GEORGE ELIOT’S MIDDLEMARCH: THE URGE OF REFORM AND PROGRESS IN VICTORIAN NOVEL
GEORGE ELIOT’S MIDDLEMARCH: THE URGE OF REFORM AND PROGRESS IN VICTORIAN NOVEL

Summary/Abstract: Middlemarch is not only one of the greatest novels by George Eliot but also one of the most popular and bulkiest novels in English literature, with its richly-peopled story, multi-plot structure, and outnumbering themes and arguments. The grandeur of Middlemarch has been perhaps due to its intellectual powers to include major ideas of the Victorian England, which also attracts contemporary readers as well, such as the idea of reform and progress at the aftermath of Industrial Revolution, the rise of science and scientific thought with its influence on theology, the changing face of the new world despite the old, and the overall prosperity of Victorian England greatly developing and reaching to the one tenth of the world’s soil. George Eliot situates her novel within such a complex scene of early 19th century and reflects the intermingled developments of the time in the fictitious world of Middlemarch community. Yet she not only reflects these discussions but also participates in them intellectually in Middlemarch. Interested in Victorian urge and relish on the ideas of reform and progress, this paper analyzes George Eliot’s Middlemarch with a New Historicist look to be able to grasp the idea of reform in the novel and evaluate it on political, scientific, and social grounds.

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