Middlemarch (Eliot, 1872)

Theme tracking

Materiality

• 8 interesting (and useful for me) that the gendered question of idealism vs materialism is pitched in Dorothea as between books and fabric

She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in guimp [fabric trimmings] and artificial protrusions of drapery.

Shakespeare references

• 7 epigram to ch 1 from Beaumont and Fletcher, which she almost certainly knew from Dyce's eds