I have been traveling to Middlemarch with George Eliot. It has been a long trip since Eliot’s book Middlemarch is 781 pages long.
However, even though I am enjoying a visit to a provincial English town, I’m happy that my stay is temporary. The life of women in England in 1832 was restricted.
As Eliot explained, “A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterward.”
Mr. Brooke said, “There is a lightness about the feminine mind—a touch and go—music, the fine arts, that kind of thing. They should study those up to a certain point, women should, but in a light way.”
And, Mrs. Plymdale thought that “Rosamond had been educated to a ridiculous pitch, for what was the use of accomplishments which would be all laid aside as soon as she was married?”
–Joy