Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Middlemarch
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===The "Woman Question"=== Central to ''Middlemarch'' is the idea that Dorothea Brooke cannot hope to achieve the heroic stature of a figure like [[Teresa of Γvila|Saint Teresa]], for Eliot's heroine lives at the wrong time, "amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion".<ref>"Finale" to ''Middlemarch''</ref> [[Antigone]], a figure from Greek mythology best known from [[Sophocles]]' play, is given in the "Finale" as a further example of a heroic woman. The literary critic Kathleen Blake notes Eliot's emphasis on St Teresa's "very concrete accomplishment, the reform of a religious order", rather than her Christian mysticism.{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |p=288}} A frequent criticism by feminist critics is that not only is Dorothea less heroic than Saint Teresa and Antigone, but George Eliot herself.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Austen |first1=Zelda |title=Why Feminist Critics Are Angry with George Eliot |journal=College English |date=1976 |volume=37 |issue=6 |pages=549β561 |doi=10.2307/376148 |jstor=376148}} {{subscription required}}</ref> In response, [[Ruth Yeazell]] and Kathleen Blake chide these critics for "expecting literary pictures of a strong woman succeeding in a period [around 1830] that did not make them likely in life".{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |p=310}} Eliot has also been criticised more widely for ending the novel with Dorothea marrying Will Ladislaw, someone so clearly her inferior.{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |pp=306β310}} The novelist Henry James describes Ladislaw as a ''dilettante'' who "has not the concentrated fervour essential in the man chosen by so nobly strenuous a heroine".{{sfnp |James |1873}}
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)