In this thesis I examine the evolving social and personal attitudes about marriage and love as depicted in George Eliot's Middlemarch by arguing that Eliot anticipates modern marriages by critiquing traditional Victorian marital values. For the purposes of this analysis, the applicable aspects of modern marriage are sexuality, shifting gender roles, and a dismissal of social class as the major factor in choosing a partner. In order to achieve this end, I apply close textual analysis as well as a New Historical approach to examine how Middlemarch is conditioned by its historical context.