George Eliot was a significant female copy writer in the 19th hundred years; her life was close related to her works; her life experience attributed themes to her lterary works, and the connection between her works and her life experience had been studied by many experts for a long period. George Eliot's masterpiece Middlemarch, since its publication, attained many visitors and critics in English world. Dorothea, in Middlemarch, was a feminist; this heroine had been examined through the views: the blend of George Eliot's idealism and Vitorian realism, George Eliot's view of marriage, feminist linguistic-psychoanalysis. The success or failure of Dorothea's feminism is paid close attention all the time.
In this newspaper, the copy writer uses research study analysis to study Dorothea in a multidimentional view, and makes a further development of her feminist trend. This newspaper will analyze the background of Victorian period, Dorothea's character, view of relationship, then predicated on the analysis, the writer places forward that George Eliot had a new acknowledgement about feminism. Dorothea, the heroine in Middlemarch, to some extent, penetrated George Eliot's thought, and also acquired new so this means of feminine in marriage, in life and even in modern culture.
Key words feminism; Victorian Period; George Eliot; realism; idealism; character
1. Introduction
George Eliot, penname of Mary Ann Evans, was one of the greatest writers in the 19th century. She was thought to be the one of those who had written the best novels for parents. In her writing profession, controversy and outrage followed her. George Eliot's critical reputation came from the very start when she commenced to issue works by using the pseudonym of George Eliot to pay her personality of the unmarried partner of George Henry Lewes. When she performed in Westerminster Review, she recognized George Henry Lewes, who she thought realized her and may lead her to a sensible life, then in 1854, she started out to reside with George Henry Lewes, an extrodinary man of words who wrote viewpoint, research, fiction, and drama. Their marriage was not accepted in British society and regarded as immoral. Under the encouragement of George Henry Lewes, in 1857, Mary Ann Evans published her first fiction The Sad Fortunes of Reverend Amos Barton and published in Blackwood's Magazine. It could be said without exaggeration that, it was George Henry Lewes who created an eximious feminine fictional writer --George Eliot of the 19th century. In her 60s, George Eliot hitched John Walter Combination for a legal matrimony.
Because of her immoral relationship with George Henry Lewes, she encountered online ostracism. Though many critics adopted her, her intellect was never hidden; her later works gained her acceptance as well as the love of the reading consumer. She was recognized as "the best article writer in Victorian age"(the author's translation, , 1987:6). Virginia Woolf commented that, "she was a woman of pleasure and model"(the author's translation, Virginia, qtd. in, 2006:1); her novels stood in "the list of a small number of English books written for men and women" (the author's translation, Virginia, qtd. in, 2006:1).
The whole life of George Eliot was rebellious, and was regarded as unsensible. She battled between realism and idealism; she wished to use herself though she was a female, however gender was discriminated prior to the 20th century. Like a feminist and idealist, George Eliot had a profound significance in feminism among the list of Victorian novelists. Her works were coupled with her real life experience. Middlemarch, since its publication, had been recognized as George Eliot's finest achievements, written when she was at the height of her power.
Middlemarch have been named George Eliot's work of her mixture of idealism and realism, as well as the portray of her real life. In her life, George Eliot committed John Walter Combination for a husband's surname; she finally bowed to conservative population and received the forgiveness of her family. In Middlemarch, George Eliot, created a heroine, Dorothea, for womanly emancipation. Not to mention the success or the inability of Dorothea' s emancipation revolution, she was the product of George Eliot under the general aftereffect of her true to life experience, her idealism and realism to the English society in the 19th century.
In Middlemarch, George Eliot targeted to creat a great young lady, who had deep knowledge and a virtuous heart for humans. For a long time, she lived in her idealistic world that a knowledgeable young lady could help to make a much better life for modern culture. While at the end of the fiction, George Eliot made her heroine back again to fact; the heroine was recognized as the heart of George Eliot herself; she was also regarded as the agent of George Eliot's feminine revolution. Like a style of feminist, Dorothea was not like traditional women, not paying much focus on her dress; she pursued to help the prevailing contemporary society, not only living for self-admiration. Along with the shock of actuality and personal idealism, in this novel, she had two marriages in the form of pursuing her high selection of heart and positional satisfaction. With this novel, she experienced objection on her ideal way. She made great attempts to marry Mr. Casaubon, who was much over the age of her, that was a sacrifice. Mr. Casaubon was not that kind of great heart as she regarded as. Finally, Dorothea acquired a regular end. Following the loss of life of Mr. Casaubon, her heart and soul beated strongly for finding a man and married him, who really realized her views and took women as independent and equal person; they were equal in marital relationships, and had taken part in public activity; both of these found their value in marriage.
