Middlemarch Part I

This is George Eliots best novel, it is the story of a provincial town in the Midlands, in the years before Victoria became queen. It covers a big range of society, from the landed gentry, to the poor. The heroine is Dorothea Brooke, whose uncle Mr Brooke is a landlord, who has a good heart but is a bad manager of his land, in spite of his liberal ideas. Dorothea like George Eliot, had ideas of doing something grand with her life, and she was restless at the narrowness of life for a young lady in provincial England. She has a younger sister, Celia, who is pretty and conventional and does not mind the restrictions of her life. Dorothea falls in love with the local clergyman, a well to do middle aged man, called Causubon, who is supposed to be very learned and scholarly. He is said to be engaged in writing a book. She longs to have a role of supporting such a man, who is doing valuable intellectual work. Dorothea has anothter suitor, James Chettam, who owns a nearby estate, but she refuses to consider him as a husband. Mr Brooke likes Causubon as he fancies himself as a writer, also, and he consents to the marriage. Dorothea marries and while she is away on honeymoon, Celia wins a proposal from Sir James Chettam. The other characters in the novel are mainly from the middle classes. Rosamund VIncy is a very beautiful but flighty girl whose father is a local businessman. Her brother Fred is a rather idle young man, who is in love with Mary Garth, the daughter of the local land agent, Caleb Garth, but Mary refuses to marry him because he has no profession and shows no sign of working hard or having any ambition. Caleb Garth is based on Eliots own father who loved his job as a land agent, but the Garths are not that well off and Mary has had to get a job as companion and nurse to one of Mrs VIncy's elderly relatives, Peter Featherstone. Rosamund is however a lady of leisure who has a lot of suitors, but she is ambitious and would like to marry into the gentry.