Chaucerian Echoes: Chivalric Tradition and Gender Construction in George Eliot's Middlemarch

George Eliot’s Middlemarch critiques Victorian social and gender norms through characters' relationships with each other and with horseback riding. This paper argues that Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde informs the symbolism and literary tropes Eliot uses in crafting her narrative. Analysis of Chaucerian tropes of courtly love and medieval codes of chivalry reveals how characters either maintain or undermine traditional Victorian conventions of masculinity and femininity; these dynamics are primarily seen through horse ownership and horseback riding. One protagonist in particular, Will Ladislaw, is examined in this paper as representing ideas of androgyny through his unconventional relationships with horses and other characters, as well as his medieval approach to love in a Victorian context.