In the “Prelude” to the novel, Eliot includes an allusion to the story of Saint Theresa, a Catholic saint who lived in the early 1500s in Avila, Spain. Eliot tells Saint Theresa’s life story, describing the saint’s idealistic nature and also how, at times, her intentions were thwarted by everyday concerns and family members who underestimated her. In order to tie Saint Theresa’s story to the novel to come, Eliot concludes the Prelude in the following way:
Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
Though subtle, this passage prepares readers for Middlemarch to tell the story of a woman who “is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing,” foreshadowing Dorothea’s role in the novel. Like Saint Theresa, Dorothea is a woman with lofty goals who ends up a homemaker, trapped, as she is, by the gender roles of her time. It could be argued that, as the other primary character of the novel, Lydgate, too, is a Saint Theresa—he dreamt of changing the face of medicine and dies an average physician.
In an effort to capture Casaubon’s philosophical and studious nature, Eliot has characters allude to several important historical figures when describing Casaubon. For example, in the following passage Dorothea compares Casaubon to Pascal, a 17th century French philosopher who was also a physicist, mathematician, and inventor:
"I should learn everything then," she said to herself, still walking quickly along the bridle road through the wood. "It would be my duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works. There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Every-day things with us would mean the greatest things. It would be like marrying Pascal.”
In another moment, Dorothea remarks that Casaubon resembles a portrait she once saw of John Locke, a 17th century English philosopher. Later, Mrs. Cadwallader refers to Casaubon as “Lowick Cicero,” an allusion to an ancient Roman scholar who penned some of the foundational philosophical texts.
All of these comparisons (which occur early in the novel) lead readers to view the character of Casaubon as a scholar with high ambitions. These comparisons ultimately help readers to feel the depth of Casaubon’s (and Dorothea’s) disappointment when he is unable to finish his great work (The Key to all Mythologies) before he passes away.
At several points throughout the novel, characters reference “the Catholic Bill” or “the Catholic question,” allusions to the Catholic Relief Act of 1829. For example, when discussing which newspapers Middlemarch residents tended to prefer, the narrator alludes to the bill:
Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"—which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress—because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal.
The Catholic Relief Act allowed Catholics to legally become members of Parliament (which, until that point, had only been open to members of the Church of England) and overturned policies like the Penal Laws that imposed fines on people who did not attend Church of England services. Charles James Fox—referenced in the passage—was a prominent politician who supported the Catholic Reform Act and was known for speaking eloquently on the subject. Robert Peel—also mentioned—was the Home Secretary of England who initially opposed the reform bill and then supported it.
The narrator’s note about how the Catholic Relief Act “blotted […] Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal” is a tongue-in-cheek way of showing how conservative Middlemarch residents are. In comparing Jesuits (members of a specific order of Catholic priests) to people who worshipped Baal (an ancient deity mentioned in the Old Testament and considered to be a false god), the narrator shows how little Middlemarch residents think of Catholics. By showing how Middlemarch townspeople overall did not support the passing of the Catholic Relief Act, Eliot is highlighting how small towns can be resistant to reform.
There are many different references to the 1832 Reform Act throughout the novel as Middlemach is set in the years immediately before its passage (when it was being thoroughly debated). It comes up, for example, in the following conversation between Dorothea’s uncle Mr. Brooke and Will Ladislaw:
"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here," said Mr. Brooke. "Only I want to keep myself independent about Reform, you know; I don't want to go too far. I want to take up Wilberforce's and Romilly's line, you know, and work at Negro Emancipation, Criminal Law—that kind of thing. But of course I should support Grey."
The Reform Act expanded the population of eligible voters in the country and changed aspects of the parliamentary system in order to make it more democratic—it specifically expanded voting rights such that 1 in 5 men became eligible to vote, a steep increase from how it was before. The Act also made it harder for wealthy elites to wield unearned power.
Residents of Middlemarch are generally against the Reform Act, an orientation that is likely due to the conservative nature of small-town provincial life—something Eliot is indirectly critiquing throughout the novel. The quote from Mr. Brooke shows how the Reform Bill is, in Mr. Brooke’s estimation, more of a hot button topic than the abolition of slavery and criminal reform.
Every single chapter of Middlemarch opens with an epigraph, specifically a quote from another work of literature that has informed Eliot’s own writing. The epigraphs hint at the content in the chapter to come.
For example, the epigraph at the start of the chapter that includes the climax of the book—when Dorothea and Will declare their love for each other and kiss—is an excerpt from a John Donne Poem called “The Good-Morrow” and is about the beauty of romantic love:
And now good-morrow to our waking souls
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
This poem captures something important about romantic love generally, and also about the particular love between Dorothea and Will. The language that love “makes one little room, an everywhere” is lyrically evocative and also ties back to the fact that Dorothea and Will are intentionally choosing each other despite the fact that they will be losing Dorothea’s wealth and downsizing to a smaller space.
The allusions Eliot makes in the over 80 epigraphs she includes are too numerous to count, but range from poetry to philosophy to Shakespeare to Don Quixote. With these epigraphs, Eliot shows the depth and breadth of her literary knowledge and situates Middlemarch within larger literary traditions.
In the final paragraph of the novel, Eliot uses a simile to compare Dorothea’s nature to the River Gyndes:
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth.
This simile rests on readers knowing the story of the River Gyndes, a tributary of the Tigris River that, so the story goes, King Cyrus of Persia redirected into 360 channels in order to punish the river for drowning one of his horses. Like this mythological river, Dorothea’s energy and ambition were dammed up (by her sexist society) and redirected into smaller channels.
There is both a pessimism and optimism to this simile—Dorothea was not allowed to be the singular powerful force she hoped to be, but her true nature wasn’t squashed either; her energy was able to multiply and be shared with more people. In this way, it is possible to see her as having had more of an impact than if she had become a more political or scholarly person focused on one cause or project, as she was able to touch the lives of more people in small ways.
