George Eliot's Engrossing Background to Middlemarch

   George Eliot is certainly not afraid to hide the personality that bursts through her being into her novels. Middlemarch is the seventh novel written by George Eliot and is still considered a masterpiece of English fiction. This was Eliot's most comprehensive and sweeping novel to date and was intended as a study of provincial British life. Though Eliot's novel was to focus on the life and integrate the opinions of others, she still put in personal opinion in terms of marriage, belief of humanity and other factors that can show in the novel. This was not just a simple novel but a piece of history brought to life through her gifted story telling in Middlemarch.

   Initially, there was going to be two separate books. One book was going to center on the doctor Lygate as the main character, and the other would focus on Dorthea. In the end, she decided to take a different route by combining the characters' stories into one. The characters in Eliot's novel can be related to or empathized with; with each person in the novel, the characters may be liked or disliked. The human behavior the characters express represents and mirrors us as people to some degree. As we judge Eliot's characters in Middlemarch, we are also judging ourselves. Having that perspective of the novel and by looking at these complex characters, each if not all of them hold some aspect that lies within ourselves whether that aspect of our personality is desirable to one's self or not.

   The characters and stories told within the novel are meant to show how people are affected by historical change while it happens and how progress happens in people's lives. Her intention with the novel was to analyze recent political, social and economic threads through the character's life experience and personality. Middlemarch was written in such a subtle way, incorporating both topical history, such as the death of George IV, and the reform bill that will be passed later that year and still bestowing a feeling of an engrossing novel. The novel is very much concerned with women's roles and how they should be changed. Although she had no children and lived with her lover, George Lewes, without being married, believed that women should be married and had obligations to their husbands and children. This tension in Eliot's personal views forms struggles that Rosamond, Dorothea, and Celia face, determining the outcome of their unions according to their character. Middlemarch is a very carefully woven work of social commentary with living and breathing characters who are as real as the historical time period they inhabit.