George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, presents the story of an entire community in a rising town around 1830. However, this essay will primarily focus on the interactions between Nicholas Bulstrode and Will Ladislaw. Nicholas Bulstrode is a respectable banker, however he made his fortune through shady business practices. On the other hand, Will Ladislaw is a struggling artist with very little to his name. Bulstrode arranges a meeting with Ladislaw shortly after Bulstrode learns that one of his former employees, Raffles, had discovered the origins of Bulstrode’s wealth and has been blackmailing him. Ladislaw’s mother, Sarah Dunkirk, ran away from her family at a young age after discovering the dark secrets of her father’s family business. After her father’s death, Sarah would have inherited some of the wealth from this business, however her mother did not know where to find her and Bulstrode saw marriage to Ladislaw’s grandmather as an opportunity to acquire all of the family’s fortune. Consequently, Bulstrode is pressured by Raffles’ knowledge of his secret and believes that he owes Ladislaw a great deal as Bulstrode essentially took Sarah’s money for his own and made no attempts to locate or assist Sarah.
This sets the stage for numerous moral dilemmas and debates, with perhaps the most central question being whether or not Ladislaw should accept the money being offered to him by Bulstrode. This essay will ultimately argue that Ladislaw should not accept Bulstrode’s money, but this raises a number of philosophical issues that need to be addressed. First, we should consider Ladislaw’s relationship with Bulstrode and whether or not he has a right to claim the money offered by Bulstrode. As outlined by The Stanford Encyclope...
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...elieve that Ladislaw should not accept the money as evidenced by his relationship with Bulstrode, his relationship with his mother, and his own sense of self.
Works Cited
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The novel’s use of contrast between East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes begins to explore the differences between social classes. East Egg houses the most wealthy and aristocratic members of the nearby area. It contains many “white palaces” (Fitzgerald 10) that are quite “fashionable” (Fitzgerald 10). This description paints an image of purity and untouched standards of wealth that are translated into the book’s time period. Due to the pristineness of the village, the homes “[glitter] along the water,” (10) further supporting the idyllic qualities East Egg appears to have. West Egg, on the contrary, is home to people of near equal affluence, but of less social establishment. It is described by the narrator as “less fashionable,” (Fitzgerald
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Some hold that Kant’s conception of autonomy requires the rejection of moral realism in favor of "moral constructivism." However, commentary on a little noticed passage in the Metaphysics of Morals (with the assistance of Kant’s Lectures and Reflexionen) reveals that the conception of legislation at the core of Kant’s conception of autonomy represents a decidedly anti-constructivist strand in his moral philosophy.
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- These rights are natural rights, petitions, bills of rights, declarations of the rights of man etc.
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The setting for this novel was a constantly shifting one. Taking place during what seems to be the Late Industrial Revolution and the high of the British Empire, the era is portrayed amongst influential Englishmen, the value of the pound, the presence of steamers, railroads, ferries, and a European globe.
Rights are generally considered to be a given, particularly those of the legal/ moral variety. These legal rights refer to the rights “ which are necessarily enforceable because they exist in law” (Vincent, 2012: 136), these laws that govern us are also referred to as ‘positive’ rights. Moral rights are the things we believe we have justifiable claim to but may/may not be upheld by the law, as not all are “codified in law”(Vincent, 2012: 136). Rights are further considered as “entitlements that belong to all human beings simply because they are human” (Nussbaum, 1997: 273), this ties in with natural rights as unlike those of the utilitarian variety, the group does not thrive at the cost of the individual, simply because they have more followers.
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