of their lives. In the choice of their partner, both beautiful ladies have an underlying agenda for choosing their husbands whereas Mary does it purely based on her feelings for Fred. She is also not afraid of letting her voice be heard and is intelligent and witty and dares to confront men when they do her wrong, which is different for Rosamond and Dorothea, whose

A 21st Century Outlook on Womanhood in the Victorian Age: Intersectionality in "Middlemarch"

A 21

st

Century Outlook on Womanhood

in the Victorian Age

Intersectionality in Middlemarch

Manon Bobo

Table of Contents

A 21

Century Outlook on Womanhood in the Victorian Age:

Intersectionality in Middlemarch

Introduction

Intersectionality in Middlemarch

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