In George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Will Ladislaw is introduced as Mr. Casaubon’s young cousin. He is seen in the gardens at Lowick Manor and described as “a gentleman with a sketch book […] and light brown curls” (49). Mr. Casaubon describes him as a young man who with a mercurial temperament, general inclination to resist responsibility and an affinity towards grand artistic endeavors. Later in the book, town gossip Mrs. Cadwallader refers to him as “a dangerous little sprig […] with his opera song and his ready tongue. A sort of Byronic, amorous conspirator” (237). In ‘Middlemarch,’ Eliot weaves a character with a Romantic character into the social web of a provincial Victorian village. Eliot’s depiction of Ladislaw’s coming-of-age journey can be interpreted as a description of the fate of the Romantic artist figure in a new Victorian society.
When Will Ladislaw is first introduced to the reader, he appears to be a foil for his cousin and benefactor Mr. Casaubon. Mr. Casaubon is “noted in the county as a man of profound learning, understood for many years to be engaged on a great work concerning religious history” (7). Dorothea notes that “his manners [were] dignified; the set of his iron-grey hair and his deep eye sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke” (11). In stark contrast, Will Ladislaw is first described as a youthful artist with “long black curls.” Eliot juxtaposes these descriptions to dramatize the difference between these characters. Since Will Ladislaw is introduced to Dorothea within the context of Lowick Manor, and therefore Mr. Casaubon, he appears to be a foil for Mr. Casaubon himself. Mr. Casaubon complains about Will’s “general inaccuracy and indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds” (52). These conver...
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... an ardent public man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good […], and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency who payed his expenses.” (513) Will Ladislaw dedicates himself to reform-oriented political writing, combining his need for artistic expression and social welfare with his need to provide for a family. By the end of the book, Eliot hasn’t destroyed the Romantic in Middlemarch, but merely made him more respectable. To the end, Ladislaw still lays on the ground instead of on the couch, and Eliot celebrates his candid emotionality instead of ridiculing it.
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen, Deidre Lynch, and Jack Stillinger. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Eliot, George, and Bert Hornback G. Middlemarch. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Print.
examines the effects of Eliot’s first marriage on his views of love and time. She
The most obvious stylistic device used by Eliot is that of personification. She uses this device to create two people from her thoughts on old and new leisure. The fist person is New Leisure, who we can infer to be part of the growth of industry in the 19th century. He is eager and interested in science, politics, and philosophy. He reads exciting novels and leads a hurried life, attempting to do many things at once. Such characteristics help us to create an image of New Leisure as Eliot sees him.
...eaders to challenge their own notions of what is and is not acceptable, and to have compassion on those who, for reasons not always easy to control, have made poor choices. Eliot and Rossetti both seem to realize a paradox of femininity: women must be kept innocent and protected from certain types of knowledge, but if they are not made aware of this knowledge, they may be prone to making foolish choices that cannot be undone. Eliot’s telling of Hetty’s story is like Laura passing on her story to her daughters: they aim to educate women so that they might learn from others’ mistakes.
Goethe is breaking away from the period of enlightenment, a period of reason that thinks these experiences can be great in moderation. In “Bedazzled,” it is seen through the movie how Eliot learns that most things are good in moderation. This movie encompasses many of these literary movements in its portrayal of Eliot’s adventure.
Abrams, M.H., et al. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. 2 Vols. New York: Norton, 1993.
... As each character begins to “emerge from that stupidity” (198) of delusion, they are given the opportunity 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 he maintains some of his illusion while completely sacrificing his goals and himself to the consequences. Thus, this temptation to imagine is 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).
and solicitation of ‘pennies for the Old Guy’. Eliot’s images of scarecrows, a cellar, and violent souls recall this tale of a violent plot tha...
Other images of Eliot’s, in contrast, are much larger than Shakespeare, but again succeed in making Eliot’s character look small and insignificant in comparison. Eliot describes the enormous amount of adornments around the room, including her ‘vials of ivory and coloured glass’, which contain many perfumes, which are described as ‘drowning the sense in odours’ and again it is the lack of subtlety t...
