
NOTE: This is an in-depth book review and CONTAINS SPOILERS.
In the first part, George Eliot introduced us to the young Brooke sisters—sweet, simple-natured Celia and her fervently religious older sister Dorothea. The latter becomes enamored of an elderly scholar, Mr. Casaubon, while evading the advances of Sir James Chettam, a respectable but (to Dorothea) utterly prosaic gentleman. Book 2 continues this drama and fleshes out a range of other Middlemarchers, including the young and ambitious Tertius Lydgate, glamorous Miss Rosamund Vincy, and the banker Bulstrode and his associates, eager to strengthen their influence over the politics and religion of this provincial English town.
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