Alan Mintz's Critisism of Middlemarch

       Regardless of the era, the thought and emotion when encountering romance still holds prominent in society. Every one wants to feel passion and love, and one way to get that taste can be through books. Middlemarch does not just stop at one romance; it involves various forms of love and the fatality that could surface with love. Alan Mintz read and critiqued the romance and vocation of Middlemarch. Mintz looked at the desire men have for women whether it brings prosperity for a man's life or ruin. He sees that people never grow tired to what King James explained as a woman's “makdom and her fairnesse” (p.630). The push and pull that the genders of our species often have and how it has also tied into the novel of vocation for the future that Eliot reveals to her readers.

      When Alan Mintz is looking and critiquing the romantic aspect of the novel, he has much to look at. The story of Middlemarch is full of romance with more than just one pairing of characters. Instead, Mintz has to look at almost all of the characters to analyze the romantic perspective that each of them have for each romantic pair the reader encounters has a different outcome and vocation. The critic almost seemed enthusiastic about the novel when he referred the piece to the Troubadours. The Troubadours are French poets during the 11^th and 13^th centuries that themed and seemingly devoted their creations to love and the concept of it. Throughout the paper the troubadours is mentioned often when comparing George Eliot's book, “Although erotic love, that “passion sung by the Troubadours,” continues to play a role in the novel, it persists chiefly as a demonic presence, a “catastrophe” that wrecks the more valuable marriages of men to their vocations” (p.632). He is saying that the future for men's new means of realizing oneself is through his own works. The new era for man lies beyond their children and evolve into an “impassioned struggle to change the world” through aspirations and their jobs. The rich and overflowing emotion that Eliot expresses in Middlemarch is full of the rich feelings love can bring in “makdom and fairnesse.” More than romance has captured the heart of Mintz, but the shape of a character's deeds that effect the core of a person.

Furthermore, the problems of originality and community are embedded in the rhetorical complexity of the book through the vocational aspect. “To work means to assert ones individuality,

      Shape ones own deeds and to effect an original relationship to the world” (p.632). Mintz continues this thought by explaining that if the world is nothing more than a community that we all inhabit, it's the sense of security that unhinges by our own vocational assertion. If a person is in a bind, the person produces a threat in the shape of temptation to the other aspirants. Not only are the characters touched by these contradictions, but the narrator is as well. Mintz makes a valid point when applying it to the book by looking at all the choices that are made by the characters like Fred, Casaubon and almost all of them. These characters put themselves in a bind and are in a position to make a decision about vocation or consequences of their choices.

       Alan Mintz looked beyond the simple romantic aspect of the characters and looked at their choices that shaped them whether they were positive or negative. It was clear that he enjoyed the depth of Middlemarch in their relationship and strive for a bigger purpose which people can relate to today. A group of people could read the book and feel differently from each other about the characters which serves as a reflector of the people who we are inside. As readers, we look at the literary worked even as far back as the Victorian age, indulge in its feeling and passion that sprung to life from authors long past and still feel a sense of connection to the characters that we encounter.