Eliot's Middlemarch: 'Viciousness in he Kitchen' and Fragmentation in the Boudoir
George Eliot's Middlemarch and the Fragmentation of Women in the Nineteenth Century
Mary Anne Evans, alias George Eliot, wrote Middlemarch in 1871, a time when England was the cradle of industrialism and the locus of great social and cultural reforms. Middlemarch takes place in the years leading up to 1832, the year that the Reform Bill was passed solely for the benefit of middle-class men.
Women in Victorian society were excluded from the public sphere. They were, instead, confined in domestic roles and they were narrowly defined under he scope of such female stereotypes as the Angel of the Hearth, the Siren, the Criminal, the Fallen Woman and the Madwoman. Even scientific research supported the claim that women were biologically inferior to men. ?In The Descent of Man, Darwin reiterated Spencer?s assumption that sexual and racial differences create a natural hierarchy. He wrote in this volume, for example, that women were closer to the ?childhood of humanity?, like other ?less developed? races, and he concluded that that women?s intellectual capacity for ?intuition? showed that they were less mentally developed than men.? (Paxton, 172)
In this cultural and social context. Even women, who could afford an education, were permitted only a very restricting glimpse into culture, science or philosophy. Gilmour in The Victorian Period remarks: ? As for education, a woman ought to have only so much as to allow her to encourage her children and enter sympathetically into her husband?s pursuit? (Gilmour, 190). Due to the deprivation of an equal opportunity to education as well as the rigid gender roles that related submissiveness to virtue, Victorian women were confronted with limited survival tactics; they could either be governesses or get themselves a husband.
The idealized visions of marriage through the spectacles of Victorianism was a peculiar form of chivalry, in which the man-husband is the prototype of manliness, confronting enemies and financial problems while his woman-wife was the domestic angel, always there to alleviate his frustrations by playing his favorite tune on the piano or by singing, which was an essential part of her education. ?The poetical vision of marriage was encouraged by the endings of thousands of novels, by highly popular books of wifely instruction like Mrs. Ellis?s The Women of England (1838) and by such classic expressions of elevated domesticity as Coventry Patmore?s Angel in the House (1854-63) and the lecture of Queen?s Gardens? in Ruskin?s Sesame and Lilies (18650).? (Gilmour, 190)
Most literature produced at that time, even literature written by women, was both reflective of what Victorian society expected a woman to be, as well as supportive of this unnatural blazon of women as created and defined by the male gaze. Consequently, the English canon abounds in images of women of dazzling beauty combined with immaculate virtue who encounter an aristocratic gentleman superior than them (either financially or mentally) who undertakes the noble task of saving them from a visible menace or from a romantic faux pas they are about to commit with an unsuitable suitor.
George Eliot resists this narrow and fragmented depiction of women and in her ?Silly Novels by Lady Novelists? she rejects such unnatural female characters, in a very ironic and witty way. ? The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph and reads the Bible in the original tongues? (Eliot, ?Silly Novels by Lady Novelists?)
George Eliot, in Middlemarch, through the depiction of various couples and women of essentially different character, presents us with a nuptial kaleidoscope reflecting the fragmentation women were subjected to by the Victorian politics of gender. Moreover, by the failure of these marriages to constitute a proper union between a man and a woman, Eliot exhibits the disastrous effects of Victorian gender discourse on human relationships.
In Middlemarch, Dorothea Brooke, a virtual Saint Theresa, wants to improve the life of impoverished working people in her uncle?s estate, by building better cottages for them. There is little she can do about it, though, since she is financially depended on her uncle. Dorothea is an unconventional woman, rejecting female coquetry and matchmaking etiquette, since she clearly does not belong to the caste of women who are grooming themselves solely for the purpose of trapping a man in wedlock. Dorothea is diametrically opposed to Rosamond Vincy and her own sister Celia Brooke, who both are conventional Victorian women each one in her own way.
