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One of the longest books I have ever read ended up being one of the most frustrating and beautiful at the same time, and I think that is exactly the point. What immediately stands out is that George Eliot is a woman writing under a male name, while the novel itself is about how easily women’s lives can get hidden, misread, or flattened. The ending, “…who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs” (Eliot 785), is not comforting; it is a warning. Not religiously or symbolically, but in a way where people are constantly being reduced in real time, and their full lives are never actually seen by all. This novel makes you uncomfortable; it forces readers to realize how easily humans overlook one another.
Dorothea’s life is the clearest example of this and is one of the strongest and most vulnerable parts of the novel. She is introduced as someone sharp, intentional, and almost resistant to the expectations placed on her: she doesn’t even want to wear her mother’s jewelry (12), which shows she rejects what femininity is supposed to look like as this soft, adequate on every regard person. By the end, she is reduced to someone who married two men in the same family, which is completely disproportionate to the life we actually read. We spend hundreds of pages watching her think, struggle, sacrifice, and try to build a meaningful life, just for her to be remembered in a way that erases all of that. That reduction is not just unfair, it exposes how limited and lazy social judgment is. Eliot creates a gap between who Dorothea actually is and how others read her, and the gap is where the real meaning of the novel sits what we readers get to see. Dorothea is not small; society just never had the capacity to understand her in the first place.
Something else entirely striking is how the novel splits characters between those who wait and those who actually do something with their lives. Still, then Eliot refuses to let that distinction stay simple. No character fully belongs to one side, which makes the idea of moral clarity fall apart. There are characters like Mr. Brooke, Fred Vincy (at least early on), and even Rosamond, who seem to expect life to just work itself out, through inheritance, marriage, or status. Then there are characters like Dorothea, Mary Garth, and Will Ladislaw, who are actively trying to build something ethical and meaningful for themselves. But even that distinction breaks down when looking at Lydgate, who wants to be someone who works for something real but still ends up relying on circumstances, especially when he takes Bulstrode’s money, yet later returns it. His breaking point is not just personal failure; it shows that even people who try to “do the right thing” are still shaped and sometimes trapped by the systems around them. That idea connects to Eliot’s point that waiting for a morally perfect person, especially in leadership, is unrealistic (437). Instead, we are left with flawed people making decisions inside flawed systems, which feels far more honest than any idealized vision of moral perfection.
Becoming a young woman in this world in any era feels like one of the most unstable positions to occupy, and George Eliot captures that instability with precision. Reality operates as if those in power, those with the higher vantage point, are the only ones capable of producing truth, as if only a handful of voices can speak for entire populations. But Middlemarch pushes against that assumption. The idea that even the small, messy lives of ordinary provincial people carry serious moral weight, which pushes against the idea that only people in power get to define what matters (321). At the same time, Eliot does not pretend that access to truth is equal. Bulstrode believes he can bury his past, even to the extent of morally destroying another person, yet it resurfaces. Will Ladislaw’s family history also refused to stay hidden. Though Dorothea does not get the same opportunity to define or reclaim her own narrative. Even after her death, her life remains filtered through others’ interpretations. This shows that power determines whose truth is preserved and how it comes to light. Bulstrode’s past does not simply resurface because truth is inevitable; it is dragged into the open because of Bulstrode’s wealthy and morally righteous status and then dragged even more through Raffles’ cheeky manipulation and control over him. Truth in Middlemarch is neither pure nor self-sustaining; it is contingent, often forced into visibility by unequal power dynamics. Dorothea’s inner life, suffering, and moral complexity are never forced into public recognition in the same way. Instead, they remain vulnerable to simplification, reinforcing how power shapes not just what is known, but what is remembered.
In the end, marriage emerges as one of the most controlling and revealing structures in the novel, especially through Dorothea’s experience as a widow. Her rejection of remarriage as an automatic expectation is resistance. She makes it clear that marriage is not a law she is obligated to follow, despite the pressure surrounding her. However, what makes this moment more complex is that even in rejecting that expectation, she cannot fully escape the system that produced it. Her eventual remarriage does not function as a simple resolution or proof of happiness, because there is no way to determine whether her life would have been better with or without Will. And that uncertainty disrupts the idea that marriage is a guaranteed path to fulfillment. The novel also shows how aggressively society polices women’s future, reducing their lives to the outcomes of their relationships. Even when Dorothea asserts independence, she is still shaped by the same idealism that led her into her first marriage. Mary Garth reflects a similar tension where her decision to choose Fred over a more socially advantageous match (Mr. Farebrother) resists economic logic, but it still exists within the structure of marriage as the central framework for a woman’s life. Eliot exposes how deeply embedded power systems are even in moments that appear to challenge them. Eliot does not provide clean answers, and she does not reward characters in ways that feel satisfying. Instead, she forces the reader to sit with the idea that people can live full, complicated lives and still be misunderstood, reduced, or forgotten. The novel does not let that go unnoticed. It keeps pushing back, reminding us that there is always more beneath the surface, even if we are not willing or privileged enough to see it.
Anjolie's Sake 