George Eliot's Middlemarch

George Eliot opens her complex study of life in the provincial Midlands with a brilliant portrait of Dorothea Brooke in all her strengths and weaknesses. Dorothea's misguided marriage is only one of the many, at first seemingly quite separate, stories of thwarted ideals, passions and ambitions. In the end the 'web of relationships' comes together as every character meets an appropriate fate. The story links the struggles of the individuals with the problems of society as a whole, as it wrestles with the disturbances that are approaching through industrialisation and a changing social order. As pretty much everyone knows George Eliot was a woman and a staggeringly talented writer. Whilst then she had to hide her gender today it brings an extra fascination that these classic books were written by a woman.