A Tragedy of Egoism——an Analysis of George Eliot's Moral Concern in Middlemarch

I.IntroductionVirginia Woolf speaks of Middlemarch as“the magnificentbook which with all its imperfection is one of the few Englishnovels written for grown-up people.”(Rubinstein,795)Middlemarch is also George Henry Lewes’favorite amongEliot’s books.Indeed,compared with Eliot’s earlier works,Middlemarch,a close“study of provincial life”,is more matureand complex.In the small provincial town——Middlemarch,individualsfrom different classes interact with each other and theirrelations…