George Eliot's masterpiece MiddlemarchA. C. Dicey detailed it as "a book which may be said, almost without exaggeration, to acquire designed for many persons the chief joy and interest of the this past year" (George Eliot, 1992:3). This booklet brought her many critics and approve; in Middlemarch, George Eliot's heroine for femimine emancipation was an incarnation of George Eliot; she struggled for feminine emancipation under her idealism and the realism in world background.
This paper is to study the life experience of George Eliot, her idealism and realism in the British sociey, to be able to figure out how these factors afflicted her feminism in the real English culture, as well as how they attributed to her heroine in Middlemarch. Thus the paper aims to produce a further research of Dorothea's feminism in Middlemarch, concentrating on George Eliot's life experience, her idealism, and realism of Victorian period. Beneath the study of such factors, the writer can pull a final result that the female emancipation of Dorothea could not be a failure, but it was her new frame of mind toward life as well as matrimony---- wives were and should be the fantastic man beside her successful man.
2. Books Review
By the time George Eliot passed on on Dec 22, 1880, she was recognized as the best of comtemporary English novelists. Her whole writing life left many literary works and responses to later decades to study and research. George Eliot was a writer of appreciation and depreciation. George Eliot's works reflected the politics, viewpoint, science, faith, and genders. Her literary works have been researched by scholars from your home and abroad since 19th hundred years.
In 1884, George Willis Cooke in George Eliot: A Critical Study of Her Life, Writing and Viewpoint pointed out that "George Eliot was a product of her time; some understanding of her early home and the influences admist which her head was made, helped largely to an understanding of her books and the views of life which she provided in them" (George Willis Cooke, 1884). George Eliot was a realistic copy writer, in her works, she mirrored the 19th knowledge attainments, beliefs, and genders. In Middlemarch, George Eliot created an agloat young doctor called Lydgate, a feminist named Dorothea, an old pedant known as Casaubon, and an enchanting known as painter Will Ladislaw. Through these assignments in her works, George Eliot exhibited her brilliance. George Levine once commented that George Eliot had been discovered that because the Second World Warfare it was her brilliance and intellectual depth of her fiction offered her appreciative reputation. George Levine also described that George Eliot was a realist; she was self-reflexive in that her life experience attributed a whole lot of designs to her works.
Besides that, as a feminist, George Eliot also revealed herself attempting against men-dominated contemporary society. Kate Flint in George Eliot commneted that "in George Eliot's writing, alertness and acute consciousness of the injustice to that they gave rise, automatically chafed against the doctrine of submitting to a sense of broader cultural duty"(George Levine, 2001). George Eliot's feminism was not noly seen in her life but also in her works, making clear in areas of education and marriages. In her masterpiece Middlemarch, 1 / 3 of the pages penetrated her feminism. The heroine, Dorothea, thirsted for knowledge, thus possessed two marriges in her life. However, in the 19th hundred years, women was adornment of men; the ideal women were the beautification in her house. Women's great importance lied in reproductiveness. Biomedical discourse defined females in terms of her reproductive function as following description:
a biological entity, a sexed body': Woman's characteristics and her communal role were reported to be managed by her womb and her ovaries, and were the unavoidable and indivisible implications of her reproductive and the female corporation another. . . (Joanne Shattock, 2001:79)
At in foreign countries, there have studies about feminism, George Eliot's introdction, critical research of George Eliot, and the relation of George Eliot and the Empire. At home, many scholars have analyzed George Eliot from her views of matrimony, feminism, philosophy, ethic, and the harmonizing and synthesizing of realism and idealism.
