This essay examines Mary Garth's pivotal moral decision in George Eliot's Middlemarch — her refusal to take Mr. Featherstone's money or burn his will — through the lens of utilitarian philosophy. The paper distinguishes between act utilitarianism, which judges actions by immediate circumstances, and rule utilitarianism, which holds that consistent adherence to a virtuous code best serves personal happiness. Drawing on John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, the essay argues that Mary's conduct aligns most closely with rule utilitarianism: her refusal reflects not selfless altruism but a coherent personal standard in which moral virtue is itself a component of happiness. The author also reflects on how they would act in a comparable situation.
The paper demonstrates comparative framework analysis: it introduces two versions of a philosophical doctrine (act versus rule utilitarianism), applies both systematically to the same literary case, and argues that one framework better explains the character's behavior. This technique — testing competing theories against the same evidence — is a foundational move in literary-philosophical scholarship.
The essay opens with a close reading of Mary Garth's scene, then introduces utilitarianism as a philosophical lens. It works through act utilitarianism and its limitations for this case, pivots to rule utilitarianism as the more fitting explanation, and reinforces the argument with Mill's own words on money and happiness. The conclusion synthesizes the philosophical and literary threads into a single evaluative claim about rule utilitarianism's broader applicability to human behavior.
Mary Garth from George Eliot's Middlemarch is a kind and upright person who follows her own moral principles closely. When Mary is confronted with the difficult decision that Mr. Featherstone presents her with, she does not waver and refuses to touch the old man's money or his testament. Her action is all the more significant because of the complex background surrounding the old man's death. An avaricious, weak, and heartless person, Featherstone attempts vainly to persuade Mary into taking all his money and burning his testaments so as to ensure his family is excluded from gaining anything after his death. This situation scales human dignity and the price of human life against that of material possessions at the same time.
What is interesting is the fact that Mary is not even tempted by the fortune and resists the old man's entreaties with the greatest determination. Her reaction is eloquent precisely because she appears to discard her own interest and happiness, acting with complete disinterest for the sake of respecting her moral principles. From another point of view, however, Mary does act in her own interest — or at least she acts so as to reach personal happiness. This is explicable since one can argue that the immoral act of taking advantage of the old man's death would have constituted an impediment to Mary's happiness.
In a similar situation, I believe I would be bound to act in the same way as Mary. The main reason would be that any immoral act would affect my personal happiness and comfort. Moreover, people act in disinterested ways not necessarily because they follow the sole principle of happiness, but for virtue in itself as well. Virtue can be an end in itself, since it is a necessary ingredient in what people generally term happiness. I would make my decision based on my personal comfort in this case, since the interests of others are not directly at stake here.
Utilitarianism proposes that human beings act only so as to pursue or maintain their personal happiness. The philosophy was often condemned as an immoral doctrine that preached pleasure and self-interest as the only principles guiding human action. Its detractors argue that the philosophy discards the higher and more virtuous feelings that animate a human being, assuming that a person pursues nothing other than what is useful to himself and to his own good. However, there is certainly one aspect of utilitarianism that is cogent: every action a person takes does in some way concern the agent's well-being. If Mary had taken the money, she would have revealed a different character — one easily satisfied through material means. Since she did not take the money, the direct implication is that her immediate interest was moral satisfaction.
According to the principles of act utilitarianism, all human beings should act in whatever way a given situation requires in order to be happy. However, if Mary were to act strictly according to immediate circumstances, it is not directly obvious that she would refuse the money. If she regarded only her direct happiness — or the shortest route to it — she would probably have taken the money and preferred material satisfaction over other considerations. This is precisely the implication of act utilitarianism's emphasis on behaving according to each particular circumstance.
The other version of utilitarianism is rule utilitarianism, a form of the philosophy which holds that a person always follows the same rules or the same pattern of behavior in order to be happy. It follows that such a person always acts virtuously, regardless of the situation, and does not waver according to circumstance. In this case, Mary would have acted precisely as she did — pursuing her personal happiness and acting according to a pattern she had established before, that of being virtuous and always acting morally. The decision is therefore plain and easy to take: Mary must be virtuous in order to satisfy her own moral demands and ensure her emotional and spiritual comfort. She acts, in short, according to her pre-established set of rules.
Mary acts primarily, as she herself argues, so as not to "soil" the beginning of her life. She feels that taking the money would serve only the old man's own self-interest — his happiness lay in giving the money to anyone other than his family: "I will not let the close of your life soil the beginning of mine. I will not touch your iron chest or your will" (Eliot, 411). Mary's remark is pertinent because she keenly observes that her own satisfaction in this case would simultaneously deprive the old man of getting his own way. According to my pre-theoretical judgment, I would have acted as Mary did, since doing so would also accord with my standards and principles.
Of the forms of utilitarianism, the most pertinent — and the one which seems to agree with the general pattern of human behavior — is rule utilitarianism. Human beings behave in a certain way so as to ensure their happiness, but the rules they follow to do that also ensure that they behave in a virtuous and coherent way. Mary Garth's refusal to take Featherstone's money exemplifies this principle: her action is not a momentary calculation of immediate gain but the expression of a consistent moral character in which virtue itself constitutes a component of genuine happiness.
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