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Article: Eliot's 'Middlemarch.' (George Eliot)
- Article from:
- The Explicator
- Article date:
- January 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Nicholas and Harriet Bulstrode subplot of George Eliot's Middle-march (1872) is part of a main subject of the great novel: the union of the worthy spouse with a more-or-less unworthy one. Nicholas, a rich, hypocritical banker, and his attractive wife, Harriet, with three other couples (Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy; Mary Garth and Fred Vincy; and Dorothea and Casaubon) demonstrate how an unworthy partner can variously threaten, or eventually destroy, the happiness of the worthy one, as Nicholas does Harriet's. Eliot likes to assemble characters who reflect, highlight, and shadow one another as in a series of mirrors. Harriet affects the other characters much less directly ...
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