In 2006, Wang Pei granted a thesis to go over George Eliot's view of matrimony in Journal of Chongqing University or college of Research and Technology. She brought up that though George Eliot possessed a rebellious love and matrimony, she was still that kind of conventional ladies in 19th century. She longed for love as well as legal matrimony; she also presented that women could get desired happiness only once they felt content with the mediocre marriage life. Her view of matrimony was shown in Dorothea, who dreamed to be always a great woman and added to culture, finally back again to a common housewife.
Then on George Eliot's feminism, in 2004, Vice Professor Dong Shumin researched in Zhejiang Friendly Research that George Eliot indicated her feminism in Middlemarch that females and men were unequal to the general public on a regular basis, if women wanted to show themselves, they need to realize the restriction of women from the population. Women might have their distictive importance, which was to affect guys, making guys become some type of man. As George Eliot's heroine, Dorothea, she married Will Ladislaw and made him be s successful man; Dorothea herself became one common better half for love and desired happiness as well as femine fullfilment in family.
Though George Eliot was a feminist, even she acquired idealistic and reasonable modern culture for females to make full use of themselves, she needed to bow to fact. In George Eliot: Harmonizing and Synthesizing Idealism and Realism, Doctor Zhang Jinfeng pointed out that George Eliot was an inborn idealist, incorporating her realistic looks with her idealistic life and modern culture for females, even for humans. However, she cannot avoid reality and finally converted to certainty. In Middlemarch, she would prefer to creat ideal polictics, education and relationships, in which woman was free. Dorothea was a role under her idealism. Dorothea's first relationship, with Casaubon, was all her idealism, she cannot chage the men-dominated considered Causobon. Finally, she'd prefer to have a husband who really cared females, then hitched Will Ladislaw, and became a wife and mother. The finish of Middlemarch was the surrender of idealism to realism.
Based on the above analiysis, there is the information that George Eliot was a idealist as well as a realist; her works place on the true culture but also embraced the deep effect of her idealism. While, sociable limitation made George Eliot hard to construct an ideal world. All her thoughts affected in her works. Thus this is actually the distance that George Eliot's life experience, her feminist, her idealism and realism contributed to her works, especially her heroine Dorothea in Middlemarch. Within this paper the copy writer aims at the above mentioned factors and make a further analysis of Dorothea's feminism, through inspecting the difference between George Eliot's ideal feminism and the feminism in Victorian period, Dorothea's character, as well as her two marriages, to demonstrate that Dorothea received a new cognition of women's status and feminine emancipation in relationship, even in society.
3. Feminism in Victorian Period and George Eliot's Feminism
As a lady writer in the 19th century in the English contemporary society, George Eliot lived in a men-dominated population; she had not been content with the rising condition. As a feminist against the serious culture for females, George Eliot struggled between ideality and simple fact.
3. 1 Real Feminism in Victorian Period
In the 19th century, females' status was discriminated and inferior compared to males. The British socity was a men-dominated population; men were more advanced than women, no matter in politics, current economic climate, modern culture, family and relationship. Though Queen of Victoria was at reign, women's position was not equal to men's. Women were limited by work in politics, research, education, interpersonal activities, and literary and so on. A wifehood or womanhood ought to be the best job of a lady. An ideal girl should be what Virginia Woolf called-"the Angel of the home"(Virginia Woolf, qtd. in ·", 2004:1)
At that time, people required for granted that a woman shouldn't be educated for self-development, but also for self-renunciation. They were sent to research in ladies' institutions, to understand how to be a perfect wife. They discovered music and entertainment; they were trained to be peaceable, obedient to guys, and not having personal thoughts. To the general public, a female with few ideas about their man, contemporary society and politics was virtuous. In that world, women were delivered to suffer and also to be in a disadvantageous status in family, education, profession and marriage, first as a little girl and a partner. In family, daughters were reliant on her dad or brother. After marriage, they were reliant on their hubby. If left with no heritance and left over single, daughters would lead a miserable life.
