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."

Question: How can the description of Bulstrode’s inner turmoil relate to Eliot’s construction of the “imagined community” of Middlemarch?

Bulstrode’s past and present converge as he is forced to deal with the consequences of his unscrupulous decision, putting him at a crossroad between reputation and redemption. With reference to Anderson’s “Imagined Communities”, the way that Bulstrode is forced to confront the reality also sheds light on Eliot’s construction of an “imagined community” in the novel as she orchestrates the plot events.

Eliot weaves her “web” through the simultaneous events that concern different characters and also builds an “imagined community” in the readers’ minds (Anderson 424). As the events proceed in “homogenous, empty time”, the novel is able to represent the “imagined community”, selectively depicting the daily lives of different characters to create the Middlemarch society Eliot hopes us to visualize (424). Although Ladislaw and Bulstrode are both embedded in the same Middlemarch society, Ladislaw knows nothing of his relationship with Bulstrode and is merely the latter’s employee because of how well Bulstrode hides his secret of denying Ladislaw’s mother the Dunkirks’ inheritance. We as readers also know that Ladislaw is the grandson of Bulstrode’s first wife because Eliot has already embedded this fact in our minds previously through Raffles in Ch. 53, allowing us to see the “links” between the two characters who seem to have nothing to do with each other (423). Therefore, readers are given an omniscient view of the events by Eliot, watching the characters “like God”, while Eliot presides over all of us by controlling when to reveal the secret and the order we address each characters’ problems (423).

Similar to how Bulstrode’s mistake “kept their hold in (his) consciousness”, it is also held in our consciousness. While he is enjoying his respected position in Middlemarch and his success, Raffles’ reappearance threatens to subvert the status quo and causes Bulstrode’s guilt to resurface. The “objects” that Bulstrode turns his back on, which is his continual justification of using the dirty money “for God’s sake”, comes back to haunt his mind. At the same time, we readers are controlled by Eliot to turn our back on Bulstrode’s inner struggle temporarily while she interweaves it with other events regarding other characters. Bulstrode’s full secret is only disclosed to us eight chapters after Raffles’ hint at Ladislaw’s relationship with Bulstrode. When Eliot jumps to discuss Lydgate’s debt and the auction before allowing Ladislaw and Bulstrode to “reappear” in Ch.61, Bulstrode’s secret still “kept (its) hold in (our) consciousness”. It is temporarily stored in the readers’ consciousness as the “imagined community” conjured by Eliot gives us “complete confidence in (the characters’) steady…simultaneous activity” (423). By allowing the events to move through calendrical time, Eliot merges the “interior” time of the novel to the “exterior” time of readers, hypnotizing us into a single “imagined community” (424).

Although to Bulstrode the events progress in calendrical time – from his past involvement in the Dunkirks’ thieving business to his reputable status in Middlemarch now, his secrets are brought to the surface through flashbacks and make known to the readers presently reading the novel. Not only Bulstrode sees the “successive events inward and outward…in one view” as he reflects on his mistakes and the potential repercussions if they are exposed to the Middlemarch society, readers are also able to do so – Bulstrode’s guilt is made known to us through Eliot’s omniscient narrative, and the outward events such as Raffles threatening to reveal Bulstrode’s secret is processed by the readers in turn, while the troubles concerning other characters, such as Lydgate’s debt and Dorothea’s feelings in Ladislaw are still occupying the space in readers’ consciousness and the other “spaces” of the novel.

Furthermore, Eliot suggests that “each (event) might be dwelt on in turn” as she moves between characters. The progression of events in calendrical time seems to attribute the plot events to “temporal coincidence” and Eliot’s power as the author (Anderson 422). However, Bulstrode’s flashbacks “wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present”, suggesting that the events he did years ago may have affected the present, forcing him to seek redemption. His deeply religious personality further causes him to justify his past actions due to “remarkable providences”, instead of “temporal coincidence” (422). In the same logic, the death of Mr Dunkirk, leading to Bulstrode marrying the widow, or even the sudden appearance of Raffles can also be seen as the work of fate. Yet, no one knows if the events that shaped Bulstrode’s current dilemma would have been the same if “temporal coincidence” had not played a part in it. Ultimately, Eliot is the mastermind behind the “imagined community” and can be said to have orchestrated the role of both fate and time in the novel.