In George Eliot's Middlemarch, the reader is confronted with a cast of enigmatic characters, although the "character" to whom the reader is most exposed is perhaps the least easily understood, and for the simple fact that he shouldn't be a character. Despite the supposed objectivity possessed by an omniscient third-person narrator, Eliot eliminates these conventions by attributing to his narrator a certain level of ambiguity – a degree of questionability – within the narrative. This leads the narrator to develop a subjectivity contrary to his role, sometimes exhibiting unique opinions and revelations as the plot unfolds. This becomes more evident when analyzing a passage in which the narrator makes two distinct observations that require varying degrees of subjectivity, suddenly calling into question the extent of the narrator's role in the story. Eliot's narrator is no longer a simple vehicle for transmitting the plot, but possesses the ability to, as James Wood says, "draw our attention to the writer, to the artifices of the author's construction, and therefore to the imprint of the artist" (Wood 6). Eliot's mission of representation, of amplifying the insignificant, of trying to understand other people is best handled by something that deliberately ignores these broad concepts, but is also rudely aware of them in ways that the cast of characters inherently cannot be . We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Over the course of the book the characters develop, rationalizing their decisions or reaching some revelation as a result of those decisions. Just like the characters themselves, the narrator also proclaims a revelation or opinion, and does so outside the context of the plot. For example, in the following passage, when Casaubon introduces Dorothea to his estate, the narrator makes two distinct observations: “A woman dictates before marriage to have desire for submission afterward. And certainly, the mistakes that we mortals, male and female, make when we get our own way might make you wonder why we like them so much. (Eliot 73) The distinction lies in the way the observations are conveyed. Focusing on the first sentence, we observe that women are given a choice in decorating so that “she may have an appetite for submission” (73), a fact that neither Dorothea nor Casaubon consciously express, or act upon explicitly, but what the narrator sets the basis for such actions, however. The beginning of the sentence, "A woman..." does not precede any character assignment, implying that the narrator is observing something seemingly beyond the plot. This first sentence maintains an aphoristic structure, with the only nouns and pronouns being “women” and “she,” neither of which are assigned to anyone in particular, while the lack of subjective inflections gives the sentence an impartial and authoritative tone. Suddenly, the reader is aware of a social condition relating to marital norms, of appeasement for submission, even though the norm itself is not the focus of the plot. Yet the reader is informed anyway because the narrator's means of communication, his very role, cannot be refuted. On the one hand, the narrator plays the role of third-person omniscience, but it is only when this sentence is juxtaposed with the next one that the narrator's ability to characterize himself and formulate a unique subjectivity is realized. achieved through its ambiguity. The ambiguity, however, that degree of questionability and why the role of the narrator begins to become something more, is brought into.