Standard literary histography thus reserves autonomy and agency for the centre, and necessary imitation with local colour for the peripheries. (Julien, 674)
How can the relationship of language between the core and peripheries in Julien's "The Extroverted African Novel" shed light on the power dynamics within Middlemarch society?
Passage: "Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the consciousness."
Dorothea sees her relationship to Casaubon not only as lovers, but more as a teacher and a student, or a disciple to a God. Some hints of servitude can also be seen. (“Kissing his unfashionable shoe ties as if he were a Protestant Pope”, “as Milton’s daughters did to their father”) What is Eliot trying to convey through their unique dynamic?
