In the law husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person... Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayA woman...must endure the life her husband makes for her... In Middlemarch, George Eliot offers a portrait of a close-knit, semi-rural community, but in fact transcends this simplistic framework to consider a range of issues social and political, thus positioning herself as one of the great dialectical writers of the Victorian era. Eliot's interest is not sparked by the gossip and petty politics of rural life, and his amused contempt, which ranges from cynical to ferocious as he describes the inhabitants of Middlemarch, underlines the fact that he needs protagonists who are intellectuals to prevent his works from slipping into the abyss of irony and condescension. Since Eliot appears not to be writing about the same society as Middlemarch, the novel is consistent on the theme of marriage; this is where the disparate plot points converge, and this is where Eliot's real strengths lie. Similarly, in He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope focuses not on the political workings of a particular town (in this case, Barchester) or institution (such as the Church of England), but instead on the choices made in marriage. In particular, Eliot and Trollope contemplate alienation and the consequences of poor decisions, drawing on a range of explorations of male authority to place their works within the wider Victorian debate over women's rights. During the late 17th and 18th centuries, society witnessed the beginning of a move away from the idea that marital love can only exist as an ideal and towards an ethical imperative to marry for love. While in no way a radical move away from the status quo advocated by Blackstone, whispers of John Locke's contract ethics began to creep into the institution of government, as well as the family. Locke defined "contract" as a mutually voluntary agreement, arguing that any violation of the terms of the contract would render it dissolvable. However, as soon as this contractual ethic was applied to marriage, a discussion arose about the contractual foundations of marriage, which ensure that the husband should not subordinate or undermine his wife. Added to this was a discussion of the economic consequences of marriage: women's rights were a necessary corollary of the progress enjoyed during the Victorian period. All these factors converged in the campaigns that led to the reforms, including the Factory Acts of 1844, 1847 and 1850 (which affected women and children), the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 (which gave a legally separated wife the right to retain her earnings, and allowing, in the case of a man divorcing his wife for adultery, the wife to argue that her adultery was aggravated by cruelty or abandonment) and finally, in 1870, the first Women's Property Act. Set in the 1990s 30 of the nineteenth century against the backdrop of the frenetic appeals and counterattacks centered on the legal denial of female subjectivity, Middlemarch is a novel centered on the debate on women's property and the right to marry for love. Eliot incorporates examples of both characters who fail to conform to society's expectations (which she clearly believes are admirable), and characters so consumed by traditional ideas of male authority and female submission that Eliot believes they should be taught a lesson. She therefore successfully narrates and criticizes at the same time. That Dorothea is described as having a nature"entirely ardent, theoretical and intellectually consequent... struggling in the bonds of a narrow teaching, surrounded by a social life that seemed nothing more than a labyrinth of little paths, a walled maze of little paths that did not lead to withering" it seems suggest that Eliot intends to highlight the harmful effects that the provincial society of Middlemarch can have on even a strong-willed teenager. For further emphasis, Eliot writes in his prelude: "Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and domestic life was that opinions were not put into practice." important male figures in the novel, not least the rather unenlightened Arthur Brooke. Brooke's dialogue is largely made up of traditional attitudes regarding the nature of women, who he believes are only suited for "music, fine arts, that sort of thing." His rejection of Dorothea's knowledge and aspirations has a direct impact on the topic at hand - marriage - as cultural assumptions regarding female inferiority and male intelligence push brilliant female characters like his niece into a difficult position in the sphere domestic. Dorothea is clearly not a “perfect” character – Eliot makes no attempt to hide his disgust at Dorothea's self-defeating characteristics – and in chapter 4, Celia berates her sister, saying, “You always see what no one else sees… yet you never saw what is clear enough." However, while the character of Dorothea speaks in poignant and beautiful metaphors and is presented as an innocent altruist, Eliot's portrayal of Mr. Casaubon sometimes borders on caricature. Eliot seems to work through superlative juxtapositions to emphasize the importance of making "right" choices in marriage, and although he portrays Casaubon as attempting to show kindness towards Dorothea, he takes every opportunity to describe him as "repugnant" and "death's-headed." ” – and, at one point, as Milton's “affable archangel.” Trollope employs a similar tone of socio-historical observation of individual experiences which, born of society's unenlightened attitudes, evidently shape his characters' marriages. Hugh Stanbury is a case in point: he becomes a hero because he marries despite the lack of money "A vague ideal of self-denial came into his mind, - that... the poetry of his life was, in effect, the ability to take more. care for other human beings than for himself." Similarly, Nora Rowley rejects Lord Peterborough's marriage proposal and says, "there is a time when a girl must be supposed to know what is best for herself, just as there is for a man" when she is reprimanded by her parents for choosing Hugh. Trollope's character is therefore engaged in a quite radical feminist discourse. Trollope re-emphasizes the contractual ethic of marital love by articulating the obsession of Trevelyan for his perceived entitlement to "mastery" and the monomania that comes with it. He cannot trust Emily, and therefore believes that she requires the "rigor of surveillance". However, by hiring a personal detective, Trevelyan undermines the entire basis of the consensual contract that feminists hoped to see introduced into the institution of marriage. Ultimately, Trevelyan destroys his own home, symbolically destroying the domestic life he had always wanted. Trollope thus appears to equate female subjectivity with domesticity, demonstrating that a marriage must be based on mutual love and respect to function. It is significant that Eliot's most notable passages focus on the problems of marriage. For example, after the wedding, Dorothea reflects: But once you cross the threshold of marriage, the wait ends.concentrate on the present. Once you have embarked on your marital journey, it is impossible not to realize that you are not making any progress and that the sea is not in sight, that, in fact, you are exploring a closed basin. This metaphor for the "journey" of marriage aptly describes the growing loss and desperation Dorothea feels as her marriage fails to live up to her expectations. Later in the novel, Lydgate describes his disappointment in his marriage by saying that he feels "as if he had opened a door out of a suffocating place. And found it walled up." Here, Eliot uses the language of imprisonment to describe the emotions of a male victim of contemporary culture. Indeed, the strength of the novel is the presentation of the tragedy of a truly consensual contract, both partners would be able to continue to realize their ambitions, each enjoying the 'encouragement of the other. However, the murder of Dorothea and Lydgate's raison d'etre - social reform and scientific progress respectively - highlights once again the importance of contractual ethics and the harmful effects of the legal denial of female subjectivity. A notable episode in He Knew He Was Right occurs when Miss Stanbury is told of Dorothy's rejection of Mr. Gibson, at which point she declares that it was so. "as if I asked her to walk the streets." Ironically, prostituting herself is exactly what Miss Stanbury asks Dorothy to do by saying that she should marry a man for purely mercenary reasons. The main question on the reader's mind In Middlemarch - beyond whether Dorothea will eventually marry Will Ladislaw - is the question of why she married Casaubon in the first place. Despite her self-deprecating statements and her desire for knowledge, it seems inconceivable that someone as exuberant and romantic as Dorothea could ever fall in love with someone as cold and callous as Casaubon. Yet Dorothea is unable to ask herself this question. While Celia is happy in a more superficial and traditional relationship, Dorothea is unable to reconcile her desire for independence with this conventional practice, and therefore requires a more modern marriage of consensual love and respect. However, one might assume that Dorothea is incapable of love at the time of her introduction to Casaubon due to the damage she has suffered by being orphaned and raised by her uncle. Furthermore, it is clear that Dorothea is a fantasist and, to some extent, is actually marrying a father figure. He attempts to treat the relationship as a fantasy, reflecting on absence and loss, treating Casaubon as both a lover and a father. This approach, however, ultimately fails, inspiring her to turn to Will as a release from the monotony. It is important to recognize that neither George Eliot nor Anthony Trollope can truly be labeled proto-feminists. The Lockean appeal to the contract principle permeated the 19th century, and although Eliot was enlightened (she would clearly have had more interest in women's rights than Trollope, being a woman herself), Trollope appears fundamentally ambivalent about feminism; both have clearly been conditioned by the society in which they exist. In He Knew He Was Right, Trollope seems to suggest that male authority is right, but it should manifest itself through loving persuasion rather than harsh coercion. This is certainly not a radically feminist polemic, and both Trollope and Eliot are clearly interested in other social issues beyond those relating to women's rights. Trollope references Locke and idealizes marriages born of love, but also highlights the general question of progress - both economic and domestic - beyond the arena of.