The oppression of the characters is generally fueled by external causes. In the case of Madame Bovary and Middlemarch, external causes such as gender norms lead to the oppression of women. In Madame Bovary, society's expectations of a wife figure limit Emma's desire to climb the social ladder. In Middlemarch, the dogmas about female intellectual abilities propagated by figures like Lydgate and Casaubon hinder Dorothea's ability to become an intellectual within society. Critic Howard Kushner writes that “the ideology…emphasized women as mothers and caretakers of the family” (Kushner 1). This quote draws the parameters of what a woman was supposed to be during the Victorian era, clearly highlighting the limitations put in place for women. Exploring the characters of Madame Bovary and Middlemarch offers insight into the oppression of women in Victorian society. The Oppression of Madame Bovary by the Society Madame Bovary offers a scathing indictment of the oppression of women in the 19th century. The life of Emma Bovary is used as an example to illustrate how women's lives were circumscribed and dictated by the men around them. Emma is presented as an average woman with fantasies of love and luxury in her heart. These fantasies never come true due to her early marriage (dictated by her father) and her bourgeois lifestyle (dictated by her husband). Her dreams are stuck between the wills of the two men in her life and although she tries, in her own way, to free herself from them, she does not find fulfillment in her life, which ultimately leads her to unhappiness and her disappearance. note the title of the novel, Madame Bovary. The title is dissociative, overshadowing the character lacking identity. According to the title, the...... middle of paper......Middlemarch, 'Obligation and Dorothea's Duplicity. Journal of Rocky Mountain Language and Literature, 2000. JSTOR. Internet. May 5, 2014. McCarthy, Patrick. Lydgate, 'the new young surgeon' of Middlemarch. Studies in English literature, 1500-1900. 10.4 (1970): 805-816. JSTOR. Internet. May 5, 2014.Nicholes, Joseph. “Dorothea in the Moated Grange: Millais’s Mariana and the Window Scenes of Middlemarch.” Journal of the Victorian Institute Vol. 20 1992: 93-124. Postlethwaite, Diana. George Eliot and science. The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot. Ed. George Levine. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 98-118. Print.Sodre, Ignes. Death by daydreaming. London: Routledge, 1999. Print. Walker, Alexander. Woman physiologically considered in terms of mind, morals, marriage, marital slavery, infidelity and divorce. London, AH Baily and Co., Cornhill, 1840. Web. May 5 2014.