Hmm, Middlemarch is the second Victorian novel I have read in which a father (alright uncle) has to pass on a proposal of marriage from a much older man; the other was Hard Times. Also, the second Victorian novel which addresses the frustrations of intellectually gifted women; the other being Jane Eyre. I am not sure what I would have done if I had been Dorothy Brooke's guardian. I think I would have refused my consent for her to marry either of her suitors until she was twenty-one. I cannot predict which of them she will marry, but I can predict it is going to be an unhappy marriage.