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01-11-2013, 03:26 PM

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George Eliot produced literary works of great value and universal recognition. Middlemarch is her greatest novel and masterpiece. It is decidedly George Eliot’s most outstanding novel. It received wide acclaim when it first appeared. Much work has been done on this novel. Critics and students of literature have tried to explore the elements of Victorianism in the novel; they have discussed and analysed it as an intellectual, psychological and philosophical novel, showing the competence and extraordinary intelligence of the author in communicating and addressing different intellectual, psychological and philosophical ideas. Bernard Paris focuses on George Eliot’s philosophy and religion of humanity and how she grew skeptical after freeing from church and developed her own religion of humanity and her doctrine of “extension of our sympathies.” He also discusses how Eliot was influenced by the philosophy of Comte, Feuerbach and others, pointing out how this religion of human relationship shaped her views of art, making her sympathetic with all her characters. Bernard Paris (1970: 34) says, “Eliot is sympathetic towards almost her characters.” On his part, Darrel Mansell, Jr. studies the conception of form in Geroge Eliot’s fiction and how she considers form of art a higher element that art should exhibit. He argues that her art shows complexity as she believes that the more complex the art, the higher it is. Mansell (1970: 68) says, “She [Eliot] strives to make the relations in her fiction as complex as possible.” Similarily, Barbara Hardy highlights some of the artistic values and features of Eliot; her images, her characters, character and form and character and plot, exploring the power of form in her novels. David Cecil has another approach to the art of George Eliot. He compares and contrasts her with other novelists like Thackeray, Dickens and Hardy and how she is different from them. Cecil (1934: 328) says, “She stands at the gateway between the old novel and the new, a massive caryatid, heavy of countenance, uneasy of attitude; but noble, monumental, profoundly impressive.”
There has also been much work done on Middlemarch, studying various aspects of the novel. Joan Bennet presents in her book, George Eliot: Her Mind and Her Art a chapter on the novel, pointing out in general terms the main theme and plot and characters and how the book is well-designed. She argues that the weaving of a massive plot and a heap of characters show her artistic power. According to Bennet (1966: 162) “in the finished novel there is nothing irrelevant to the design.” She adds (174), “Middlemarch is George Eliot’s supreme achievement. While its characters are at least as various and as deeply studied as any she has created; they are more perfectly combined into a single whole than those in any other of her novels.” Bennet does not give a detailed study of the society of Middlemarch. Bert G. Hornback, however, finds the power of the novel in its realism. He (1977: 676) argues “one of the most remarkable aspects of Middlemarch has been, for many critics, its realism: the way in which the real world is woven together with the fictional. The history of England from 1828-1881 is an impressive part of the texture of the novel–so much so that English history and Middlemarch seem to be complementary.” On his part Edith Simcox focuses on the psychological aspect of the novel which gives a vivid analysis of the inner life of mankind. He (1965: 74) declares that Middlemarch “marks an epoch in the history of fiction in so far as its incidents are taken from the inner life,” and “as giving a background of a perfect realistic truth to a profoundly imaginative psychological study.” There is also much work on regional novelists and writers like Mrs. Gaskell, Hardy and others. In his book The Literature of Change: Studies in the Nineteenth-Century Provincial Novel, John Lucas (1977) gives a full account of Mrs. Gaskell and nature of social change and that of Manchester. The book also makes a good study of Hardy’s women. But it does not deal with George Eliot and her regionalism. There are some studies on the regionalism of George Eliot’s novels. For example, we find in Henry Auster’s Local Habitation: Regionalism in the Early Novels of George Eliot (1970) a good study of Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life and Mill on the Floss. However, there is nothing on Middlemarch. In his study of Middlemarch, David Daiches (1963) makes a chapter-wise analysis of the events with a special focus on the characters and how they are depicted. None of these works give a full length study on Middlemarch as a regional novel, giving a detailed approach to the various aspects of the provincial life of the society of Middlemarch.
This study aims to investigaate Middlemarch as a regional novel depicting the provincial life of rural England and analyse the elements that make it so. It will show how George Eliot gives a portrait of the English society in the countryside and how her experience in the Midlands affects her portraiture of Middlemarch society. In fact, our purpose in this work is to analyse and study the book as a regional novel and show the provincial aspects of the book and how the book portrays the changes in the English society taking place at that time as depicted in the novel. We aim to scrutinize and explore the provincial life of the society of the country town of Middlemarch from different political, social and economic angles in a vivid and comprehensive manner that brings about the greatness of Middlemarch. We shall place greater emphasis on the regionality of the novel. This work, in passing, also deals with the plot and art of characterization of the novel but only in so far as they are related to the main topic of the dissertation, which is the provincial life in the novel and how the regional represents the universal. This study is based on the researcher’s own interpretation and analysis of the primary and secondary sources. The primary source is the novel. The secondary sources include books on George Eliot, her biography, and critical works. They also include books and articles on social, political, cultural and economic life in rural England during the Victorian Age and the concept of regionalism.
Middlemarch, the action of which lasts from 1829 to 1832, is an important social document presenting the life of the Midlands where Eliot spent most of her life during the time period of the 1830s. It investigates the social, political and economic aspects of life of the society during that time with reference to some historical facts like that of the First Reform Act. We try here to study the politics of the society represented by some characters like Mr. Brooke and Will Ladislaw, the social classes and their impact on the life of these people, the use of power by people like Bulstrode to influence people. We also give an account of the relationship between these people of Middlemarch and how they deal with each other in such a provincial society. We shall demonstrate how this narrow-minded conventional society operates to cripple and crack down all possibilities of change and modernity. It defeats ambitious people capable of bringing about change and breathe a new life into this traditional society sticking to traditional and conventional way of life and resisting any kind of change. This theme of defeated ambitions, which is a universal theme, is worked out better in this regional society which is a symbol of the whole universe. Middlemarch thus is not merely a regional novel about a particular society or locality; it is rather a represenation of life at large.
The thesis is divided into seven chapters with a conclusion. The first chapter deals with the life, philosophy and art of the author as it is important to study George Eliot’s life because it is her life in the countryside of Warwickshire which has shaped her vision of life and art. This countryside is the setting of her works. It also deals with the factors and experiences that influenced George Eliot during her life. These influences made her mind the moral battle-field, struggling between extremes–religion and agnosticism, free-thinking and conventionalism. In chapter two, an idea about the Victorian age and countryside has been given so as to highlight the situation in which the novel was written. As our focus is on studying the book as a regional novel, the third chapter provides the background of the genre of the regional novel and its development. The fourth chapter is the focus of the thesis, studying Middlemarch as a provincial society. The fifth chapter focuses on the plot of the novel and how it represents a single whole despite the vastness and variousness of its characters and events. Symbolically, the regional society of Middlemarch is well-connected and remains a single whole despite the various number of people with different interests. The sixth chapter studies the major themes of the novel with emphasis on the theme of the ambition frustrated by the meanness of society. This theme brings out the universality of the novel in presenting human life. The last chapter discusses the people of Middlemarch and how they are inter-related in a small society of Middlemarch.

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