Middlemarch Essay

How to Approach the A.P. prompt for MIDDLEMARCH

How does Eliot portray characters?

How does she portray complex relationship between husband and wife?

Literary devices: Narrative perspective (Pov) and selection of detail.

Middlemarch: underline novels!!!!!

Rosamond’s personality:

She was not given to weeping and disliked it.

Lines 14 – 16: Rosamond thinks…..

Go through the entire prompt and find examples of pov (narrative perspective) of Rosamond. Find at least three examples.

Lines 77 – 79: “The thought in her mind was if she had known what he was going to be like she would never have married him.”

Lines 87 - 90: “She was determined to make no further resistance or utterance.”

Lines 23 – 26: This sudden trial was to a creature who had known nothing but indulgence.

52 – 53: His self blame gave her some hope that he would attend to her opinion.

Tertius:

Lines 48 – 50: Lydgate was bowing his neck like a creature……”

Lines 34 – 35: That she had moved away made everything more difficult for him to say but he must go on with it.”

Lines 26 – 27: “But he did wish to spare her as much as he could, and her tears cut him to the heart.”

Selection of detail:

What do the characters do or say?

Rosamond:

Lines 28 – 31: “But she did not go on sobbing. Rosamond tried to conquer her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her at the mantelpiece.”

Lines 4 – 6: “Releasing her hands from Lydgate, she rose and stood two yards away from him.”

Tone:

Line 12: Lydgate, with peremptory emphasis, “I insist upon it, that you not tell your father unless I choose to do so.”

Lines 68 – 72: “This is idle, Rosamond, you must learn to take my judgement on questions you don’t understand.”

Rosamond:

Lines 54 – 56: “Why can’t you put off the inventory and send the men away?”

Lines 68: “And surely these odious tradesman might be made to understand that and to wait for you to make proper arrangements.”

Answer the prompt.

Answer the prompt in the first paragraph!!!!!!!!!

In the body paragraph:

You start off with a mini-topic sentence

Develop the idea of the mini-topic sentence.

You must support what you are writing with a quotation.

Every time you make an assertion you have to support it with a quotation or with direct evidence from the text.

Then you discuss how this quotation supports your mini-thesis statement.

Then you show how this supports your thesis statement which supports the prompt.

Everything you write must relate to the prompt.

General Rules:

Do not use double negatives: he don’t go nowhere.

Do not use “Wanna”

Do not use informal language or slang: “She doesn’t get where he’s coming from.”

How to embed quotations:

Rosamond was a “young creature who had known nothing but indulgence and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence….” She was naïve, unschooled in the ways of the world and clearly did not understand how the world works, for she asked Tertius why he could not “send the tradesmen away” (whom she referred to later as “odious”) and put off the inventory?

Instead of writing obvious things the reader already knows about, such as:

The narrator uses this same technique to express Lydgate's emotion. "Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who has talons but who had reason too." This was used to let one know how trapped Lydgate felt. Lydgate was in a yoke and he was trying to get out by scratching his neck with this talons. From this simile one could conclude Lydgate was trying to get himself out of this situation.

or:

Another literary device Eliot uses is simile. In the line 43 Eliot describes Lydgate as being bowed down "under the yoke like a creature who has talons". This isn't only a simile, it's also clear imagery. The reader can picture a defeated yet strong creature with its neck down pulling an old wagon and imagine Lydgate doing the same.

No!

Instead:

"Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who has talons but who had reason too" which shows how trapped he felt. He was like a great strong beast of burden, with powers (talons) to defend himself but he was also blessed with the powers of reason, and was allowing himself to be constrained by a creature much weaker than himself in every respect - and to whom he was yoked in holy matrimony.

Other examples of stating the obvious when you don't know what else to write:

Narrative perspective in called into play again in lines 77 - 79. The narrator goes into Rosamond's mind and tells her thoughts after her husband's display of adamant pride. Rosamond is said to be thinking that "if she had known how Lydgate would behave, she would have never married him". This lets the reader know what Rosamond is feeling without her having to say it. Narrative perspective plays a strong key role in the understanding of emotion of this passage.

The reader already knows what narrative perspective does. S/he doesn't need to be reminded, but your telling the reader what narrative perspective is only tells the reader you don't know what else to write and you don't really understand how narrative perspective reveals the relationship between the two characters.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) was actually a woman and an early feminist. MIDDLEMARCH shows in a fair and equitable way the damage that can occur when women are left uneducated. There are two pairs of foils - the couple, Lydgate and his wife, Rosamond - who are stereotypical husband and wife at the time - the man is educated and knowledgeable about the ways of the world and the woman is not, which breeds in her a kind of child like dependency and petulance. The other couple is Dorothea Brooks, a brilliant young woman who marries a much older man with the hopes of helping him in his intellectual works. She soon becomes aware that he is not only disdainful of her attempts to help him, but that his important intellectual endeavors are pointless, pedantic and miserable failures. The young woman, in this marriage, is the far brighter and competent one, and if the world were a fairer place, would be be the one to lead the intellectual work. The two couples are contrasted to bring out the tragedy that happens when women are treated like children.

Other random things:

Who is used before the verb and connects the noun with the adjective clause.

Whom is in passive voice and receives the action and follows a preposition

Examples: To whom do you wish to speak?

To whom did you send the letter?