Explore 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot

Learn about the author, study a summary of her novel, and analyze Will Ladislaw, Rosamond Vincy, and other characters.

Middlemarch Summary

Middlemarch is a novel by 19th-century British author George Eliot. Praised for its careful examination of social class dynamics, marriage, and provincial English life, Eliot's novel is often considered the author's best work and one of the most important British novels of the past 200 years. Middlemarch was published in serialized form from 1871 to 1872, manifesting as eight short volumes published by famed London publisher John Blackwood. The novel was later published in a complete four-volume set in 1872.

Who Wrote Middlemarch?

George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819. Raised in Nuneaton, England, Eliot's father was a manager at the luxurious Arbury Estate, which granted the author access from a young age to the estate's massive library. The Evans family later moved to Coventry, where the author befriended a band of creatives, political radicals, and intellectuals led by editors Charles and Cara Bray. During these years, Eliot began writing book reviews under the name Marian Evans and would continue her critical work after moving to London, where she became an assistant editor of the Westminster Review. Here, Eliot would meet dramatist George Lewes. While Lewes was already legally married in an open arrangement, the two remained partnered until Lewes's death in 1878.
The author published her first work under the pen name George Eliot in 1857 in Blackwood's Magazine. Her choice to use a pen name was based on a few factors, including her desire to separate her novels from her previous critical work and to maintain privacy, particularly around the scandal of her relationship with the legally married Lewes.

Eliot's first novel, Adam Bede, was published in 1859 to great acclaim and speculation on its authorship. Eliot would become more public about her use of the pen name with later novels like Mill on the Floss (1860) and Silas Marner (1861). While later novels would prove great successes, Eliot's Middlemarch is often considered her best work.
After the 1878 death of Lewes, Eliot briefly married a commissions agent named John Cross. The fact that he was 15 years younger than her also garnered family and societal disapproval. George Eliot died in 1880 after a throat infection and kidney problems. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.

Middlemarch Characters

Middlemarch is built around the storylines of various characters as they interact with others, some major and some minor. Important characters include:

Dorothea Brooke

Dorothea Brooke is a young, idealistic woman raised by her uncle. Instead of choosing a younger suitor, Dorothea marries Edward Casaubon, a much older scholar. Casaubon's cruelty and jealousy affect Dorothea's happiness, even after his death, when she is forbidden to marry Will Ladislaw, his cousin, out of fear of losing her inheritance. Despite the loss of support and social standing, Dorothea eventually marries Ladislaw and begins a family.

Edward Casaubon

Much older than his young wife, Casaubon is a scholar who leads Dorothea to believe it will be an equal marriage, but soon proves otherwise while in Italy on their honeymoon. His own jealousy and cruelty follow him to his deathbed, where he forbids Dorothea's potential marriage to Ladislaw in his will.

Tertius Lydgate

Lydgate is a young doctor new to Middlemarch. He is the grandson of the widow Bulstrode once swindled for her inheritance. Lydgate marries Rosamond, a vain shallow woman who overspends them both into poverty. After asking to borrow money from him, Lydgate is implicated in the murder of Bulstrode's blackmailer, John Raffles, and is driven from Middlemarch in scandal.

Will Ladislaw

The younger cousin of Edward Casaubon, Will Ladislaw develops a friendship with Dorothea Brooke and eventually falls in love with her. While the two are forbidden to marry by Casaubon's will, they eventually do, facing social and financial consequences.

Rosamond Vincy

The mayor's daughter, Rosamond Vincy is a shallow and superficial woman who marries Lydgate, believing him to be far wealthier than he is. When her spending bankrupts them, Lydgate must ask for money from Bulstrode, inadvertently becoming tangled in Bulstrode's plot to murder his blackmailer, John Raffles. Rosamond and Lydgate flee Middlemarch for London, where Lydgate dies young and unhappy. Rosamond remarries a wealthy man.

Sir James Chettam

Chettam is a young suitor and neighbor of Dorothea Brooke. When Dorothea chooses to marry Casaubon, Chettam instead turns his attention toward Celia Brooke, Dorothea's sister.

Fred Vincy

Rosamond's brother, Fred Vincy, is initially a lazy and self-indulgent young man who believes he will eventually gain a huge inheritance from the wealthy Mr. Featherstone. His financial missteps, however, not only doom him to an unwanted career in the clergy but potentially sever his relationship with his love Mary Garth, who refuses to marry him if he proceeds into a career he does not love. Fred eventually follows in the footsteps of Mary's father as a land surveyor and the two marry.

Adaptations of George Eliot's Middlemarch Novel

While Middlemarch has never been adapted into a feature film, many television and dramatic adaptations exist, including both the 1968 and 1994 BBC network versions. In 2013, the novel was adapted into a three-part dramatic version by the Orange Tree Theater Company in London. An operatic version debuted in San Francisco in 2015. The most recent adaptation was a YouTube web series from 2017. The lack of film adaptation has often been credited to the novel's complex plots and large web of characters, making it difficult to wrangle into a single film. Director Sam Mendes was rumored to have begun work on a film adaptation in 2009, but it has yet to be completed.

Lesson Summary

George Eliot's Middlemarch is a sprawling, multi-character, multi-plot novel set in provincial England during the early 19th century. The novel is centered around themes of social class and marriage. While the "marriage plot" was a common device of 19th-century novels, Eliot's twist is that marriage does not solve conflict within character experiences, but actually complicates their lives. Dorothea Brooke, the female character at the center of the novel, falls into an unfortunate marriage with Casaubon, a jealous older scholar who on his deathbed forbids her to marry his younger cousin Ladislaw. While Casaubon stipulates in his will that the cost of doing so is disinheritance, the couple eventually marries regardless of the consequences.