Analyzing the Narrator's Attitude in George Eliot's Middlemarch

In this assignment, you will practice writing a clear thesis statement and a well-structured body paragraph. You will analyze the narrator's attitude toward Dorothea Brooke in the provided passage from George Eliot's novel, Middlemarch. Focus on identifying the literary techniques used to convey this attitude, and support your analysis with specific evidence from the text.

Group 1

Draft a thesis statement and a body paragraph based on the passage from George Eliot's Middlemarch. Your thesis should clearly state the narrator's complex attitude toward Dorothea Brooke and the literary techniques used to convey this attitude. The body paragraph should include a topic sentence, at least two pieces of quoted evidence, and insightful commentary on each piece of evidence.

Read the following passage from George Eliot's novel Middlemarch (1871). Then write an essay in which you characterize the narrator's attitude toward Dorothea Brooke and analyze the literary techniques used to convey this attitude. Support your analysis with specific references to the passage.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief* by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, -- or from one of our elder poets, -- in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. ...

*Emphasized or highlighted

Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor* by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamored of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractions, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection. With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned condition. ...

*Pascal and Taylor = philosophical and religious authors *solicitude = concern *Bedlam = famous mental hospital

The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally in favor of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent-looking, while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise, so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it.

Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by this alarming hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably reconcilable with it. Most men thought her bewitching when she was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it.

She was open, ardent, and not in the least self-admiring; indeed, it was pretty to see how her imagination adorned her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia: Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating whether it would be good for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor to herself would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance. Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker*, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton* when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty, --how could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

*Hooker = Anglican theologian *John Milton = Puritan poet

Question 2

Short answer

Write a thesis statement that clearly articulates the narrator's complex attitude toward Dorothea Brooke in the passage from Middlemarch and identifies the literary techniques used to convey this attitude.

Question 3

Essay

Draft a body paragraph that begins with a topic sentence indicating the purpose of the paragraph. Include at least two pieces of quoted evidence from the passage and provide insightful commentary on each piece of evidence, explaining how it supports your thesis statement.

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