Middlemarch

In her novel Middlemarch, George Eliot’s job is to compare different types of existence and their relevance to one another—where each character is faced with a struggle to resolve his/hers desires with the realities of life. In the novel, both the character of Dorothea Brooke and Dr. Lydgate share a similar form of imagination, where both create an image in their mind of the ideal marriage. Such images can be seen as illusions and it is through these illusions the characters must surrender to reality, as they must make an effort to understand the desires that sparked their imagination from the start, and must attempt to make peace with their existing situations. Eliot, through her narration, attempts to exemplify through these two characters this common inclination of human nature to create what we desire as a tool when dealing with life that is both limiting and disappointing.

The vision of the ideal marital partner, for both Dorothea and Lydgate, is oddly chanced. Strangely, Dorothea seeks an intellectually dominant partner who will guide her to her higher purpose in life, while Lydgate seeks a submissive woman who will share in his struggles and assist him with achieving his ambitious goals. It appears to the reader that in many ways it seems like they were looking for each other—for the commonality in their both ideals is the desire for a partner with whom they can share their higher goals, however, both marry someone quite different from this vision. In the beginning chapters, Dorothea is described as looking for a union “that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the greatest path” (27). Here, Dorothea’s sel...

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...ion. As each character begins to “emerge from that stupidity” (198) of delusion, they are given the opportunity to show to show their true moral standing through the way in which they deal with the realities—the realities with which they are confronted with after the illusions starts rubbing off. Dorothea morally elevates herself in the post-imaginative state, showing her ability to accept her duties. Whereas, Lydgate is less satisfying, forcing himself into a perpetual compromise in which her maintains some of his illusion while completely sacrificing his goals and himself to the consequences. Thus, this temptation to imagine in inescapable in the world of Middlemarch, and—as Eliot informs the reader—in the world at large: “We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire,” in this inescapable “fellowship of illusion” (304).