" to have been driven to be more particular would have been like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows; for that new real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from the endless minutae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with the secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maiden dream. It was too early yet for fully to recognize or at least admit the change, still more for her to have readjusted that devotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life that she was almost sure sooner or later to recover it In this way, the early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult "whether that of a shrimp-pool or of deepened waters "which afterwards subsides into cheerful peace- (125). .
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At the point in the novel when this passage was presented, George Eliot has established numerous ideals of English provincial life in the 1830's. In books I and II, George Eliot has introduced two main struggles or principles dealt with during this time period. As alluded to in the above passage, Eliot examines male and female relationships and the role that both sexes played during courting and marriage. Acknowledging the ideals of marriage within this Middlemarch society' aids in examining some of the changes in ideas that occur inside their culture. Dorothea, the character being discussed in the epigraph, and her marriage to Mr. Casaubon significantly symbolizes the changing of principles held within the culture by dealing with the notion of marriage and the role that it plays within a society. .
When the novel begins, readers are introduced to the character of Dorothea who is a wealthy and single young woman. Dorothea begins the novel with an intense conviction that the conditions of their society can be improved for the majority. It is this conviction that motivates her actions in her marriage with Casaubon.
