Class Distinction in Middlemarch

     

CLASS DISTINCTION IN MIDDLEMARCH

     The class system itself is complex define without using a superficial definition the system was always altering due to different legislation, and upon the development of the middle class began subcategories such as the ‘upper-middle class’ and the ‘lower-working class’. “Different society classes can be (and were by the classes themselves) distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture”. The middle class came about as a result of the industrial revolution, those who had profession such as factory workers were not wealthy enough and did not have the same aristocratic heritage as the upper class, but were more affluent  and comfortable in their lifestyle them the working class. They were the “new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions.

   CLASS DISTINCTION MIDDLEMARCH:

It is the issue of class differences, of economic inequality, that is presented as the more pressing of humanity’s problems. For some reason this issue has received little critical attention. The issue of economic inequality is introduced early in the novel. It is through the young Dorothea’s efforts to improve the lot of the poor by building better cottages that we first see this issue of class. It is introduced almost anecdotally, and could be written off as a gloss on Dorothea’s ardent nature, but it stems from her looking at the luxury I which she is living and comparing it with the relative squalor in which the lower classes on her uncle’s land are living. It is this effort to improve the lives of the poorer classes that is the essence of Dorothea’s struggle to find her vocation.

And Casaubon is not just a symbol of patriarchal oppression. He is also representative of the problem of artificial class distinctions. The first inkling notion Dorothea gets that Casaubon is not the great man she thinks of him as is in his disinterest toward her plan for the cottages. She tries to overlook this by justifying his lack of concern for the poor by the fact that he is so busy with his intellectual work, and the fact that the workers on his land are really not so poorly treated. But his cold dismissal of her concerns disturbs her and she is not fully able to overlook his lack of sympathy. And this is not the only time that the class issue surfaces and causes problems between the two. The second time it arises is in reference to will Ladislaw. Dorothea first sees Ladislaw as Casaubon’s idle young relative who is taking advantage of Casaubon’s kindness and generosity in offering him an allowance. As she gets to know will better he grows in her estimation, and as the circumstances of his background unfold it is revealed that his grandmother was disinherited simply because she married a man beneath her in class. And typical of Dorothea’s ardent nature, she sees an injustice ad tries to rectify it.

This theme of classicism and economic inequality is highlighted by Dorothea’s passionate efforts to improve the lot of the poor, but it is even more powerfully underscored by her lament in the midst of all of her own suffering. The light of Dorothea’s conscience clearly illuminates the injustice of class distinction. Her recognition of the difficulty of life for the laboring classes, and her recognition of the wrongs suffered by will’s mother and grandmother because of society’s class structure, coupled with her efforts to rectify both of these situations highlight class inequality as one of the major themes of the novel. Will Ladislaw is a figure of central importance in the novel’s discussion of class issues. His very name, Will Ladislaw, resonates with the history of the legal tradition of inheritance. He is associated three times in the novel with this issue of inheritance.

1.     The disinheritance of his grandmother,
2.     The codicil to Casaubon’s will that will disinherit Dorothea if she ever marries him,
3.     The revelation of his relation to Mr.Bulstrode - Who has in essence stolen a second inheritance from him.

Not only is Ladislaw thus thoroughly immersed in the issue of class through the legal tradition of inheritance, but Eliot also depicts of him as an “a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of belonging to o class”. This further sets him up      as a model for evolution away from artificial class distinctions. At this class was not just a matter of economics. It was a matter of blood. The members of the aristocracy were superior to the commoners because of a natural, inbred nobility (pun intended). Ladislaw is distrusted and looked down upon because he contains the taint of foreign blood. His Jewish or Italian polish heritage causes rumor and speculation to swirl around him. Ladislaw’s intelligence and goodness highlight the ridiculousness of these racist and classist views. Dorothea’s acceptance of will represents the rejection of the save lives that makes him noble: It is not that his uncle is a duke. But in the class system of the time, the uncle is the nobler of the two. Lydgate, however, is not able to fully free himself from the bonds of the aristocratic tradition. As admirable a character a Lydgate is, he is also flawed. His main character flaw lies in his arrogance surrounding the nobility of his blood. In chapter 15^th Eliot introduces us to what makes Lydgate such an admirable figure. She also illustrates his flaws:

Lydgate’s conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. […] All his faults were marked by kindred traits and were those of a man who had a fine baritone, whose clothes hung well upon him, and who had a fine baritone, whose clothes hug well upon him, and who even in his ordinary gestures had an air of inbred distinction.

These false notion of class superiority are so ingrained in him that his very being is infused them. In the same way that the young Dorothea unthinkingly embraces her prescribed gender role, Lydgate has subconsciously assumed the notion that a man born of noble blood is naturally superior to those of more common lineage.

Lydgate’s classism is inextricably linked with his sexism. It is his aristocratic pretensions that mislead him into thinking he needs a gentlewoman for a wife. His marriage to Rosamond, that ultimately dooms him to mediocrity, is the result. And the expenses of that wedding are just as much Lydgate’s fault as Rosamond’s. It is his picture of himself as the aristocrat that makes him feel the need to buy the finest of furnishings for his home; ad it is that which begins his descent in to debt. 

Lydgate is certainly a figure to admire, but his faults are deeper than either Dorothea’s or Ladislaw’s. Dorothea and Ladislaw are steps forward in the evolutionary process of society. Lydgate is too much rooted in the past. It is his classism that ultimately murders his brains. As powerful an example of the destructive force of these false perceptions of class as Lydgate is, and as symbolic as the death of Casaubon and the emergence of Ladislaw is of this move away from strict class distinction toward greater equality, the falseness of the tradition of the class structure is perhaps even more powerfully displayed in the contrast between the Vinci's and the Garths. Rosamond Vinci is presented as a frivolous young woman. As the worldly rose she is truly an ornament. Her education, both by her family and Miss Lemon’s school, has indoctrinated her into this role. Dorothea sees the life of a gentlewoman as a prison to be escaped. She longs for action: to do something good and meaningful. And this criticism of the idle gentlewoman is made even more vivid give Dorothea’s guilt at her position of luxury juxtaposed against the hardships of the working class. It never occurs to Rosamond to be anything other than what she is. Her failing is twofold- she has unthinkingly accepted both the gender and class roles prescribed to her. Both leave her a frivolous and idle person, waddled in moral stupidity. But if it is an example of moral stupidity to be an idle gentlewoman, then it is at least equality so to be an idle gentleman.