Celia is more pragmatic and conventional than her sister. Dorothea is an idealist and ?to the extend her era allowed- unconventional. Celia is described as the younger sister with more common sense. ? The word common sense implies the practical middle-class ethics of their age and society, and the social position of a family which links the historical puritan tradition of strenuous personal self-scrutiny with a comfortable sense that its prosperity has now softened that pressure? (Hirai, 47)
Celia is not a Rosamond character focusing her energy in search of a proper husband. However, she is very conventional and not prone to the romantic ideas that torment her sister?s psyche. However, her corrosion as individual and her fragmentation in the role of just a mother and a wife is not painful to her, because she is completely assimilated by the Victorian rhetoric; she simply does not know that a different modus vivendi is possible for women. She considers herself happy with Sir James because she cannot possibly imagine what else a woman could long for: she has a luxurious household, a Royalty husband and a baby. She completely disregards the fact that Sir James was originally in love with Dorothea: she just does not look further into things or emotions, nor does she indulge in romantic ideas and fancies. Unlike, of course, Dorothea. ?What is happening in the dark corner of Dorothea?s mind is inaccessible to Celia, partly because Celia?s logic is too simple to grasp the subtle and complex workings of her sister?s more intelligent and morally conscientious mind, and also because Dorothea herself is struggling with her passionate, physical nature, unaware of what will well up within her to determine her next action.? (Hirai, 56)
Dorothea resolves to marry the pedantic Casaubon, admiring him for his ?as she originally assumes- vast intellect and ascetic lifestyle. Remarking on his enormous library learning she exclaims: ?. What a lake compared to my little pool.? (Middlemarch, 20). She was dreaming of marrying Casaubon in the hope to have her curiosity nurtured, to become really educated and prove to herself that was not a ? flighty young lady? (Middlemarch, 16) as was her uncle?s reply upon her request to help him by sorting his papers. ? ?No, no?, said Mr.Brooke shaking his head, ?I cannot let young ladies meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty.? Dorothea felt hurt. ? (Middlemarch, 15-16). Dorothea was thirsty for knowledge and for an essential education denied to her on the grounds of her femininity, she therefore saw in Casaubon not only a ?great soul? (Middlemarch, 16) but also a great intellectual, a marriage with whom would enlighten her vision and bring about an emotional and intellectual bond stronger than any other: ?There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Everyday-things with us would mean the greatest things. It would be like marrying Pascal. I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen it by. And then I should know what to do when I got older; I should see how it was possible to lead a grand life here-now- in England? (Middlemarch, 23), or further down in the book, Dorothea?s view of Casaubon?s intellectuality is more enhanced and clearly seen as a way out of the destiny of women: ?For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world adapted to young ladies which had made the chief part of her education, Mr. Casaubon?s talk about his great book was full of new vistas; and this sense of revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to the Stoics and Alexandrians, as people who had ideas not totally unlike her own, kept in abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory which could bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with that amazing past, and give the remotest sources of knowledge some bearing on her actions? (Middlemarch, 70)
Dorothea?s idealistic view of her marriage to Casaubon is shattered when she finds out that Casaubon, whose letter of proposal to Dorothea reads more like an employment contract for a secretary (Middlemarch, 34-35), is actually a petty, selfish man completely absorbed by his gargantuan treaty ?Key to All Mythologies?. She subsequently finds out that that he never resolves to write this treaty but he just takes notes and studies all day, without contributing actively to the common welfare, which is Dorothea?s utmost concern. Their marriage is an unhappy one. ?She takes his name; she belongs to his religion, his class, his circle; she joins his family, she becomes his ?half?. She follows wherever his work calls him and determines their place of residence; she breaks more or less decisively with her past, becoming attached to her husband?s universe; she gives him her person, virginity and a rigorous fidelity being required. She loses some of the rights legally belonging to the unmarried woman. Roman law placed the wife in the husband?s hands loco filiae, in the position of a daughter; early in the nineteenth century the conservative writer Bonald pronounced the wife to be to her husband as the child is to its mother.? (De Beauvoir, 449). This passage from The Second Sex accurately describes the relationship between Casaubon and Dorothea: she is his attachment or at best a child who longs to be taught by a father figure.
George Eliot slowly peels away the layers of trust in their marriage; Edward Casaubon is jealous of Ladislaw and interprets every comment Dorothea makes on his work as a harsh critique on his intellect. This makes him responding equally harshly to her. He is, thus, disillusioned from Dorothea whom he perceived as an Angelic figure, bound to his desires and fascinated by his work. ? Woman is doomed to immorality, because for her to be moral would mean that she must incarnate a being of superhuman qualities: the Virtuous Woman of Proverbs, the Perfect Mother, the Honest Woman, and so on. Let her but think, dream, sleep, desire, breathe without permission and she betrays the masculine ideal.? (De Beauvoir, 492). Of course, Dorothea is equally disillusioned by Casaubon, realizing that his great soul-as was her previous vision of him-is nothing but a petty, egocentric construction.
