Middlemarch by George Eliot

It seems to me that this book's theme is the problem in male/ female relationships due to the inequality of education and employment which existed in European society in the nineteenth century, and continues to exist in many societies to this day.

To start with, if Dorothea had been able to achieve something (intellectual, spiritual or practical) on her own behalf she would not have been so keen to assume a role as a man's helpmeet. Secondly, if she had had sufficient education to engage with Mr Casaubon intellectually, she wouldn't have overvalued his intellectual capability, and then married him on those grounds. As it was, she took him at his own (very high) opinion, and he was insecure, suspicious and jealous when he realised that she might see that he was not as capable as she had first supposed. Dorothea is a fine person but is very conscious that she is, as a young woman who has no particular role in her community, considered less influential and effective than other adults, and is at the mercy of her advisers whenever she wants to take action. She wants to take action by marrying Will, who is a stranger to her society, and she finally grasps (it seems to take several bolts of lightning to show her) that she can take the initiative and do this if she wants to.

Mary Garth is the only woman in the story who is independent in that she earns money as an old man's housekeeper/ maid. She has in front of her a good role-model in the shape of her mother, who is educated to a certain level - school-teacher level -, can teach her own children and complete household tasks at the same time. Mary - like the rest of her family - seems to have a stock of confidence and self-possession that help her to weather her changes in fortune without self-pity. If she had had more education and more independence she would have been able to marry the man she loved without any problem - but the story is about Fred's development into maturity, not hers. She is already mature in that her emotions are fixed and stable, and she can take care of the elderly and of children without questioning her role. That is all she needs to be able to do.

The trouble that one grieves over the most is that of the Lydgate/ Rosamund relationship. Lydgate has high ideals and wants to be able to contribute findings to medical science.

even with close knowledge of Lydgate's character: for character too is a process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making .. and there were both virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding... Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him:... Lydgate's spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, ... that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor, did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons.

(Note that the author is ironic about furniture coming before women. The furniture doesn't matter but the lack of judgment about women becomes his undoing.)

 He wants a funded hospital so that he doesn't have to depend on selling quack medicines to keep himself in funds: he doesn't believe in them. He wants to use his brain; to observe illness and what causes and hinders it like a modern scientist. However, his fellow doctors are jealous of his superiority of manner and dislike his lofty ideals. He meets Rosamund regularly to admire her singing and for a pleasant flirtation but she is determined to have him, finding his gentlemanly manners as attractive as his titled connections.

The marriage works well as long as she responds to being his cherished pet, but Rosamund has no intellectual projects and is easily bored. She enjoys flirting with Lydgate's cousin and disobeys Lydgate's proviso that she doesn't ride a spirited new horse. Disappointment follows in which Lydgate seems to be the kindest and most forgiving of men. However, Rosamund has not changed... She can't understand Lydgate's work, she can't understand his priorities or ambitions. She can only tell him he hasn't made her happy. Making R. happy means indulging her whims. She has none of Dorothea's religious selflessness nor Mary Garth's common sense. She is a child in that she can't identify with an adult's preoccupations, and the novel tells us clearly that she has never even thought about where money comes from. Here is the result of her lack of proper education: had she been educated to the idea that she must make her own money to pay for her own fun she would have been good at it because she is clearly intelligent in a way, will act on her own  initiative and doesn't lack confidence.

But poor Lydgate with his high ideals! finding himself in debt, losing his good reputation and with useless interference and a grudging attitude from Rosy, he starts hitting the opiates and betting on himself in the billiard-hall. "Glittering-eyed" and full of nervous energy, he plays well for most of an evening, but can't stop when he starts to lose. Fred steps in and stops his run.

Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed disgust with himself the next day...

 He at last gets the loan, but it's tainted and compromised and leads to his character being suspected of corruption.

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that had happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which has come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make people who had only vulgar standards regards his reputation as irrevocably damaged. ... His marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably. 

Dorothea knows what to say and Rosamond doesn't because R can't even begin to imagine how her husband feels (here there's a class rift; she comes from trade and he comes from the officer class, thus notions of honour very important to him): D. says:

I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not do anything dishonourable.  

The Lydgates' is a more gripping story because it's all imperfections and compromises - having married they have to make great adjustments, and neither would have married the other if they had been more analytical about what they really expected or wanted beforehand.

But sometime in the future: "he once called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains."   EXTRAORDINARily rude and resentful thing for Lydgate to say!

This book certainly makes one wonder if one understands the hopes and dreams and even moral priorities of one's husband, and in fact, makes one worry that one doesn't understand him well enough. It would be helpful if a man were more communicative - but George Eliot had a wonderful breadth of understanding of different mixtures of strengths and weaknesses in characters of both genders, and she makes one feel ashamed of one's shortcomings in this area.

The book has a number of clergymen in it and within the novel none of them talk about religion. Only the most hypocritical character does. None of the characters is held up to be judged by the tenets of Christianity in so many words, but they show a changing society where town and trade, with their own values, are playing a larger part, but the contribution of the landowning class is still needed.