Middlemarch by George Eliot

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Recommended: The power of imagination in literature

Fellowship is a method of connection in Middlemarch. With imagination, fellowship can be viewed as positive because it helps characters develop hope. Right before the meeting between Dorothea and Lydgate, the narrator describes Dorothea as “she was full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of his personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman. Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on her youth and sex when she was moved to show her human fellowship” (Eliot 761). In this passage, the narrator brings back the idea of Theresa in the prelude of the novel as he depicts Dorothea as someone who does not care about the rumors related to Lydgate nor her position as a young woman. Dorothea only cares about establishing a bond with Lydgate that would help clear his name in Middlemarch. It is the image of hope that helps Dorothea and Lydgate establish a fellowship that will give them the strength to resolve Lydgate’s problems. However, the narrator warns the readers that “we are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship of illusion” (Eliot 324). The narrator brings out the negative side of fellowship and image by stating that desire comes from images and that fellowship can be ambiguous because it is associated with illusion. Since human are imaginative creatures and fellowship is empowered by images, the downside of fellowship is inevitable. Due to the ambiguity of fellowship and the illusions created by the imaginative minds; fellowship turns bonds between characters into bondages that chains...

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...Mr. Bulstrode suffering. Lydgate establishes a fellowship with Rosamond because he believes that she is someone who fits into his qualification of an ideal wife. However, that illusion gets crushed by Rosamond when they are faced with debt problems. The ambiguity of fellowship is most prominent during the relationship between Dorothea and Casaubon as the two are both stuck in their different imaginary views of marriage which conclusions the relationship in tragedy. Through these relationships, Eliot wishes to teach her readers that it is important to compromise and to not always chase after the imaginative beliefs. Due to the ambiguity of fellowship and the illusions created by the imaginative minds; fellowship turns bonds between characters into bondages that chains characters to each other.

Works Cited

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. London: Penguin, 1994. Print.

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