Liberal Evaluation in the Character System of Middlemarch

This article argues that George Eliot's Middlemarch (1874) uses character foils to promote liberal habits of evaluation in readers. By deliberately contrasting Dorothea Brooke's ethos of sympathetic discipline with Fred Vincy's ethos of egoistic spontaneity, the novel cultivates readers' appreciation for these conflicting ethical modes. In so doing, Middlemarch invites readers to adopt the many-sided understanding of ideals championed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859).