The paper explores the position of women in Victorian England as portrayed in the novel “Middlemarch” by George Eliot.
The paper explores the main female characters and shows the attitudes and expectations that the men in the novel have regarding the women. The paper shows how the author is writing against superficial or disrespectful roles assumed by women because of society’s limiting, restrictive expectations of them. The paper also reveals how the happiness that exists at the end of the novel is the product of respectful, flexible attitudes between man and wife.
In Middlemarch Eliot demonstrates what she believes is an incongruity in Victorian society. She uses a range of female characters as both good and bad examples as to their fulfillment of differing expectations, and the roles they play in their interaction with others. The role that a character plays is a manifestation of expectation, and it depends on whose expectation this is that defines their place in society.