“Middlemarch” (post 7) by George Eliot (post 18): Dorothea is nearsighted (1, p. 444), her Uncle wears eyeglasses (1, p. 454), so why doesn’t she?

Women did wear eyeglasses in the nineteenth century (2). Perhaps not as commonly as men. But so far, the issue has not even been raised as to why Dorothea does not wear them, or at least have them for optional use on appropriate occasions.

When the narrator recurrently makes a point of saying that Dorothea has “short-sighted eyes,” does that imply a defect in her character?

Or did the author mean nothing significant by it?

For my purposes, it would have been better if Dorothea had eyeglasses, but wore them only at certain times, indicating different personalities. Or maybe George Eliot knew that, and wanted to avoid the issue.

1. George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans]. Middlemarch [A Study of Provincial Life] [1872]. Edited with Notes by David Carroll. With an Introduction by David Russell. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019.

2. Trystan L. Bass. “A Brief History of Women’s Eyeglasses.” http://www.trystancraft.com/costume/2018/04/17/a-brief-history-of-eyeglasses/