Editing Middlemarch (section)

===The "Woman Question"===
Central to ''Middlemarch'' is the idea that Dorothea Brooke cannot hope to achieve the heroic stature of a figure like [[Teresa of Ávila|Saint Teresa]], for Eliot's heroine lives at the wrong time, "amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion".<ref>"Finale" to ''Middlemarch''</ref> [[Antigone]], a figure from Greek mythology best known from [[Sophocles]]' play, is given in the "Finale" as a further example of a heroic woman. The literary critic Kathleen Blake notes Eliot's emphasis on St Teresa's "very concrete accomplishment, the reform of a religious order", rather than her Christian mysticism.{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |p=288}} A frequent criticism by feminist critics is that not only is Dorothea  less heroic than Saint Teresa and Antigone, but George Eliot herself.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Austen |first1=Zelda |title=Why Feminist Critics Are Angry with George Eliot |journal=College English |date=1976 |volume=37 |issue=6 |pages=549–561 |doi=10.2307/376148 |jstor=376148}} {{subscription required}}</ref> In response, [[Ruth Yeazell]] and Kathleen Blake chide these critics for "expecting literary pictures of a strong woman succeeding in a period [around 1830] that did not make them likely in life".{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |p=310}} Eliot has also been criticised more widely for ending the novel with Dorothea marrying Will Ladislaw, someone so clearly her inferior.{{sfnp |Blake |1976 |pp=306–310}} The novelist Henry James describes Ladislaw as a ''dilettante'' who "has not the concentrated fervour essential in the man chosen by so nobly strenuous a heroine".{{sfnp |James |1873}}