Middlemarch Attitude

1092 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: George Eliots moral vision in Middlemarch

In this passage of George Eliot's Middlemarch, the narrator reveals a complex attitude toward one of the main characters, Dorothea Brooke. She is portrayed as a plain girl who cares less for worldly, material things, yet eventually turns into a character to be pitied because of her childlike view of marriage and conception of the world. The author's attitude in the beginning is one of reverence and respectability shown through his admiration for the way she dresses and bears herself. However, the tone develops into one of pity and criticism. This tone begins with a satirical approach to her philosophy which is too overbearing (for some people) and her ignorance towards the subject of marriage. The switch in tone is so powerful that it can change what the reader once thought of Dorothea, a woman of dignity, into a naive child. In the first sentence, Eliot focuses on Dorothea's facade which " had a kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress". Throughout the passage Dorothea's beauty is masked by something, whether it be by a material object or one of her personality traits. The first example is shown here through this quote which is interesting because of the way the dress is related to her appearance. Usually the dress is what makes the girl ornamented and adds more beauty than the girl has herself , but here her beauty is much greater than the "poor dress". In lines two and three, the author makes an allusion to the Virgin Mary for visual imagery and symbolism. "Her hand and wrist so finely formed" shows her delicacy but shown as the Virgin Mary adds a religious element to her over all characterization. When she wore plain garments she gained dignity to her name which symbo... ... middle of paper ... ...would curb her doubts. Dorothea is not looking for a lover because her faith blinds her into thinking she always needs to gain more faith and knowledge but through his tone, the author shows that she needs a father figure now because she is still a child and continues to need guidance. It is wrong to say that the author is merely criticizing Dorothea as a person. Through many adjectives and allusions, he recognizes her as a young, clever woman who is seen as the ideal in respect to her purity and her lack of vanity. He comments on her “open, ardent, and non self-admiring” character because she views her sister as more beautiful and deserving of relationship than herself. However, Eliot does condemn her binding faith that takes her away from anything enjoyable. Not everything has to bring forth knowledge but rather she should enjoy her happiness.

Show More
Related

  • Mythology in The Virgin Suicides

    573 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Virgin Mary symbol in “The Virgin Suicides” foreshadows events that will play out later in the novel. In the very beginning of the novel we learn of the attempted suicide of the youngest Libson girl Cecilia. While the fact that Cecilia had tried to kill herself was astounding itself what was also interesting is wh...

    Read More

  • Juxtaposing Violence and Tranquility: Analyzing Southern Imagery

    269 Words  | 1 Pages

    2. What is the effect of the exclamation mark used in the last line of the second stanza?

    Read More

  • Half Hanged Margaret Atwood Essay

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ironically, the author divides the poem into different times of the day, we see that as the time changes, so does Mary’s beliefs. This form of poetry confronts any interpretation that suggest that light is holy and darkness is evil. Specifically, at 6 am. In the first stanza when the sun comes up, she explicitly states this no longer a simile for God. In the same moment readers witness the death of her soul and the shattering of her beliefs. On the other hand, Atwood creates a contrasting effect at 12 midnight, in which in this time of darkness she exemplifies hope and optimism despite the fact death sat upon her shoulders.

    Read More

  • Analyzing Paul Laurence Dunbar's They Wear The Mask

    519 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this picture the lady is hiding because she does not want to show the pain she is feeling, so she keeps it bottled up inside. She buries her true self by “wearing” these masks and fake smiles. For example, “This debt we pay to human guile;/ With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,” translating to we put up that face to hide the pain others put us through, we try our best to smile. When you look at the poem “We Wear the Mask”, they seem similar to that of those in the picture of that girl. “We Wear the Mask- We wear the mask that grins and lies,/ It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-,” meaning “We look as though we are something that we are not” and “We show a completely different face than what our emotions feel”. It emphasizes what the girl in the picture also portrays she’s

    Read More

  • Marge Piercy’s Barbie Doll

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    The third stanza starts off saying, “She was advised to play coy, / exhorted to come on hearty, / exercise, diet, smile and wheedle” (12-14). In the girls’ mind she is becoming completely fake to herself to make society happy; this in turn makes her dissatisfied. She soon grows tired of pretending and, “cut[s] off her nose and her legs (17).

