Middlemarch: Victorian Education for Women

First Edition

With dim light and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but, after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness, for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for their ardently willing soul” (Middlemarch 1).

      Middlemarch is one of my most beloved novels, one I have read half a dozen times or so. The rich prose and complex characters can never be exhausted, regardless of the number of readings. Perhaps because I am an educator, I tend to read the novel in terms of Dorothea's education. Over the next few blogs, I will write about the key facets of her education.

The Victorian Woman's Insufficient Education

     We learn about Dorothea's paltry education prior to the temporality of the novel. Although England’s education system was undergoing changes, women’s education was certainly inferior to the schooling available to men. According to Keith Evans, in The Development and Structure of the English Education Systems:

The main concern [of female education] was for those female accomplishments considered important for the marriage market—dancing, singing, instrumental music, deportment, embroidery, painting, and French, Italian and German. This was combined with a smattering of general knowledge obtained from catechisms of historical and geographical facts and some English and arithmetic (50). 

      Dorothea, we learn, has received some formal education within the home of a British family (4), before moving to Lausanne, Switzerland where she was educated under Swiss Puritanism, and “fed on meager Protestant histories” (176). Although Eliot does not elucidate all the particulars of her learning, we know that this time period—the 1820s and 1830s—was a time when women were expected to have weak opinions” (5). Any subject of educational importance would have only been taught superficially. Dorothea considers that “the toy-box history of the world adapted to young ladies . . . had made the chief part of her education” (76). While most women in the novel are content to accept the inferior standard of education available to them, the narrator tells us that Dorothea, “the poor child, [wished] to be wise herself” (56). In addition to any formal education she received, she takes responsibility for her own learning. Cardinal Newman, in his seminal work on liberal education--The Idea of a University--credits efforts to self-teach: “Self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind”(149). Dorothea turns to the one viable option for receiving an education—self-education.

     It is useful to consider Newman's The Idea of a University which expresses his viewpoints of education, published only two decades prior to Middlemarch's publication. One could argue that Eliot endorses many of Newman's ideas in her novel. Newman maintains that the purpose of a university education, is “on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement” (ix). Newman claims that a quality education will include a range of disciplines and subject matters. He argues that, although students cannot study every course, they will benefit from being a part of an institution that houses all the courses. He explains: “Thus is created a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes . . . He profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers . . . He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them (102). An education which highlights several disciplines and exposes us to many epistemologies is most conducive to intellectual and philosophical growth. Newman argues that under this system of education a “habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom” (102). Eliot’s views on education, as expressed through the narrator of Middlemarch, resonate with Newman’s discourses. Eliot, an advocate for liberal education, endorses the use of a range of theoretical ideas and practices. The narrator says: “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view” (58). It is through a liberal education—outside of an institution, of course, for women did not have the privilege to attend university—that Dorothea is transformed.

      Next post, I will focus on Mr. Brooke's contribution to Dorothea's education.