Eliot takes both very seriously, as they can affect a person’s well-being greatly. Two major life choices that people make are marriage and career. Dorothea was saved from living with her mistake for her whole life when her elderly husband died of a heart attack, but Lydgate and Rosamond married young before having children of their own so they had less time together as an unhappy couple.” Such is the case with Lydgate and Dorothea’s marriage, which was doomed from day one because he was more interested in his medical career than being a husband or father. It actually becomes a burden on both parties involved because they’re not compatible in the first place. An ill-advised marriage between two people who are inherently incompatible never becomes completely harmonious. She refused to bow down to the conventions of a happy ending for her characters. Moreover, Eliot’s critics found Middlemarch to be too depressing. Although she disliked being confined by gender stereotypes and conventions, Eliot didn’t mind being labeled as a woman writer because she believed that “women who write like men are plagiarists those who write well should declare themselves women.” She did dislike the idea of marriage ending a story because it was unrealistic and stereotypical when compared to real life experiences. Some even criticized Eliot for not writing what they considered to be appropriate literature for women at the time. Many critics felt women writers shouldn’t be so intellectual or scholarly. Critics’ reactions were mixed, with some criticizing the book’s gloomy tone and others disliking Eliot’s use of literary allusions in her writing. It has many characteristics of modern novels, but it also has characteristics that are typical to Victorian novels.

March brooks geraldine