If we had a keen vision & feeling of all ordinary human life' Dorothea is bright beautiful & rebellious Lydgate is the ambitious new doctor in town Both of them long to make a positive difference in the world But their stories do not proceed as expected & both they & the other inhabitants of Middlemarch must struggle to reconcile themselves to their fates & find their places in the world Middlemarch contains all of life the rich & the poor the conventional & the radical literature & science politics & romance but above all it gives us a vision of what lies within the human heart the roar on the other side of silence