? Casaubon makes a terrible mockery of the marriage vows exchanged in love when he demands that Dorothea commit herself blindly to carrying out his wishes. In response, Dorothea points out the distinction between moral obligations compelled by love and affection and those defined by patriarchal prerogatives which require female subordination in marriage: ?It is not right?to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me to. Whatever affection prompted, I could do without promising? (Ch.49). Her comment, of course, applies to her na?ve idealism about her marriage to Casaubon in the first place.? (Paxton, 193).
Casaubon is an emotionally stilted man who views his work as a means to an end; he is incapable of love, not only in the romantic sense but in the humanitarian one as well. ?Moreover, sitting for a picture of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who rejected the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, implying that the Virgin was tainted by original sin, Casaubon incarnates patriarchal belief in feminine evil and thereby demonstrates the inextricable link between male culture and misogyny. And so, he only perceives Dorothea as a decorous complement to his own existence, a moon ?to adorn the remaining quadrant of his course? (Ch. 11), a secretary and scribe, an appreciative representative of the public, even an apostle to carry on his mission after his demise? (Gilbert and Gubar, 501)
Dorothea finds herself entombed in Lowick, Casaubon?s estate. She discovers that ?the large vistas and wide fresh air she had dreamt of finding in her husband?s mind are ?replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? (Ch. 20)? (Gilbert and Gubar, 504). Dorothea is ?entrapped in sterile submission to male force? (Gilbert and Gubar, 504) and instead of widening her intellectual horizons she finds herself transforming into a caricature unable to define her identity, under the distorting power of the male gaze. ?Not only does Dorothea?s married life make her feel as if she had ?shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him? (Ch. 42), she is especially haunted by that ?thin papery feeling? so well documented by Sylvia Plalth, the feeling of physical unreality that results from trying to shape her self into Casaubon?s rather uncongenial image of what he wants her to be as a wife.? (Gilbert and Gubar, 505)
Her life after her marriage is not much different than her life with Mr. Brooke, her uncle. ?Indeed, with his smattering of unconnected information, his useless classicism, and his misogynistic belief in the biological inferiority of Dorothea?s brain, Brooke is a dark parody of Casaubon?Dorothea is imprisoned not just by Casaubon, or Brooke, but by a ?walled-in maze? of relationships in a society controlled by men who are very much like both these men.? (Gilbert and Gubar, 507). But it was Dorothea who chose Casaubon . It was not an arranged marriage, but a result of free will. However, in the Victorian era even free will is adulterated by subconscious dictates nurtured by years of female submission.? The eroticism of inequality-the male teacher and the enamored female student, the male master and the admiring female servant, the male author and the acquiescent female scribe or character-illustrates both how dependent women are upon male approval and how destructive such dependence is.? (Gilbert and Gubar, 506)
There is also another form of dependency confining to women, that is more subtle but no less tyrannical. This is illustrated by the relationship between Mary Garth and Fred Vincy. Mary Garth, the daughter of Susan and Caleb who enjoy the most meaningful marriage in Middlemarch, is love with her childhood friend Fred Vincy, a very irresponsible young man, who nevertheless loves her too. Mary does not agree to marry him immediately on the grounds that he lacks the manly independence she considers a necessary trait of her husband-to-be. Fred nurtured with the Victorian notion of the Angelic Woman that will save and tame the Fallen Man wants to be a better man under Mary?s influence. Mary may be cold towards him at first but later on she voluntarily assumes the role of the Madonna, the eternal mother figure, the saint woman, Fred?s savior. This is a role equally dangerous with the ?eroticism of inequality? described above. It reduces women to the role of tireless reformers to naughty men-boys who refuse to be responsible human beings. This Victorian stereotype sacrifices the development of the woman herself in the altar of marriage and reinforces the fragmentation strategies of Victorianism by making the domestic carceral a canon for wives.
