"Marriage in Middlemarch" and "Jane Eyre"

Paper Summary:

This essay analyzes the pessimistic and optimistic narratives of matrimony seen in George Eliot's "Marriage in Middlemarch" and in Bronte's "Jane Eyre," and concludes that the realistic approach of both epics advocates marriage as the only route English women had to happiness in the 19th century.

From the Paper:

"To understand the view of marriage in Middlemarch and Jane Eyre we must first acknowledge the 19th century perspective. Marriage was the center of the woman's role in society, and an independent woman such as George Eliot herself was extremely rare. The education a woman received reinforced this view of the marital institution. However, the role of the woman in society began to evolve over the 19th century, as reflected in the proposal of the Married Woman's Property Bill in 1856 (Nestor, Female Friendships and Communities, p10) which could give the widow the independence her deceased partner had enjoyed. Eliot's Middlemarch is written using such changes in society as the backdrop of provincial life, where although marriage remained of primary importance, such changes as the Property Bill still had their effect. Bronte's Jane Eyre, on the other hand, takes the autobiographical perspective of one woman's own experience, which tends heavily towards a personal view of marriage. Nevertheless, both novels share the same viewpoint on many aspects of this issue. In this essay I shall examine the imagery associated with marriage, the tendency for marriage to be an unhappy affair, and the arguably happy resolutions the female protagonists come to regarding matrimony. It will also be important to notice the ellipses of the marriage ceremony and children in both novels, and to examine the feminist debate on the value of the novels."

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