Relations between the sexes have been a topic of discussion for many years. How genders relate to each other, their similarities in situations, and how different they may encounter comparative life tribulations, including roles imposed by society. By analyzing the characters Dorothea Brooke, Tertuis Lydgate and Edward Casaubon we can identify the issues the genders have in common and how they deal with them. George Eliot's Middlemarch uses imagery and language to illustrate how the genders face similar issues of dissatisfaction and social concerns throughout the novel. The setting of Middlemarch is set in the years 1830-1832. Historical context would tell us that this novel was written right before the First Reform Bill of 1832. Understanding the setting can help us contextualize why certain events happen in the novel to particular characters. Apart from this there has been much critical speculation on this novel, analyzing many aspects of the work. Robert Speaight writes: “To return to Adam Bede (1859) from reading Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda is to experience a shock of naivety. The writer is too eager to tell us everything about herself, her tastes, her feelings, her philosophy. (93) This critic is telling us that in Middlemarch, the author's personal voice is too strong to include in the narrative or character plot. With this in mind, we as readers must not lose focus on each character's personal story. "Modern critics agree... that the novel has unity and that its subject is an exploration of human aspiration and fulfillment through individual and social influences..." as a veneer for various themes that Eliot uses throughout the images and language. (Doyle 118) Starting with...... middle of the paper...... with on every page makes George Eliot's Middlemarch a timeless classic that can cross many boundaries.Bibliography1. Speaight, Robert. George Eliot. London: Arthur Barker Limited, 1954. Print.2. Elliot, George and Gordon Sherman. Haight. Selections from the letters of George Eliot. New Haven [Conn.: Yale UP, Print3. Doyle, Mary Ellen. The Comprehensive Answer: George Eliot's Imaginary Rhetoric. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1981. Print.4. Hardy, Barbara. Special Features: Readings in George Eliot. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1982. Print.5. Bloom, Harold. George Eliot. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Print.6. Eliot, George and Rosemary Ashton. Middlemarch. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.7. Shuttleworth, Sally. George Eliot and nineteenth-century science: the fiction of a beginning. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1984. Print.