A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.
Eliot has sometimes likened Dorothea to Don Quixote's lady, Dulcinea, but throughout "Middlemarch" she is really casting Dorothea as Don Quixote himself