In marriage, young ladies could not have their own choice. These were the property of their father to work with for land and estate; always, they were utilized by men to combine social status. In the 16th hundred years, when Elizabeth was at reign, a dad chose a husband for his girl, if the daughter did not consent to get married, she would be locked in an area and intensely punished. In the 19th hundred years, women could choose their own beloved, but the much loved should be accepted by their family, most of all by their father, if it turned out to be not, their family might disengage their romantic relationship or would not give help when they were in trouble. Because of the restriction in occupation, education, family and matrimony, women weren't encouraged, even allowed to work outside the house, thus women's do it yourself satisfation was based on the success of being a partner. They seeked for ideas to be a perfect wife, mom, and prosper in housework. The next words can best describe women's feelings of being inferior:
"So long as I can keep in mind, I have already been discouraged, when I've endeavoured to cast the total of my intellectual value, by finding that I did so not possess, in the degree of various other men, an intuitive conception of intellectual beauty. . . "(Godwin, qtd. in Joanne Shattock, 2001:14).
The 19th century could be reported to be a convert of feminine position; because of Industrial Revolution, women could go out of homes to work in factories, but their salary was much less than men's. Moreover, their jobs were insignificant, for instance, a tutor, a nurse and so on; after Industrial Revolution, they had one more choice----a employee. In Victorian Era, literature in British was at the elevation of devolopment. Many female writers surfaced, for example, sister Bronte, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, May Sinclair, George Eliot, and so on. However in the 19th English society, female freelance writers were not given high reputation of these writing expertise; they thought we would publish their works by using pseudonym. "'A female and her publication are identical'----or so Edgar Allen Poe shown when reading an early on assortment of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning" (Joanne Shattodk, 2001:8). Feminine consciousness had been awaken, and the majority of their works were about seeking for feminine position in society; females were more indie in their ideas, thus they commenced to write in order to uncover their sufferings and protect for their occupations.
3. 2 George Eliot's Ideal Feminism
Victorian Era was the pattern of reasonable literary. As an effective realistic novel article writer, Gorge Eliot was created in a family of land agent, and put in her youth in the rural environment within the country of Warwickshire in the mid lands. Her youth and her living environment provided her with plenty of material on her behalf earlier works. Because of the simple fact, George Eliot's later works possessed a major change. "In George Eliot's later novels, characters and situations seem more and more to be projections of ideals in her brain" (Zhang Jinfeng, 2005:61).
"George Eliot created her fine art out of a cluster of rebellions, especially against reigning interpersonal, moral, and visual conventions" (George Levine, 2001:2). George Eliot's living exprience made her an idealist; she wished to change her public position, even all feminine social position, therefore limited to the reality, she published down what she got at heart. "A female and her book are identical" (Joanne Shattodk, 2001:8). Her unique personality, education, and moral belief made her an idealist.
To start with, she was a religious freethinker. She was sent to boarding schools together with her elder sister. In one boarding college, George Eliot achieved a female teacher, Maria Levis, who was a piously Evangelical. Together with the teaching, George Eliot became a piously Evangelical too. "But her camaraderie with spiritual freethinkers in Coventry in the early 1840s reinforced her own growing uncertainties and led to a rest with orthodox religion" (George Eliot, 1992:1). From the starting of 1842, she claimed that she would not go to cathedral, never to pray, not believe in God any more.
Besides, George Eliot highly held that it ought to be of the very importance for females to get organized education as well as have their own profession. She herself went to boarding academic institutions from 5 years of age to 17 years old. She learned vocabulary, technology, and piano. She was a lady who never gave up going after her value. The following cited event could words her support for womanly education:
She sympathized with the movements for women's education and donated 50 pounds towards establishment of Girton, a Cambridge university for ladies. Her support for women's educational reforms led her to attend a series of letures at Bedford College for Ladies of these years and transferred her to 'add to Emily Daves's campaingn for the establishment of Girton University' also to other feminist initiatives to 'start the occupations to ladies in the 1850s and1860s. (ibid, qtd. in 2007:19)
Not only approving of women education, George Eliot also received a living herself. When she was 29 years of age, George Eliot's father died; in Victotian English modern culture, an unmarried, intellectual lady without any inheritance from daddy, would lead to a miserable life. But George Eliot elected to stay in London and received the living herself. Later, she started to be an editor for Westminster Review.
