After thinking about Dorothea's mission statement of wanting to make the world a better place, I actually felt bad for her lack of option. Today, a woman can do many things: college ,a military branch, peace corp, hell,a nunnery. The lack of options for Dorothea and Cecilia is depressing to a woman of the 21st century. The desire for education and self improvement is admirable but enslavement? Not for me.
You know...after thinking about it a nunnery would probably be the better choice. Dorothea would have many hours of uninterubed time to "pray" and think about the world and how to accomplish missonary work. To do good for the world and the unfortunate people of Middlemarch. Joining a nunnery is not disgraceful and was very common for families that had many daughters and could not get them married off to honorable suitors. I feel that, that was the outcome for Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejustice.
Thoughts?
It's also a kind of confinement with other women, away from the life of knowledge and activity in society. And if Dorothea is as patriarchally cowed, yearning for masculine knowledge (or, knowledge of men, wink wink), then I could see why that option would seem like a dead end to her.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there'd be a book in this if she joined a nunnery. I do think, at the time, there was a certain path through marriage to knowledge for women to obtain, if they mastered their husbands the way society had mastered them, as women.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, good Anglican girls don't join nunneries. :) But, to your larger point, lots of women have found freedom in the seeming confinement of a convent. It's an interesting phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteI would agree that for Dorothea, her best option would have been to become a nun. She would be free to use her time in "bettering the world", however she chooses. Marrying an older man wouldn't have been my first choice.
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