psychological study of human nature in Middlemarch

George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) was much concerned with evangelical christians and their place in the securlar world. This is evident in Silas Marner and Adam Bede, both of the protagonists of those novels being evangelical christians. Dorothea is an idealistic woman with no experience of the world, and a fervent devotion to evangelical christianity when she is convinced to marry Mr. Casaubon, a scriptural and theological scholar of minor repute. The novel, among other plot themes, traces her disillusionment with Mr. Casaubon, the institution of marriage, and the injustices of which women were the victims in the nineteenth century world of which both Dorothea and Miss Evans ("George Eliot") were members. This particular passage is important because it marks a turning point, the point at which Dorothea makes her last willful effort to see her marriage as a good thing, and a vocation for her in support of a man whom she admired from afar for scholarly reasons and an illusion about his evangelical purity, and whom she is growing to despise. In the subsequent passages of the novel, she is forced to see him for the petty, self-interested man which he actually is. She becomes aware both from her own experience and her knowledge of her Aunt Julia's tribulations that marriage as it exists in her lifetime is an essentially unjust institution which too readily lends itself to the exploitation of the woman.

The other themes of the novel have to do with the illusions men and women take into marriage, and Dorothea becomes central to the lives of the other principle characters when Casaubon dies and leaves her a relatively wealthy woman. She does not become cynical, and her evangelical principles remain strong, but she loses her illusions about life, marriage and the relationship of men to women, and what she sees in the lives and marriages of the other women of the novel confirms for her the lessons she learns from her own marriage.

These are my favorite lines from Middlemarch....

"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
Source: Middlemarch (final lines) (1871)

When I first read them, I was filled with such a sense of belonging in this world.

Yes - and in this passage we see the complex interplay of human perception with emotion - the external world has become frozen and dulled and diminished, as Dorothea begins to confront the death of her dreams of a great purpose and love in marrying Casaubon.

As Setanta has pointed out, her circumstances have pushed her to see this great purpose in life (which she considers an essential) as coming through a role as helpmeet to a great man - her youth and inexperience have led her to see the arid Casaubon as embodying this - she had previously imbued him with the life and energy which she now no longer sees...

Here, the books themselves metamorphosing to dull, dusty tomes is especially important, since she is discovering that Casaubon's "great work" is nothing but stale and already refuted stuff. He is intellectually as well as emotionally arid.

It is interesting how she begins to identify (presumably through her dawning feelings for him, emotional and sexual?) with Ladislaw's mother, and awakens emotionally - only immediately to sublimate her feelings back to an attempt to find in her husband what she had sought.

I will think more...