In relationship, George Eliot broke the original convention of relationship. She fell deeply in love with a committed, acknowledgeable man, called George Henry Lewes; at that time, George Eliot had been a publicly well-known feminine; though she was ostracized by British population, her works was criticized, and her family was angry recover, she was determined to live on with George Henry Lewes as an unmarried better half. In George Eliot's head, women might well have their own choice of marriage, even although whole world wouldn't normally recognize her, she still sticked to her love. Her view about matrimony was in some way penetrated in Dorothea in Middlemarch. Dorothea, when 18 yrs. old, was determined to marry a pedant who was almost two decades more than her, which was not understood by citizens of Middlemarch.
Ralph Waldo Emerson commented that George Eliot was "a young lady with a not quiet and serious heart" (Emerson, qtd. in, 2006:7). George Eliot was inborn ideal; life made an idealistic George Eliot. The following cited paragraph shown George Eliot's expereince of living and her idealism well:
As an overly intense and bookish child in a pratical home, as a fervid evangelical adolescent Religious doctrine, as an unbiased girl editor and journalist in a sociable bohemians, and lastly as the unmarried domestic spouse of George Henry Lewes, George Eliot was always strecthing the norms of appropriate female tendencies, and bringing public rejection upon herself. (George Levine, 2001:21)
4. THE TYPE of Dorothea
Dorothea, under the background of Victorian British, was a female representative to have difficulties for female emancipation. Her beauty was not like the traditonal females, and she thirsted for profound knowldege as well as made full use of herself. Each one of these made her a distinctive woman in Middlemarch.
4. 1 Rebellious Allure of Dorothea
In the 19th century, girls of middle class attached importance with their appearance and dress. ; ribbons, flouce, and bowknot were prevailing. The wealthy young ladies used trendy dress and jewelries. They were sent to learn music and painting, that could improve their elegance. A conventional charming lady, as to the men and even to the public, should "lays herself out of a little more to please us. There must be a filigree in regards to a woman----something of the coquette. A man likes challenge. The greater of a lifeless collection she makes at you the better" (George Eliot, 1992:79).
Focusing on simple dress was a means of good cultivation. Dorothea placed the fact that a remarkably smart woman shouldn't pay much focus on appearance, even so, she still experienced her lovely beauty. "Her side and wrist were so finely produced that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin seemed to Italian painters; and her account as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain provincial fashion gave her plain clothes" (Gorge Eliot, 1992:1). She didn't like jewelries either, when Celia (Dorothea's sister) reminded her of looking at mama's jewels and divided them, she was occupied drawing her building, naturally forgetting them. After opening the package, she liked none of them, except gems and a bracelet to match it. Dorothea liked the gems because of her motivation of the Revelation of St. John, "It really is bizarre how deeply colorings seem to penetrate one, like fragrance. I suppose that's the reason why gems are being used as religious emblems in the Revelation of St. John. . . . " (George Eliot, 1992:9). Though she got them, she thought putting on them was some type of sinking.
Dorothea not only didn't pay attention to her dress, but also liked that kind of plain appearance, which was contrary to the beauty criteon of the general public. In section nine in Middlemarch, when Casaubon proved around his house to the Brooks, when witnessing portraits, Celia said that the aunt using necklaces was more beautiful than Cassaubon's mother; however, Dorothea pursued that kind of immortal number, as when she inserted the room, she could image that Casaubon's mom---- "the ghost of a tight-laced woman revisiting the scence of her adornments" (George Eliot, 1992:66).
To the public, females were born to please guys; females should dress beautfully, possessed sweet voice and may paint, and that kind of females were enchanting. On contrary, Dorothea viewed them as ridiculous gentlewomen. She insisted on her behalf sense of beauty; at the get together before her marriage, "she came into the drawing room in her silver-grey dress----the simple lines of her dark-brown scalp parted over her brow and coiled massively behind" (George Eliot, 1992:78). On such a significant occasion, she performed still not rig out her body beautiful, simple as Santa Barbara as who she was pursuing. In Middlemarch, Rosamond Vincy was recognized as a consultant of allure and she was a famous beauty in province, "she has excellent style in costume, with that nymph-like number and natural blondness which gives the greatest range to choice in the circulation and coloring of drapery"(George Eliot, 1992:86). A fair lady should have lovely image as well as could play a musical instrument, sing tracks and draw; when facing people, she should keep amiable smiles. Dorothea didn't like participating in any equipment, her patterns was such as a saintess, which to others was quite abnormal and rebellious. However, she was a recognized distinctively beautiful lady; her plain garments added more dignity to her statue and bearing. As opposed to her sister Celia, people might say that Dorothea was remarkbly brilliant, but Celia was more reasonable.
