Victorian Literature

Middlemarch

(Failed Idealism)

Introduction:

Idealism is used to define from the centuries in several discourses. You might have heard the word Utopia as very hard to reach out, Idealism is also very tough to grasp. In the patriarchal society where we are living, women are always expected to be a kind, beautiful, hardworking, having endurance and because of this women are more interested to move towards idealism. As we distinguish, where rigidity of religion there is is always darkness, same way made-up attraction towards idealism, it results into unhappiness, longer disquiet and anxiety. George Eliot’s Middlemarch also stresses upon failed idealism. Eyeing from surface level in Middlemarch, seems that idealism has been seized or happy ending is done but it is not so. It symbolizes the failed idealism. Every character’s suffering becomes more painful from the end itself. 

This assignment purposes to stretch out the connotation of idealism and illustration of failed idealism in Middlemarch.

We live in society where marriage has been made very vital part of life. What marriage does, actually nothing! Tendency towards marriage is been made is nothing more than another form of stereotyping. This assignment goals to stretch out idealism in Middlemarch – Failed idealism in Middlemarch.

What is idealism?

Before entering into discussion of heavy term, let me make simply clear that idealism is such complex term which very difficult to define in given context. M.H.Abrams defines Idealism as “Idealism is the name for a philosophical doctrine, arising at the end of the eighteenth century, was transformed over the course of the nineteenth century into an important concept for literature as well. Idealism was found on the distinction drawn by Immanuel Kant between the realms of freedom and necessity.

Idealism was articulated as a utopian program, at the center of which is the image of a harmonious human being perfectly at the home in the world.

Middle March is about the process of understanding the experience and perceptions of others, and also of suffering and through self-deception and disillusionment, social positioning, class-consciousness and ambition for self-improvement with its concomitants: education and money.

According to Virginia Wolfe,

George Eliot’s Middle March is ‘One of the few English novels for grown-up people’.

Middlemarch investigates into the question of just how literature relates to life and our accepted wisdom of idealism.

How idealism fails in Middlemarch

In remarks of these discussions of the idea of idealism and progress in the novel, it is noticeable that the Eliot insightfully comments on the radical, social and cultural not only offers a realistic image of the social order with a psychological portrayal of its characters, but also makes any kind of survival impossible without this realistic awakening to the societal conditions.

Michael York writes in his article “Middlemarch and History” that…

“Lydgate and Dorothea are idealists “whose dreams are destroyed as they come up against the harsh realities of daily existence”. However, the Victorian England is not the time of Romantic idealists like Lydgate, but realists like Marty Garth and Fred Vincy, the happy couple of the novel, and Will Ladislaw, the husband of Dorothea. Yet Eliot attracts the sympathy of readers for all her characters on each side, which is another aim of her, since she says in a letter to Charles Bray in 1959 just before writing the novel, “if Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.”

It is a common human tendency to cast ourselves as the central amount in the drama of our life—and the mixture but, like Mary Garth “take life very much as a comedy.”  While tragedy sets up a central hero or heroine, comedy, similar to life, provides a gathering of characters of relatively equal importance, mixed motives, and struggling interests. Characters are at one moment absurd and at another profound. For precisely this reason, comedy offers a revitalizing remedy to our inherently self-centered view of the world. Books like Middlemarch, and perhaps comedies in general, can help us engaging batter with and understand the humans around us.

Ideally failed characters in Middlemarch

Elliot is high-pitched and straight forward to the subject of the irresponsibility of some people that are of higher class who live better than others not by the merits of their own merited work. This issue is much more examined with controversial issues of the rising class as accepted and affordable of idiotic, selfish and harsh actions. The lower class has to labor for a meager living day by day with no hope of prosperity.

Now, let’s study these characters with wearing the lens of idealism.

Dorothea Brooks

Dorothea Brooks is ostensible heroine of Middlemarch. Her representation in the novel is rather heart-rending and tragic, in fact designed for herself and eager to fill. A dreamy idealist of the first degree, her days are paid out in dreaming up and trying to gather provision for her well-intentioned but unrealizable plans to renovate homes for the unfortunate.

She ignores the genuine attention of a kind but typical local lord, choosing instead to marry Mr. Casaubon, an aged minister who spends his days in historical and philosophical studies.

Mr. Casaubon

We can consider Mr. Casaubon as absurd figure. Narcissistic approach can be studies in his character.

He is ill-mannered in his conceit and self-centeredness, and his pride separates him from his family and from the community too.  Dorothea falls into love for him because she errors this reality in her incoherent sentiments of unclear nobility and abstract excellence. He seems to be noble enough for her to dedicate her life to serving his vision, and she willingly throws herself upon the altar of self-immolation—only to discover in the first few weeks of her marriage that his idealism is nothing but a mask for his selfishness, his fear of living actively and well, and his fear of being surpassed by his quick-minded young wife. In short, it represents falsified assumption of idealism, failed idealism.

