A Short summary of George Eliot's "Middlemarch"


A Short summary of George Eliot's "Middlemarch"





Novel starts and we find Dorothea Brooke, who is a young woman living with her uncle and sister. She is beautiful, intelligent and generous. Her main ambition in life is to take on a noble project – so she marries an old scholar named Casaubon, thinking that helping him in his research will be the project she's after. Dorothea quickly discovers that he cares more for his own scholarly studies than he does for her.
A young doctor named Lydgate moves to Middlemarch to set up a practice with his new ideas about medicine and science. But he faces a lot of problems. First of all, most of the residents of Middlemarch have lived in the town for their whole lives, and they don't trust newcomers. Second, they don't trust new ideas. Lydgate falls in love with Rosamond Vincy, the sister of one his patients, and finally marries her. But Lydgate discovers that Rosamond is selfish, and Rosamond learns that Lydgate will always be "married" to his work as a doctor. And then they run out of money because neither of them knows how to stick to a budget. These two unhappy couples are connected by Mr. Casaubon's young cousin, Will Ladislaw. Will is a handsome, young artist. Lydgate finds Will to be sympathetic to his ideas about science and medicine, and since Will is an outsider in Middlemarch, too, they quickly become friends. Everyone seems to like Will. Especially Dorothea, who finds that he understands her in a way that her husband doesn't. Mr. Casaubon was always jealous of the friendly bond between his cousin, Will, and his wife. So Mr. Casaubon leaves a condition in his will saying that Dorothea will lose all the money she's supposed to inherit from him if she remarries Will Ladislaw. Dorothea and Will decide to get married. They live happily ever after, despite the fact that they lost the large inheritance from dead Mr. Casaubon. And Rosamond and Lydgate live unhappily ever after until Lydgate dies at an early age, leaving Rosamond free to marry anyone.



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