Summary: For my blog, I chose Lee R. Edwards’ “Women, Energy and Middlemarch,” which focuses on how energy is functional within the text. As the piece’s name implies, Edwards’ focus was on female characters, namely Rosamond and Dorothea. Eliot compares the two, not directly but through their origins and lifestyles. While Dorothea has the majority of her author’s sympathy, and seems destined for great things, ultimately she “falls in” with what’s expected of women in her time period: marriage and a home life. Edwards finds this to be a waste of potential, much like Henry James did in the contemporary criticisms.
Analysis: The roles of women in Victorian society were extremely narrow. They had a limited range of professions available to them, and by and large were expected to be housewives. Of course, the heroines in a number of literature from that time - Dorothea, Mary Barton, or even Emma from the novel that shares her name - broke this mold. They were free thinkers, dreamers, and had great expectations (pun intended). Yet, for all the glorious setup she has and the future that we expect, Dorothea falls short.
Edwards is appreciative of the fact that she can both love Dorothea and hate Rosamond as genuine women, not as a list of cliches. Of the latter in particular, she says:
“I thought I had found a heroine worthy of my hate, one who was condemned not for her sexuality, but for her weakness, vanity and evil, ethical categories which, in the book at least, suspended sexual definition” (624).
As we discussed in class a few weeks ago, many heroines are still dependent upon the men in their lives to enable them - in other words, they’re not truly independent, as we’d like to believe. In Dorothea, we’re originally presented a character who has lofty dreams and quite possibly the capability to see them realized. In the end, though, she settles for that which most other women of her time do: wifehood, motherhood, and presumably a quaint little neighborhood. The spark of freedom and individuality that we first come to appreciate her for, is stamped out. Instead, her new husband, the layabout Will Ladislaw, gets to live Dorothea’s dreams out for her. As an audience, we feel cheated.
I glanced through a couple of the other criticisms before settling on Edwards’, which I did because I enjoy discussion on gender roles. One of the earlier ones, though, emphasized the “fullness” of Eliot’s writing - how every little detail is realized with great care and subtlety. Thus, it’s insulting to both Eliot and Dorothea to say that Dorothea’s fall from grace is an oversight. I’m also not knowledgeable enough with Eliot’s work to say that it seems uncharacteristic, though Edwards and I clearly weren’t the only ones disappointed.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is that for all its strengths and promise, Middlemarch fails to break conventional gender norms in any lasting way. Even Rosamond, whose goals are much simpler than Dorothea’s, can only achieve them through her husband.
The contemporary criticisms of the book all reiterate that the entire literary world was anticipating it. It’s a shame that it failed to convey the message we, and her other readers, were hoping for.(Also I don't know why the end of my text always turns grey. There's no visible formatting difference on my end.)
