Middlemarch: The story about the reformation of female identity in the 19th century capitalist paradigm

George Eliot lived in the early Victorian age which witnessed a transformation in the social structure because of the Industrial Revolution. In Middlemarch, she analyzes the emergence of the capitalist paradigm, and the impact of the new system on individuals and institutions. To demonstrate the interaction among history, culture, industry, defined gender roles and the position of woman in the newly formed social strata, she creates a set of characters from all the layers of the society and weaves their stories in a web of relations. The stories of three women, Dorothea, Rosamond, and Mary from the main classes of the society (aristocracy, middle class, and working class), are rendered along with the expectations of the specific classes in society, with social and political changes, and with the institution of marriage and the moral values pertaining to each class. Eliot indicates that the classes, the products of the capitalist economy, shape the personality of the characters. In the male dominated socio-economic model, women are left outside the production mechanisms, and their efforts for self-development are hindered by the norms of patriarchal society. Appreciating the individual efforts of women who try to go beyond the limits, but seeing also that women suffer from the insufficiency of opportunities, Eliot attempts in her work to depict an ideal heroine. Hence, Middlemarch is the story revealing the evolution of the female identity in capitalist patriarchal order.