Prelude: Saint Theresa and the Modern Woman

From Middlemarch by George Eliot
Eliot's famous Prelude frames the novel by comparing Dorothea to a latter-day Saint Theresa whose epic life is thwarted by the conditions of provincial existence.
Prelude

Opens with the image of the child Theresa setting out to seek martyrdom, and introduces the 'later-born Theresas' who find no coherent social faith, ending with the famous image of the 'cygnet... reared uneasily among the ducklings.'

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