After their parents die, Celia and Dorothea Brooke go to live with their uncle Mr. Brooke at Tipton Grange in Middlemarch, a small town in the English countryside. Dorothea, the beautiful, clever sister, immediately attracts the attention of Sir James Chettam, but with her always present desire to be useful, Dorothea has eyes only for the older, scholarly Mr. Casaubon. Against the desires of many in the Middlemarch community, Dorothea and Casaubon are married.
In the meantime, the lives of another pair of would-be lovers becomes quite complicated. Fred Vincy, by nature a somewhat wild and undisciplined young man, finds himself in debt. He has accepted credit from unreliable sources and must find a way to repay the debt, if he does not, the father of Mary Garth, Fred's only true love, must pay the debt for him. Fred's only hope is that his old, dying uncle Peter Featherstone will leave him money in his will. When Featherstone dies, he leaves two wills. The first promises a large sum of money to Fred, but the second and more recent will leaves the entire estate to Mr. Joshua Rigg, Peter Featherstone's son, thus effectively crushing Fred's expectations. As a result of the disappointment, Fred becomes violently ill. The Vincys call in young Dr. Lydgate, a doctor who hopes to reform medical practices in England. In the process of attending to Fred, Lydgate finds himself captivated by Rosamond Vincy, Fred's sister.
On their honeymoon in Rome, the newly married Casaubons find things not to be as happy as they had expected. Mr. Casaubon spends his time doing research for his book The Key to All Mythologies, Dorothea, who desperately wants to help him in his scholarly pursuits, finds herself shut out from his work. One afternoon as she...
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...e support of a wealthy widow is another step towards restoring Lydgate's name. Dorothea also visits Rosamond, convincing her that Lydgate loves her and that the two of them should be happy together. In the process, though, Dorothea realizes her own love for Will Ladislaw. Much to the dismay of Sir James Chettam and others, Dorothea renounces her fortune and marries Will. The novel ends with a vision of the futures of the different characters. Rosamond and Lydgate build a marriage and a medical practice, their lives are generally happy though not without occasional problems. Fred Vincy and Mary Garth are married and live happily as hard working tenants at Stone Court, the land that Fred had once hoped to inherit from his uncle Featherstone. Dorothea and Will Ladislaw move to London where they build a happy family and Dorothea continues to look for ways to be useful.
what the reader once thought of Dorothea, a woman of dignity, into a naive child.
...n their stories at first, but by the end they both praise them for their ability to act with the virtues that every Roman woman should strive to act with.
Claudio's interest in Hero is on account of her wealth, but her outward beauty also attracts him. Claudio is hence revealed to be a slave to social assumptions. He regards love and marriage as a sensible way in which to obta...
In the novel Jane Eyre, it narrates the story of a young, orphaned girl. The story begins shortly after Jane walk around Gateshead Hall and evolves within the different situations she face growing up. During Jane’s life the people she encounter has impact her growth and the character she has become.
Jane spends her first 10 years of her life at Gateshead Hall, a lavish mansion. She lived with her Aunt, Mrs Reed, and three cousins, Eliza, Georgina and John. During her time in the mansion she wouldn't dare argue with the mistress, and fulfilled every duty. Jane is deprived of love, joy and acceptance. She is very much unwanted and isolated.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s journey to love and marriage is the focal point of the narrative. But, the lesser known source of richness in Austen’s writing comes from her complex themes the well-developed minor characters. A closer examination of Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s dear friend in Pride and Prejudice, shows that while she did not take up a large amount of space in the narrative, her impact was great. Charlotte’s unfortunate circumstances in the marriage market make her a foil to Elizabeth, who has the power of choice and refusal when it comes to deciding who will be her husband. By focusing on Charlotte’s age and lack of beauty, Austen emphasizes how ridiculous and cruel marriage can be in this time.
