Friday, February 17, 2012
Oh the female woes
I often wonder the mindsets of families with daughters. In Middlemarch, and the time the novel took place, women from non-working class families are, in a general sense, raised to be wives and mothers. Rosamond knows what she wants out of life:. She wants to become a member of the aristocracy, and she thinks a marriage to Lydgate will provide this. But her marriage to Lydgate is not what she expects. Her upbringing and education do not prepare her for the hardships all married couples experience. It is almost like Rosamond is raised to be a failure at what she is expected to be in life. How is it people can expect women to succeed in life, especially the life that they were breed for, and was chosen for them, not by them, if they are not given the necessary tools to succeed. I realize I am looking at this from a modern point of view, but I still find it frustrating.
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I think that is actually a hard question to answer because I don't think anyone truly understands what marriage is like until after the fact. Even in the modern day, we spend more time flattering one another during dating than elaborating on expectations for married life. Perhaps that is why Middlemarch is still relevant today? Time and society will change but discrepancies between courtship and marriage stay fundamentally the same.
ReplyDeleteWomen in Rosamond's time had to be tricky with their decisions, and those decisions were usually marital. Has anyone married for love in this novel yet? I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me wonder how often women of that time actually married for love. It seems like it was rare. Money and status seem to be so much more important than love. In a way, that's still a trend today, in some aspects... Maybe people have always just mistaken other things for love.
ReplyDeleteI like this post, Jennifer, because it provides a smart reader response. I share your frustrations, too. Certainly Eliot does a good job explaining how/why these characters find themselves in these frustrating situations--and points out the flaws in the gender/social structure, especially when it comes to the options for and education of women.
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