Middlemarch | Historical Context

Middlemarch Historical Context

Reform

Eliot deliberately locates the action of this novel in the three years that culminated with the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. Following the American and French Revolutions, demands for political reform increased in England. There was a growing belief in the rights of all Englishmen to participate in government, whether they were property holders or not. Anglican clergy and landowners were the two groups staunchly opposed to this development. Against weakened Tory (conservative) opposition and rising agitation outside Parliament, the first of three nineteenth-century reform bills was passed in 1832. The Reform Act eliminated so-called rotten boroughs (voting districts that had far fewer residents than others yet had equal political representation), redrew voting districts in light of current population distribution, and extended the franchise further into the property-owning middle class. With the passage of this act the aristocracy's political monopoly was broken forever, and about half of all...
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