Rosamond Vincy is the town?s beauty. She is similarly shrouded and fragmented by the Victorian technologies of power but she is so corroded by Victorianism that she no longer has an identity of her own to rebel for. Rosamond affords an education but she is not interested in pursuing such a man-destined scheme of life; she is contended with the restricting and liminal knowledge she receives in Mrs. Lemon?s school for ladies. Rosamond, unlike, Dorothea, is the very prototype of Victorian femininity: submissive and beautiful, a polished automaton to serve and cherish her husband. ?Trained to see her life as a race against marriage and her beauty as a sign that she is destined to be ?the best girl in the world?, Rosamond looks forward to married life not because it offers her the opportunity to contribute altruistically to the welfare of the race but because it offers her the prospect of rising in rank. (Ch.16)? (Paxton, 177)
Despite her shallowness, Rosamond charms Dr. Tertius Lydgate a newcomer to Middlemarch, an idealist. Lydgate infatuated by her thinks to himself: ?She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished. That is what a woman ought to be: she ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.? (Middlemarch, 77). Nevertheless, Dr. Lydgate believed that: ?He should not marry for several years; not marry until he had trodden out a good, clear path for himself away from the broad road which was quite ready made.? (Middlemarch, 78). In the same line of thought Farebrother ?warns Lydgate that independence is necessary to his scientific integrity; he must not get entangled.? (Harvey, 243). It is evident, then, that whereas for women marriage is a vocation, a career they should pursue with religious devotion, for men marriage is a matter of choice. ?Boys get married, they take a wife. They look to marriage for an enlargement, a confirmation of their existence, but not the mere right to exist; it is a charge they assume voluntarily. Thus, they can inquire concerning its advantages and disadvantages, as did the Greek and medieval satirists; for them it is one mode of living not a preordained lot? (De Beauvoir, 448-449).
Rosamond?s ?preordained lot?, though, was marriage. She was virtually trained to get herself a husband and assume the role of Queen of Domesticity. In a household ?better? than her parents?, so she would consider it a professional failure to let Lydgate escape her grasp. Consequently, her very first hint of being found attractive by Lydgate makes her groom herself as an upper-middle-class lady, playing the piano, sketching, considering her dress, reading light verse and popular novels to make herself pleasant in company. She viewed Lydgate as a means of climbing the social ladder, according to what she was taught in Mrs. Lemon?s establishment- an expensive school destined to mould girls into proper Victorian young ladies. Such Victorian snobbery was essential to middle-class women longing for a place among the aristocracy. (Newton, 81)
Rosamond, as a true student of Mrs. Lemon?s, entangles Lydgate in courtship and eventually marries him.? Marriage closes like pincers upon Lydgate; he is soon ?bowing his neck under the yoke, (58), soon afraid of sinking ?into hideous fettering of domestic hate? (65) ? (Harvey, 244). Lydgate, soon found out that Rosamond was impractical and shallow. She spent money in frivolous, superficial things only to construct an image of affluence so as to snob her fellow citizens. When Lydgate decides to sell their furniture and jewelry in order to pay his debt-accumulated by Rosamond?s shopping sprees- and live responsibly, Rosamond acts behind his back and embarrasses him to his snobbish uncle. Living responsibly and within one?s own means is not part of Rosamond?s marriage formula of luxurious frivolities and lavish yet superficial social gatherings.
The construction of Rosamond?s character is, in my opinion, Eliot?s way of indicating that to shape a woman in such a way as to fit the Victorian stereotype, is in fact to create a monster with an ill assortment of parts functioning and pleasing to the eye as individual constructions. However, when seen as a whole Rosamond is no better than Frankenstein: a conglomeration of shallow virtues, beauty and an empty soul.
Moreover, by suffering a miscarriage due to her own stubbornness to go horse riding while pregnant, Rosamond is Eliot?s model in proving that the prescribed image of Victorian womanhood, incarnate in Rosamond, is in fact a problematic, sterile scheme against nature and does not guarantee a normal, happy family life. Spencer?s theories of sexual selection claimed that women modeled after Rosamond Vincy made the perfect mate for a Victorian husband and that if men did choose women on the grounds set by these principals of sexual selection the welfare of the human race would be assured. Eliot in Rosamond?s miscarriage ?reveals a fundamental failure of class reasoning in Spencer?s assumptions about women?s maternal instincts by showing how they are defeated, in Rosamond?s case, when an egotistic desire conflicts with a less palpable obligation? (Paxton, 177)
Rosamond and Lydgate have an unhappy marriage, because they are both victims of strict gender roles constructed under the scope of Victorianism. Rosamond takes great pains from a very young age to be fit for a husband, concentrating all her creative powers in one and only goal: an engagement ring. She, thus, ends up to be an empty person, made up of thousands of glittering little looking glass fragments serving to mirror every wish of the Victorian male, while under this shining veneer lies nothing but a bundle of egotistical desires. Lydgate on the other hand, is taught that he should be seeking a ladylike, proper, beautiful and perfect in all etiquette wife; he is therefore, exalted by his choice of Rosamond. Both Lydgate and Rosamond are seduced into believing that they represent the perfect match, so they are merely victims of the Victorian construction of gender. In the end, Lydgate dies in the age of fifty, failing to find the common tissue to all living organisms, which was his initial, breakthrough research, while Rosamond a lively widow with many children finds refugee in the arms of a respectable and much older doctor.