4. 2 Dorothea's Thirst for Knowledge
Dorothea and her sister Celia were orphans; their parents perished when these were very young. The sisters were sent to boarding classes, an English family and a Swiss family to receive education to be able to get them ready in the market of matrimony. But Dorothea didn't like girls' duities; she liked studying religion, science, and the ones knowledge that could do good to culture. She adored those who was knowledgable and could spend himself to culture. The living environment and communal status related to Dorothea's method of considering during her life. She seeked for eternal theory; compared with her sister, she got less common-sense in that "her head is theoretical, and yearned by its mother nature after some lofty conception of the world" (George Eliot, 1992:4) and "since I could do no good just because a woman, reach constantly at something that is near it" (Gorge Eliot, 1992:3).
To Dorothea, contribution to human being was the most important part of life; she assumed that a religious life engaged eternal consequences. she was keen on faith; she was a admirers of knowledge, for chasing the so-called knowledge and religious life in her mind, she wore ordinary garments and quit her hobby of horseriding which she thought to be most attractive, and was not in accordance with the other teenagers.
Dorothea realized many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart and soul; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of your spiritual life concerning eternal consequences, with an enthusiastic fascination with guimp and man-made protrusions of drapery. Her brain is theoretic, and yearned by frankly are the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there (Gorge Eliot, 1871:4)
The Victorian population was unequal for the education of kids. Dorothea was thirst for knowledge, which was from the men-dominated modern culture, and was prejudiced and unconventional to the neighbourhood. Evev so, she still grasped the precious chance to learn more knowledge----to marry a pedant, Mr. Casaubon. She adored Casaubon's numerous knowledge to such an extent concerning think Casaubon is a unique man; she thought to Celia "he is one of the very most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He's incredibly like the family portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets" (George Eliot, 1871:15).
Dorothea didn't desire to be an idle girl of Victorian get older; she longed for a guide who light her religious and intellectual life. Casaubon's emergence provided her the trust, and she thought that she can have religious communion with him, additionally Casaubon was a guy who could illuminate her principle along with his widest knowledge. Thus she hitched Casaubon for going after knowldege.
5. Two Ideal Relationships of Dorothea
As a lady pursuing identical social position as men, Dorothea had not been only different in character from the traditional women, she also possessed a distinct view about relationships. Along the way of idealistic feminine emancipation, she got two relationships, first she wedded a vintage pedant for knowledge, and then a son for true love.
5. 1 Marriage for Knowledge
George Eliot was an idealist; she lived in her own world without respect to the true external world. She struggled for female profession and marriage, which was treacherous to convention and also became the heart of her masterpiece Middlemarch. In Middlemarch, George Eliot put her idealism inon the creation of the heroine Dorothea. Dorothea had not been only a knowledge supporter but also a cultural contributor supporter. She dreamed to be always a saint to save the earth. Her clothes and habit were different with the conventional young ladies.
In the 19th hundred years, females were not free to spend themselves to profession, what they could do was to find their value in relationship no subject how remarkable the lady was. Dorothea was thinking about making the contemporary society better through her knowledge and effort, but certainty made her will meet much setback; she could not do anything. Dorothea, in the eyes of men, even her uncle, was childish and innocent. In the social gathering in Tipton, when Dorothea portrayed her idea about land, Mr. Brook said that, "young women don't understand political market" (George Eliot, 1992:12). Furthermore, when Dorothea provided her desire to help her uncle form his documents, Mr. Brook said that, "No, no. I cannot let young women meddle my documents. Young ladies are two fighty" (George Eliot, 1871:15). Dorothea wished to do things to make herself useful, but even in her uncle's house, she found a whole lot of hurdles. She hoped someone could come to her life and led her to a religious and suitable life. Casaubon's introduction was the drip in drought. Mr. Casaubon's present provided her desire to live for others, to devote to modern culture, and she thought that "she would have room for the energies which stirred uneasily under the dimness and pressure of her own ignorance and the petty peremptoriness of the world habits" (Gorge Eliot, 1992:38). Dorothea was happy that she may find her value in the matrimony with Casaubon in that, she could make spend on Casaubon's aim----Key to all or any Mythologies.
