The Unhistoric Acts

George Eliot's Middlemarch, published in 1871, follows Dorothea Brooke — a brilliant young woman who burns to do something meaningful with her life. She imagines herself a modern Saint Theresa, transforming the world through bold, heroic action. But life humbles her. A difficult marriage, a lost inheritance, thwarted ambitions. What remains is a pattern of small, quiet goodness: visiting a grieving friend, speaking a word of peace in a heated moment, quietly using her own money to fund a struggling young doctor's work.…