Rosamond is always failing to depend on herself, as her Victorian upbringing never included such a ?plight?. So, at some point in Middlemarch she seeks consolation in the arms of Will Ladislaw. This near-affair proves Rosamond?s emotional dependency on a certain male ?someone but it also promotes the plot, since it incites Dorothea to admit to herself that she has been in love with him all this time. Dorothea is free to marry whomever she chooses to, but for a codicil in Casaubon?s will that prohibit her to marry Ladislaw or else she would automatically lose any right to Casaubon?s estate and fortune. Dorothea, despite everyone?s protest resolves to marry Ladislaw.
Ladislaw and Dorothea?s engagement is sealed in Eliot?s ?Sunset and Sunrise? chapter, a very symbolic title, since Dorothea is starting anew in her life next to a man she loves. Dorothea ignores Casaubon?s codicil and her sister?s disapproval: ??to think of marrying Mr.Ladislaw, who has got no estate or anything. Sir James Chattam is against this marriage as well. ?In accepting Will as her husband, Dorothea rejects Casaubon?s express prohibition and acts against the advice of her sister?s husband.? (Paxton, 198). In this way she resists traditional patriarchal authority. Moreover, Dorothea?s marriage to Ladislaw is different from the rest. ?Eliot indicates a revolutionary quality of Dorothea and Will?s love and marriage by measuring both against the more complacent standards of marriage, parenthood and justice professed and recommended by her more conventional sister and brother-in-law? (Paxton, 197)
Middlemarch is Eliot?s tour-de-force in the complexity of her textual portraits. In the depiction of the historically unremarkable characters, she allows the reader to take a glimpse into 19th century English society and culture. The vivid and most of all realistic depiction of the unfortunate marriages in the Middlemarch community, constitutes Eliot?s subtle critique of the Victorian discourse that left women fragmented and, thus, unable to define themselves outside of the male gaze
?The tragedy of marriage is not that it fails to assure woman the promised happiness-there is no such thing as assurance in regard to happiness- but that it mutilates her.?(De Beauvoir, 496). Eliot demonstrates, through the shattering of these marriages that no healthy union between a man and a woman can be achieved based on such artificial gender constructions as those of Victorianism. Both partners should cherish each other?s individuality. Of course, to do so they must be allowed to seek a definition of themselves away from the etiquette of Victorian ballrooms and tea parties. However, for a woman to acquire a firm establishment of the ?I? ?as what it really is and not as what men define it- the situation is more complicated, even in our days.? A man is socially an independent and complete individual; he is regarded first of all as a producer whose existence is justified by the work he does for the group: we have seen why it is that the reproductive and domestic role to which woman is confined has not guaranteed her equal dignity?(De Beauvoir, 446)
Women have whole centuries of phallogocentrism to confront with before raising the overwhelming question: ?who am I?? Dorothea discovered and formulated her ?I? in a painful process, but found happiness when she confronted with her desires and articulated her wishes. Many Middlemarchers consider this a failure since she was destined for greatness. ? How many women of talent, engulfed in marriage have been ?in Stendhal?s phrase-?lost to humanity?! It has been said that marriage diminishes man, which is often true; but almost always it annihilates woman.? (De Beauvoir, 496. Eliot, ends Middlemarch by shifting the importance on the individual self. She, therefore. , underlines that when this individual self is properly defined, it can lead to general progress, Dorothea?s ideal come to life. To define ourselves and find happiness is highly estimated by Eliot who, in the treatment of Dorothea?s character, states that this is an act of self-revolt that cannot be deferred ? A sense of identity can only be formed and known against an opposing identity perceived as different or other. We can acquire a sense of self -of ?me?-only in opposition to what is ?not me? or other. Woman functions as the other, which allows men to construct a positive identity as masculine. Femininity is perceived as irrational, unassertive and frail so that masculinity can be felt as rational, assertive and strong. Because what is other does not have an identity in its own right, it can serve as an empty space to be ascribed whatever attributes a more dominant group chooses.? (Walder, 110)
Eliot ?s Finale could be read as an advice to her female readers to acknowledge that the focus is not on general issues but on individual characters. Women should, therefore, try to form an individual identity out of the fragmented selves Victorianism endowed them with, if they want to participate in the ?growing good of the world? by their ?unhistoric acts?. ? We insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas?. the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts: and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs? (Middlemarch, 690)
Bibliography
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Walder, Dennis. The Realist Novel. New York: Routledge, 1996