    Read More

  • Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    story points out that beauty has its cost as well, the power of being beautiful holds a great

    Read More

  • Impact of Tone in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tone of Jane Eyre is direct, perhaps even blunt. There is no prissy little-girl sensibility, but a startlingly independent, even skeptical perspective. At the age of 10, the orphan Jane already sees through the hypocrisy of her self-righteous Christian elders. She tells her bullying Aunt Reed, "People think you a good woman, but you are bad; hard-hearted. You are deceitful!" and "I am glad you are no relative of mine; I will never call you aunt again so long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say that the very thought of you makes me sick." (In fact, when her aunt is elderly and dying, Jane does return to visit her, and forgives her. But that's far in the future.) With the logic of a mature philosopher, in fact rather like Friedrich Nietzsche to come, Jane protests the basic admonitions of Christianity as a schoolgirl: "I must resist those who ... persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel that it is deserved." And this bold declaration, which would have struck readers of 1847 (in fact, of 1947) as radical and "infeminine":

    Read More

  • Characterization Of Miss Hancock In Budge Wilson's The Metaphor

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Miss Hancock, her personality and beliefs were contrasted entirely by her character foil, Charlotte’s mother, “this civilized, this clean, this disciplined woman.” All through Charlotte’s life, her mother dictated her every move. A “small child [was] a terrible test to that cool and orderly spirit.” Her mother was “lovely to look at, with her dark-blond hair, her flawless figure, her smooth hands. She never acted frazzled or rushed or angry, and her forehead was unmarked by age lines or worry. Even her appearance differed greatly to Miss Hancock, who she described as,” overdone, too much enthusiasm. Flamboyant. Orange hair.” The discrepancy between the characters couldn’t escape Charlotte’s writing, her metaphors. Her seemingly perfect mother was “a flawless, modern building, created of glass and the smoothest of pale concrete. Inside are business offices furnished with beige carpets and gleaming chromium. In every room there are machines – computers, typewriters, intricate copiers. They are buzzing and clicking way, absorbing and spitting out information with the speed of sound. Downstairs, at ground level, people walk in and out, tracking mud and dirt over the steel-grey tiles, marring the cool perfection of the building. There are no comfortable chairs in the lobby.” By description, her mother is fully based on ideals and manners, aloof, running her life with “sure and perfect control.” Miss

    Read More

  • A Comparison Of Beauty In Ligea And Hawthorne's The Birthmark

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    “There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles,” George Eliot. Beauty has caused men to move mountain, and jump through countless hoops. It is a quality that is subjective and affects the beholder differently. In Poe’s Ligea and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, Ligea, Rowena, and Georgina all had different orders of beauty that similarly affects how their husbands saw them. In these two pieces of literature there was an exaltation of beauty as an abstraction that hid the depth of the women and led to deceit and the sense of superiority in their husbands.

    Read More

  • Empowering Intersectionality In Yvonne Ridley's How I Came To Love The Veil

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    By educating herself she was able to form her own opinion and no longer be ignorant to the problem of how women are judge by their appearance in Western cultures. By posing the rhetorical question “what is more liberating” (Ridley 448), she is able to get her readers to see what she has discovered. Cisneros also learned that despite the fact that she did not take the path that her father desired, he was still proud of all of her accomplishments. After reading her work for the first time her father asked “where can I get more copies” (Cisneros 369), showing her that he wanted to show others and brag about his only daughters accomplishments. Tan shifts tones throughout the paper but ends with a straightforward tone saying “there are still plenty of other books on the shelf. Choose what you like” (Tan 4), she explains that as a reader an individual has the right to form their own opinion of her writing but if they do not like it they do not have to read it because she writes for her own pleasure and no one else’s. All of the women took separate approaches to dealing with their issues but all of these resolutions allowed them to see the positive side of the

    Read More

  • Where Are You Going?

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    she was pretty and that was everything” (225). This captivation with herself along with the constant looking in the mirrors and thinking her mother was only pestering her all the time because her mother’s own good looks were long gone by now (225) shows a sign of immaturity because she believes everything revolves around whether or not someo...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Tracy K. Smith´s Life on Mars

    2420 Words  | 5 Pages

    As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...

    Read More

  • Parent-Child Relationship in Teenage Wasteland by Anne Tyler

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Parent/Child relationships are very hard to establish among individuals. This particular relationship is very important for the child from birth because it helps the child to be able to understand moral and values of life that should be taught by the parent(s). In the short story “Teenage Wasteland”, Daisy (mother) fails to provide the proper love and care that should be given to her children. Daisy is an unfit parent that allows herself to manipulated by lacking self confidence, communication, and patience.

    Read More

  • A Character Analysis of Daisy Miller

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    She has a "natural elegance" and a mixture of "innocence and crudity," and yet, as seen in her response, her character proves to go beyond the boundaries of this character type of the natural beauty (1564 and 1574)."

    Read More

  • Woman´s Role in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

    599 Words  | 2 Pages

    Judging a woman by her appearance became a social norm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since women were not allowed to hold high or reputable positions, they often relied on their husbands to pay and bring in most of the bills and money. Such conditions often left a young woman scrambling to find a husband, or better said it was in her best interest to find a husband. Modern literature originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the time, true women were thought to exhibit the following traits: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity (Welter). Not only did women criticize each other, but the media did as well. Women were also responsible for upholding their physical beauty. A woman could’ve had all the traits that made her a true woman, but if she lacked physical beauty, she was shamed by society. The majority of modern American texts began to shift from the standards of women being weak and submissive but they still regarded physical beauty as a trait that all women had to maintain and obsess about.

    Read More

More about Middlemarch Attitude

Open Document