『미들마치』: 결혼을 통한 가정과 직업의 탐색

Abstract

Middlemarch: A Search for Vocation and Home through MarriageJung, Jae-SunMany feminist critics express their resentments because Eliot did not permit her heroines to do what Eliot did in her real life. The arguments that Middlemarch fails as a feminist work are about the figure of Dorothea Brooke. Dorothea aspires towards a life beyond the provincial confines and wishes to be of use in the world. Eliot describes female fate of desiring an epic life but finding no outlet for achievement apart from the socially limiting role of ‘common womanhood.’ This paper examines this female fate by tracing Dorothea’s vocational pursuit and her first marriage comparing with Lydgate’s. In these parallels and contrasts, Eliot explores the limitations of education and opportunity imposed upon female characters and presents implicit critique of the gentlewoman’s life and Victorian ideal of marriage. Later in the paper, I try to approach the second marriage of Dorothea with the optimistic view. In portrayal of Dorothea’s role in Will’s life, Eliot makes a claim for the importance of “unhistoric acts”. Dorothea rejects the passivity of leisure for active life of living through another. And another estimation of Dorothea’s final lot should take into account Will’s work toward political reform. We see how the constraints of Middlemarch frustrated a woman’s impulse toward vocation, turning her toward marriage. We also see how a man’s failure derived indirectly from the common view of the women in Victorian age.