Receiving Casaubon's letter for relationship, Dorothea was too happay to believe over whether Casaubon was the right husband for her ; she only considerded that she was well suited for Casaubon and she could make herself useful. While in this notice, Casaubon conveyed obviously that his relationship was for changing the solitary life; he needed a wife who could "supply assist in graver labours and cast a elegance over vacant time" (George Eliot, 1992:37). Casaubon needed a partner as a decoration to his life; his better half should be beautiful, young and blooming, as well as effortless to control and attentative to his desires. To Dorothea, her ideal matrimony was some type of life beyond self, to which she could devote herself, and her matrimony concept took its color entirely from the passion to help her man to finish his significant work, that could also make herself glorious. Concerning be commendable and dedicated, she dreamed to be almost perfect as a saint.
In the marriage relationship, the husband needed a tame and obedient partner; the wife required a knowledgeble and broad-minded husband. It was apparent that Cassaubon and Dorothea were not approximately they thought they were suited to be partner. In that marriage, even though these were careful, comflict and suspicion could not be averted. Six weeks after relationship, Dorothea wanted to have meaningful careers to do, but Casaubon had no any action about his records. "Dorothea had not distinctly detected but felt with a stifling depressive disorder, tht the large vitas and vast oxygen which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's brain were changed by ante-rooms and winding in passages" (George Eliot, 1992:179). Casaubon became aware that his wife was not ignorant and tame as he had expected; he stongly doubted that his better half didn't imagine his capabilty and didn't worship him as that before matrimony. They didn't understand one another that the period of time arrived. Even, when Dorothea realized of Will Ladislaw's family history, and she desired Casaubon to make some compensation for him, he blamed her. Later, he suspected that Dorothea and can Ladislaw had devotion. In order to control his better half, after his death, Cassaubon kept a will to avoid Dorothea marrying Will Ladislaw, or else she would lose her inheritance from Casaubon.
With the high pursuit of eternal heart, Dorothea hitched Mr. Casaubon. In this marriage, she could not avoid men's domination; partner was requested to be obedient. Dorothea's ideal relationship that she could spend herself, be significant, and do important things to population turned out to be a mistake. Casaubon was a narrow-minded man; Dorothea dreamed to be a sage and she was not a qualified partner in the 19th hundred years. They didn't understand one another, not knowing what kind of spouse he or she wanted, plus they were too self-indulgent, that was not suitable for marriage.
5. 2 Matrimony for Love
The matrimony with Casaubon was failing and made Dorothea annoyed that she cannot learn anything from her man, even Causobon was not a man to care for girl, he also savored men's domination. Following the fatality of Causobon, Dorothea arrived to grasp the sunshine of love where equality arrived to her.
Will Ladislaw was a youth of "sunlight". He was different from Mr. Casaubon and other men in Middlemarch for the reason that he was a guy of excitement for liberty, liberty, emancipation. He made friends with Pass up Noble, Mr. Farebrother's unmarried aunt; in Middlemarch, he always sang with Mrs. Lydgate to wipe out time; he enjoyed traveling, painting, and culture and so forth. All his charateristics made him be an easy-going, humorous and ardent son.
Will Ladislaw was created within an unrich family; his mother's matrimony was a rebellion against convention and not accepted. Cassaubon was the benefactor of Will Ladislaw's middle-class life. However, he was a pleased man; he previously his own view about job and life; he didn't agree to do what Casaubon desired him to do. The first time when he enountered Dorothea, he thought that "she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry Casaubon" (Geoirge Eliot, 1992:71). From the next time they come across in Rome, Will Ladislaw commenced to admire Dorothea for her beauty as well as her simpathy of the world. When Naumann changed Dorothea's attitude and colored her, Will Ladislaw experienced envious to Naumann and adored Dorothea's saint amount. "Will was divided between your inclination to land at the Saint's toes and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock Naumann down while he was adjusting her arm. All of this was impudence and desecration, and he repented that he previously helped bring her" (George Eliot, 1992:198). Later, Will Ladislaw came back to Middlemarch because he didn't desire to be spend the Dorothea so far away.
