Point of View

This novel is told from the point of view of a third person, omniscient narrator. The narrator knows all of the thoughts and actions of each of the characters. This is shown by the way in which sections of the novel focus first on the relationship between Dorothea and Casaubon then on the relationship between Lydgate and Rosamond. These two relationships are really unrelated until the end of the novel when the writer ties them together by allowing Dorothea to share what she has learned through her unhappy marriage to Casaubon with Rosamond in hopes of helping her to repair her marriage.

Interspersed with her use of the third person point of view, Eliot also intersperses times in the novel when she addresses her readers directly. Eliot will sometimes question her reader about some aspect of a character’s personality or expound upon the personality...