| Description |
Feeling as a kind of knowledge is central to George Eliot's Middlemarch. In her first marriage to Casaubon, Dorothea Brooke desires the kind of scholastic knowledge that her husband possesses, believing that this sort of knowledge will give her clarity of vision and allow her to transform the world of 1830's Victorian England. The marriage, however, shows itself to be a construction of the society she wants to change. Rather than liberating her, it becomes her trap. In the character of Will Ladislaw, Dorothea feels love, a feeling which leads both to self-knowledge and knowledge of her social world. Although finally she accomplishes nothing great, Dorothea Brooke transforms her societ; in minor ways and "the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive....." (p. 578). |