At the first reaching, Cassaubon released that his cousin was a man without goals; Dorothea believed sympathetic because of this young man, and she found reason for his tendencies----"perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded by himself unfittness, because regulations and drugs should be very serious professsions to attempt, should they not? People's lives and fortunes be based upon them" (George Eliot, 1992:72). She wished to rescue him out of perplextion of live; she desired Casaubon to make some payment for him. As Dorothea surely got to know him better, she found that he was so young as Cassaubon said; he was an ardent and humorous young man who will make the pleasure of anther spirit. They were two people who could talk about each other's same thoughts and views. The main point was that may Ladislaw had not been that kind of men who wished to be dominance in relationship as Casaubon. Will could understand her and their talkings were always completely happy. Moreove, he well known femals; he always killed time with females, especially Neglect Noble and Mrs. Lydgate.
After the loss of life of Cassaubon, their love became clearer; because Casaubon's will, their affection came out of drinking water and was boycotted by individuals of Middlemarch. They thought that may Ladislaw was inferior to Dorothea on cultural position, thus he had not been appropriate to the saint. Without regard with the boycott of population, they kept faith in one another. Once, the arena that Will sang with Mrs. Lydgate arrived to Dorothea's sight, they both were concerned about resulting in midunderstanding. Though, due to the cultural pressure, Will Ladislaw remaining Middlemarch for some time, Dorothea comprehended the fact of relationship finally and quit position and bundle of money to marry Will Ladislaw and acquired happy as well as equal relationship in relationship.
Dorothea married Will Ladislaw, who was inferior compared to her, for love and harmonious family.
Still, she never repented that she had abandoned position and fortune to marry Will Ladislaw, and he'd have organised it the best pity as well as sorrow to him if she acquired repented. They were bound to each other by the love better than any impulses which could have marred it. No life could have been possible to Dorothea which was not loaded wit feelings. (George Eliot, 1992:763)
Dorothea, "so substantive and rare a creature have been ingested into the life of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mom" (George Eliot, 1992:764).
6. Conclusion
According to the above mentioned examination, George Eliot was still a typical girl, though she stuggled for women's protection under the law in the 19th hundred years, she could not avoid being a conventional woman, desiring a legal family and having feminine fulfillments---- a legal partner and a mom. After the fatality of George Henry Lewes, George Eliot wedded John Cross, Though she did not have any children in her life, she possessed her accepted matrimony and got her husband's surname. From George Eliot's marriages, it can be known that the legal matrimony she finally yield to was what she longed for in her expereince of living and a much better consequence of her hard rebellious life to convention.
George Eliot was an idealist in the sensible Victorian British; she longed for emancipation for females, and women were add up to men in current economic climate, science, politics and education. She made great effort to make full use of herself in education and knowledge. She wanted to do what men could do in those days. Dorothea was the product of her idealism. However when idealism dashed against realism, idealism would be sacrificed. George Eliot acquired her second matrimony, that was her new understanding of sexual id and a new meaning of relationship for females. She experienced hard life in her first matrimony with George Henry Lewes, thus in some extent, she did not want to sacrifice her heroine, Dorothea, in matrimony, and even in population.
Finally, in her have difficulties between realism and idealism, George Eliot affected her heroine with reality----a standard girl. George Eliot herself finally converted to a legal marriage and acquired husband's surname; in Middlemarch, Dorothea's first marriage was for knowledge, which experienced no love and she only expected to donate to the population in this matrimony. Finally, she was looking forward to love and being a conventional woman in matrimony, thus she gave up everything to marry Will Ladislaw.
Dorothea was the presentative of George Eliot's heart and thought. Through George Eliot's marriages and Dorothea's relationships, it is obvious that both of them possessed the realization of being a lady and got a fresh status in relationship, even in society. Under the certainty of idealism, George Eliot received a new idea of females' success. Thus, Dorothea got the realization of feminine identity that ladies should be and was the fantastic man behind her successful man. By the end of this novel, George Eliot's heroine, Dorothea, became a cenventional woman and a successful partner and mom; she had been aborbed into the life of another and seen on some type of occassion as a better half and mom.