Written in two different literary periods “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning and T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” share various similarities with one another. While Browning can not be credited for inventing the dramatic monologue himself it was his fondness and skill for it that raised it to a highly sophisticated level. He also helped increase its popularity both with poets and the general public. His huge success with dramatic monologues served as inspiration for Eliot years later. Based on his work, Eliot was clearly influenced by the dramatic monologue style used by Browning. However, despite their similarities there are stark differences between the poems by Browning and Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” shows a clear movement away from the Victorian style found in “My Last Duchess” and goes towards Modernism.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Dorothea is described in many ways by George Eliot in Middlemarch, but having a great taste in men is not one of them. Dorothea’s first husband in the novel is Mr. Casaubon, and soon after the marriage realizes that she made a poor choice in choosing a husband. While Dorothea’s misery may have risen from this failure of a marriage, Casaubon is not to blame for many reasons. Dorothea got herself into this marriage, and although the expectations at that time period may have helped drive her to misery, Casaubon tried to be a proper husband.
It is said that George Eliot’s style of writing deals with much realism. Eliot, herself meant by a “realist” to be “an artist who values the truth of observation above the imaginative fancies of writers of “romance” or fashionable melodramatic fiction.” (Ashton 19) This technique is artfully utilized in her writings in a way which human character and relationships are dissected and analyzed. In the novel The Mill on the Floss, Eliot uses the relationships of the protagonist of the story, Miss Maggie Tulliver, as a medium in which to convey various aspects of human social associations. It seems that as a result of Maggie’s nature and of circumstances presented around her, that she is never able to have a connection with one person that satisfies her multifaceted needs and desires. Maggie is able, to some extent, to explore the various and occasionally conflicting aspects of her person with her relationships between other characters presented in the novel. “From an early age, Maggie needs approval from men...Maggie is not shown in any deep relationship with a female friend.” (Ashton 83) A reader can explore into Maggie Tulliver’s person and her short development as a woman in four primary male associations: her father—Mr. Tulliver, her brother—Tom Tulliver, her friend and mentor—Philip Wakem and her dangerous passion with Steven Guest.
In T.S Eliot's poem, Portrait of a Lady, he gives a glimpse into the upper class of post war society- something rather dispirited and forlorn. It is filled with people from the higher social standings and they are as soulless and empty as the lady in the poem. The upper class was also represented by the main character himself, who is truly unable to connect as a whole to his surroundings. He initially describes the world in the poem as dark, covered in smoke and haze – the scene that is in and of itself a mere half life, the individuality of the characters already swallowed by the abyss of ritual that has devoid of meaning. The truly shocking part that links this poem to the author’s previous poems is the underlying brokenness and the soullessness that the characters seem to inhabit. The main character of t...
Faced with a world lacking variety, viewpoints, vibrancy, and virtue- a world without life- a fearful and insecure T.S. Eliot found himself the only one who realized all of civilization had been reduced to a single stereotype. Eliot (1888-1965) grew up as an outsider. Born with a double hernia, he was always distinguished from his peers, but translated his disability into a love of nature. He developed a respect for religion as well as an importance for the well-being of others from his grandfather at a young age, which reflected in his poetry later in life. After studying literature and philosophy at Harvard, Eliot took a trip to Paris, absorbing their vivid culture and art. After, he moved on to Oxford and married Vivien Haigh-Wood. Her compulsivity brought an immense amount of stress into his life, resulting in their abrupt separation. A series of writing-related jobs led Eliot to a career in banking and temporarily putting aside his poetry, but the publication of “The Waste Land” brought him a position at the publishing house of Faber and Gwyer. His next poem, called “The Hollow Men” reflected the same tone of desolation and grief as “The Waste Land.” Soon after, he made a momentous shift to Anglicanism that heavily influenced the rest of his work in a positive manner. Eliot went on to marry Valerie Fletcher, whom he was with until the end of his life, and win a Nobel Prize in literature. T.S. Eliot articulates his vast dissatisfaction with the intellectual desolation of society through narrators that share his firm cultural beliefs and quest to reinvigorate a barren civilization in order to overcome his own uncertainties and inspire a revolution of thought.
Eliot’s comparison clearly illustrates “proper” feminine beauty. Dinah’s beauty leads to marriage and motherhood; Hetty’s, to moral transgression, murder, and eventual death. However, Dinah is so idealized that she loses the level of realism that Eliot so deftly created within many of her other characters, and the reader is not without sympathy for Hetty, whose fall appears to be precipitated by a common enough form of young feminine vanity. These examples speak volumes toward the practicality of conventions that demanded feminine perfection in both appearance and action. Victorian ideals were just that, and most women could not achieve everything asked of them.