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Situational Irony
Book 2, Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis:
Overall, Eliot’s style moves from philosophical reflections to allusions and references to art, history, science, and literature to long sections of dialogue between characters and poetic peeks into characters’ minds. She is also a fan of metaphor, which she works into micro-moments of dialogue between characters as well as in macro-moments of reflecting on the dynamics of the town as a whole.
Middlemarch features a third-person narrator who can switch into using first-person narration to make their own views clear, possibly representing Eliot’s own thoughts as a writer. The narrator’s style overall is a self-aware one, as is evident in the following passage:
I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.
This excerpt is an example of the narrator reflecting on their role as a storyteller—one of many interjections like this throughout the novel. One can imagine that Eliot is trying to capture her experience as a writer here—she is focused on “this particular web” of the community of Middlemarch but hopes that it can be seen as reflecting truths about “the universe” as a whole.
The novel is unique in that there is not one protagonist or storyline, but several intersecting stories. Dorothea is the character readers get to know the most, followed by Lydgate. Though the two characters do interact with each other, their narrative arcs almost exist in parallel—both of them have ambitious dreams and end up disappointed.
Related Themes:
