During the publication of Middlemarch, there were numerous amounts of events happening. Throughout the Victorian Era, the United Kingdom saw a rapid change to the world around them. There were inventors creating neat gadgets, government was making great progression, and philosophers were brining about new ideaologies and ways of thinking. It truly seemed like an exciting time to be apart of; throughtout this time one event that was very intresting and that can be connected back to the novel would be the refrom era. During this time in the UK the country was looking for a political refrom in parliament. 'The act was desgined to abolish tiny districts, gave representation to tiny cities, gave the vote to landowners, tenant farmers and shopkeepers and to householders who paid a yearly rental of 10 Euros. Only qualifying men were able to vote; the act introduced the first statuory bar to women voting, by defining a voter as a male.' Charles Grey and the wigs created the successfull refrom and it was titled: Representation Act of the People 1832, the act only applied in England and Wales. 

As a mother and an educated woman in the UK, reading the section about Lyndgate and his urgency for hospital refrom in the novel Middlemarch has brought me a great deal of emotions. There is a connection between the hospital reform and the reform act of 1832 as the novel goes on to talk about how many of the residents are horrified of the change and are weary about the situation as a whole. A rather relatable quote to better explain: "The standard of the profession is low in Middlemarch…I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status, for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople here…I am painfully aware of the backwardness under which medical treatment labors in our provincial districts." This can be understood as a representation of how the reforms needed to be done but not in the way they turned out. The reform act of 1832 did not give us women the eligibilty to vote, but instead gave that right t the men. The quote given can relate to this because of how Mr Blustrode explained that middlemarch operates in an old fashioned kind of way, where the men get to have and do everything, even without the skill set or knowledge/ eligibilty to do so just because they are men. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832

Eliot, George. “Chapter 7-12.” Middlemarch, by George Eliot, IndyPublish.com, 2006, pp. n/a-n/a.