Dorothea’s role as the “heroine” is quietly undermined as Eliot slowly but consistently forces us to focus on other characters with equal.  Two of these characters are women who instantiate the tension between idealism and realism. Rosie, daughter of the town mayor, is a ruined but sweet young woman who sets her cap for the handsome new doctor in town. Imagining a life of leisure and finery far beyond what his new practice can support, she drives them into debt and social degradation—all because she is determined to fit her life into the role she has cast for herself as a socialite and chivalric lady, a role that her real life doesn’t provide lodgings.

Lydgate:

The character who has his drives and ideals brought most obviously low is Lydgate. The earliest example is when he has to make the choice between the both Fair brother and Tyke. Both of these characters are rather poor instances of the clergy.

Failure of marriage in Middlemarch

Marriage is a theme as well as an portion of realism, marriage and its pursuit are at the center in Middlemarch, but it is different from other novels, marriage is not considered the final source of love and happiness but an direction of morality values. Eliot considers the moral growth as an act of abandoning egoistic spiritual concerns and meeting a concerned response to the sufferings of the helpless. All the characters of the novel are concerned with marriage. They all tend to fall in love with someone and then get married. The main thing in the marriages of Middlemarch people is that they are all disappointed and disillusioned. Dorothea as the main character suffers from disillusion too. Her expectations about her marriage with Edward Casaubon are totally far behind the reality.

The marriages of the secondary characters also tell us stories for example the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bulstrode face a marital crisis. Another couple having difficulties uniting are Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, they have loved each other from long ago, but Mary’s different points of view from Vincy and her decision that she won’t marry him without having a stabile profession, but never as a clerk. So they face a very great deal of hardship. And as we may think of it none of the marriages have the fairy happy ending. Middlemarch is one of the few novels that do not portray marriage as romantic and unproblematic relation.

Middlemarch can be considered as, construction of liberalistic views and the values of Catholicism once married forever married. It supports treaties in favor of divorce.

Almost every characters in Middlemarch marry for love rather than obligation, yet marriage still appears negative and unromantic. Marriage and pursuit of it are central concerns in Middlemarch, but unlike in many novels of the time, marriage is not considered the ultimate source of happiness. In Middlemarch, two are the failed marriages of  Dorothea and Lydgate.

As we discussed earlier both Lydgate and Dorothea’s marriage fails. Undeveloped question is that why? If both the marriages are essentially based upon love rather than anything else then why it fails? Does Eliot wants us to highlighting upon question,  does marriage always bring happiness?

(1)Dorothea’s marriage

Dorothea’s marriage miss the mark because of her youth and of her disillusions about marrying a much older man.

(2)Lydgate’s marriage

Lydgate’s marriage fails because of her conflicting personalities.

As a result, none of the marriages reach a perfect fairytale ending and so, perhaps it deals with failed idealism.

Brian Swann says, Middlemarch is treasure house of details, but it is an indifferent whole. George Eliot was been peculiarly intelligent.

What Is It About Middlemarch?

It was began as works of art with an unexpected connection. It is not like romantic novel, though it is a very adoring one. It is anti-romantic. It does not lead from unsatisfied love to fulfilled love to climactic marriage. It initiates with the mistaken marriage choices of its "heroine" and "hero" and shows the inexorable workings of their coming to terms with their folly. Both are idealists. Both are very intelligent yet their intelligence and idealistic thinking fails.

Epilogue

Thus, we can conclude that..

As characters are more significant than plot in Middlemarch, it depicts slow moving plot as an element of realism. Throughout the novel, there are numerous references to her desire to help the poor, though this is more often than not frustrated by her surroundings.  Eliot's refusal to conform to happy endings demonstrates the fact that Middlemarch is not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real-life issues, not the fantasy world to which women writers were often confined. Her ambition was to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and quiet moments of dignity..

References

Abrams, M. H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Cengage Learning, 2015.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch, by George Eliot. Dent, 1967.

James, Henry. “George Eliot's ‘Middlemarch.’” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 8, no. 3, 1953, pp. 161–170. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3044335. Accessed 6 Mar. 2020.

Mason, Michael York. “Middlemarch and History.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 25, no. 4, 1971, pp. 417–431. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2933120. Accessed 7 Mar. 2020.

Swann, Brian. “Middlemarch: Realism and Symbolic Form.” ELH, vol. 39, no. 2, 1972, pp. 279–308. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2872247. Accessed 8 Mar. 2020.