Topic: Frustration in MiddlemarchPaper no:6 The Victorian Age(2981)

Prepared by: Arati R.MahetaRoll No.:3P.G.Enrollment No.:13101019Sem:2Email id: davearati656@gmail.comSubmitted to:Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

ABOUT THE NOVELIST

Mary Ann Evans who wrote under the pen-name of George Eliot.

she was the daughter of a Warwick shire land agent born near Nuneaton

She is of great importance in the history of fiction.

Her serious concern with the problems of the human personality &its relation with forces outside itself.

Her most important works

• Middle-march • Danial Deronda

• Felix,Holt the Radical

Adam Bede The Mill On the Floss

Silas MarnerThe Story of Romola

ABOUT THE NOVEL

• Middlemarch is a study of provincial life.

• Was published in (1871-72)

• By this novel Eliot built up, from the lives of a great number of deeply studied characters, the complex picture of life of a small town

Characters of the novel

Dorothea Rev.Edward Casaubon Tertius Lydgate Mary Garth Mr. Arthur Brook Sir James Chettam Fred Vincy Will ladislaw Nicholas Bulstrode Rosamond Vincy

What is frustration?

• The feeling of being upset or annoyed as a result of being unable to change or achieve something.

How we can see frustration in this novel

One need only look to Lydgate to see an example of idealism being destroyed by the environment in which it is found. At the start of the novel, we are introduced to the "young, poor and ambitious" and most of all idealistic Doctor Lydgate, who has great plans for the fever hospital in Middlemarch.

By the character of Dorothea

• The second example of the young being destroyed by the old is that of Dorothea.

• This can be seen by her continuing desire to "bear a larger part of the world's misery" or to learn Latin and Greek, both of which are continually thwarted by Casaubon, though this ends after his death, with her discovery of his selfish and suspicious nature, by way of the codicil.

• Dorothea and Lydgate both are not satisfied with their marriage.

• Lydgate, because of his intense kindness, and his

desire not to hurt anyone has no choice but to marry Rosamond, as he doesn't want to see her sad, and she has manoeuvred both herself and him in such a way that to reject her could only cause this.

EXAMPLE • Her desire to help the poor, though this is more

often than not frustrated by her surroundings. The first example is her designs for the cottages; they are dismissed by her sister as being a "fad", and by her uncle as being too expensive.

• Dorothea's desire to be useful, and Lydgate's desire to help are frustrated due to Lydgate's choice of wife.

By the character of

• Bulstrode is another example of a character that has had his idealism and destroyed, though not by Middlemarch. He was once a great and trusted minister, but the lure of money from the pawn shop, and the possibility of inheriting all of Ladislaw's mother's money proved too great for him. He is no longer the honorable and trusted man, but something all together darker and more sinister:

conclusion• To conclude; all the major characters, in some form or another

have their ambitions and ideals crushed and perverted due to a number of reasons, ranging from the situation in which they find themselves, to the people with which they associate.

• In all her characters, Eliot, it would seem, shows that this destruction will lead to something better, though unfortunately not Lydgate - he cannot overcome his problems, and is in the end destroyed by them.

• It is almost as if she is writing a tragedy, in which the heroes and heroines undergo some horrendous cataclysm, and emerge from it, though scarred. It is as if the novel starts in moral twilight, and goes through the deepest night, and emerges into the sunlight of a new, though worse day.

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