A History of George Eliot and "Middlemarch"

          For this particular blog, focusing on the histories of both George Eliot, (Mary Evans Lewes) and Middlemarch, I chose to look at several sources, including an excerpt from Eliot’s essay, “The Natural History of German Life”, a letter from Eliot’s husband, George Henry Lewes to her publisher, John Blackwood, as well as two letters from Eliot to fellow writer, Harriet Beecher Stowe.  The excerpt from Eliot’s focuses on the morality in art and claims, “All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the People.”(Eliot, 520) The letter from George Lewes to John Blackwood gives readers insight as to why the novel was originally published in eight parts, and that “Each part would have a certain unity and completeness in itself with separate title.  Thus the work is called Middlemarch.  Part 1 will be Miss Brooke.”(Lewes, 532) Eliot’s first letter to Stowe talks of how Dorothea’s husband, Mr. Casaubon is not related to her own husband, George Lewes, and that she does “not for a moment imagine that Dorothea’s marriage experience is drawn from my own.  Impossible to conceive any creature less like Mr. Casaubon than my warm, enthusiastic husband, who cares much more for my doing than for his own, and is a miracle of freedom from all author’s jealousy and all suspicion.”(Eliot, 534) In Eliot’s second, and very brief letter to Stowe, she asks whether or not Stowe agrees with her that “there is one comprehensive Church whose fellowship consists in the desire to purify and ennoble human life”(Eliot, 535).

            Eliot’s claim that “we want to be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy and the artisan in all his suspicious selfishness”(Eliot, 520) goes along with the fact that her characters in Middlemarch aren’t particularly heroic, but that they are rather plain folk, and the protagonist of this novel, Dorothea Brooke’s main desire is to become a scholar, and to help others.  Lewes’ letter to Blackwood contains the background of Middlemarch, and the motives behind writing the novel in eight parts, that can be complete while read alone, yet cohesive when read consecutively.  As for the letters to Stowe, we can see Eliot’s justification for the way she created her characters like Casaubon; that she created him almost as a complete opposite from her husband, one who supports her ambitions, whereas Casaubon didn’t with Dorothea.  Dorothea’s character is extremely Protestant, and when she moves to Rome with her husband, her expectations are crushed.  As Rome is the center for Catholicism, it is almost painful for her to be somewhere where papal authority has such an obviously strong presence.  In Eliot’s second letter to Stowe, she asks whether or not she agrees that there is a church, whose followers are brought together by the need to make one leader (presumably the Pope) a noble figure.  This letter was written the same year that Middlemarch was first published, so it is likely that Eliot received criticism regarding the religious views that are presented in her work, and she is trying to justify it.