The story is about two sisters Katherine and Bianca. Bianca has a suitor who would like to marry her, Lucentio, but the only way that he will be able to marry her is if her older sister is married first. When Petruccio arrives to Padua he agrees to court and marry Katherine because she will provide a lovely dowry. Rumor has it that Katherine is a cynical, unruly, and extremely unpleasant female. Bianca on the other hand is the typical image of a lovely woman, beautiful, soft-spoken, and very feminine.
At the beginning of the story, in plot “A”, John and Mary are introduced as a stereotypical happy couple with stereotypically happy lives of middle class folks. Words like “stimulating” and “challenging” are used repetitiously to describe events in thei...
In her passage she imagines what it may have been like had William Shakespeare had a sister. She notices how difficult it would be even given...
The short story, “Roman Fever” illustrates the shocking relationship between two women, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade, by a chance meeting in Rome. As the story opens the two women are sitting on the terrace of a Roman restaurant that has an astonishing view of the Colosseum and other Roman ruins. While the women sit in silence and enjoy the tranquil view from the terrace they notice their daughters down below running off to spend a romantic evening with two young men. This triggers Mrs. Slades memories of her and Mrs. Ansley’s quixotic adventures in Rome as young adults and their first encounter with “Roman fever”. Wharton uses the term Roman fever to illustrative the women’s past relationship that is embedded with destruction, jealously and deceit. Both women live their life privately consumed with Roman fever for twenty-five years, once these secretes are reveled an ironic twist will still hold a plague on the lives of these women.
Dorothea Brooke is a very bright and beautiful young lady that does not much care for frills or getting ahead in society. She wants more than anything to help those around her, starting with the tenants of her uncle. She desires to redesign their cottages, but Arthur Brooke, her elderly uncle with whom she and her younger sister Celia Brooke lives with, does not want to spend the money required. So Dorothea shares her dream with Sir James Chettam, who finds her fascinating, and encourages her to use the plans she has drawn up for the tenants on his land instead. He falls in love with her, but does not share his feelings for her quickly enough. Edward Casaubon, an older scholarly clergyman asks Dorothea to marry him, she does not accept until she finds out Sir James means to seriously court her, then turns around and tells Casaubon yes. What she does not te...
Clarissa Dalloway is content with her life with Richard, is content to give her party on a beautiful June evening, but she does regret at times that she can’t “have her life over again” (10). Clarissa’s memories of Bourton, of her youth, are brought back to her vividly by just the “squeak of the hinges. . . [and] she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air” (3). The very intensity of these memories are what make them so much a part of what she is– everything in life reminds her of Bourton, of Sally Seton, of Peter Walsh. Peter and Sally were her best friends as a girl, and “with the two of them. . . she s...
Nelly Dean’s position as a longtime servant for both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange allow her easy access to the personal lives of these two dysfunctional families. Nelly was brought to Wuthering Heights by her mother, who was a nursemaid for Hindley Earnshaw. She grew up around the E...
The plot of the novel follows traditional plot guidelines; although there are many small conflicts, there is one central conflict that sets the scene for the novel. The novel is about an embarrassing mismatched couple and their five daughters. The novel begins with Mrs. Bennet, telling her daughters of the importance of marrying well. During this time a wealthy man, Charles Bingley, moves close to Netherfield, where the Bennets’ reside. The Bennet girls struggle to capture his attention, and Jane, who judges no one, is the daughter who manages to win his heart, until Mr. Bingley abruptly leaves town.
Aubery Tanqueray, a self-made man, is a Widower at the age of Forty two with a beautiful teenage daughter, Ellean whom he seems very protective over. His deceased wife, the first Mrs. Tanqueray was "an iceberg," stiff, and assertive, alive as well as dead (13). She had ironically died of a fever "the only warmth, I believe, that ever came to that woman's body" (14). Now alone because his daughter is away at a nunnery he's found someone that can add a little life to his elite, high class existence; a little someone, we learn, that has a past that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of his friends.