Middlemarch
Set in the fictional English Midlands town of Middlemarch during the early 1830s, the novel follows two intertwined stories of idealism meeting reality. Dorothea Brooke, young and earnest, marries the much older scholar Edward Casaubon hoping to devote herself to his great life's work, only to find the marriage cold and his research hollow; after his death, a jealous codicil in his will threatens to cost her everything if she marries his younger cousin, Will Ladislaw, whom she has come to love. Meanwhile, the idealistic young doctor Tertius Lydgate arrives in Middlemarch hoping to reform medicine, but his ambitions unravel after an imprudent marriage to the beautiful, status-conscious Rosamond Vincy and his entanglement with the town's scandal-prone banker, Nicholas Bulstrode. Against a backdrop of provincial gossip, political reform, and the slow work of ordinary lives, George Eliot examines marriage, vocation, and the gap between youthful idealism and the world as it is.
A wealthy, idealistic woman who marries the elderly scholar Casaubon hoping to help him with his research and find purpose in her life.
Edward Casaubon's younger cousin, an artistically inclined idealist whose growing bond with Dorothea is threatened by a codicil in Casaubon's will.
A beautiful, socially ambitious young woman whose marriage to Lydgate strains under financial and personal pressure.
A plain-spoken, sensible young woman who insists Fred Vincy prove himself before she will marry him.
A wealthy, sanctimonious banker whose hidden past threatens to unravel his standing in Middlemarch.