Middlemarch

Overall, Eliot’s style moves from philosophical reflections to allusions and references to art, history, science, and literature to long sections of dialogue between characters and poetic peeks into characters’ minds. She is also a fan of metaphor, which she works into micro-moments of dialogue between characters as well as in macro-moments of reflecting on the dynamics of the town as a whole.

Middlemarch features a third-person narrator who can switch into using first-person narration to make their own views clear, possibly representing Eliot’s own thoughts as a writer. The narrator’s style overall is a self-aware one, as is evident in the following passage:

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

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