Middlemarch by George Eliot

In Victorian England, idealistic Dorothea Brooke yearns to lead a meaningful life beyond society's constraints. George Eliot's masterpiece "Middlemarch" follows her ill-fated marriage to the aging scholar Casaubon, while interweaving the lives of ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate, the reformed rake Fred Vincy, and the steadfast Mary Garth. Their private struggles with love, duty, and disappointed dreams unfold against the backdrop of a society resistant to change.
This intimate yet panoramic portrait of 19th-century society reveals the painful gap between what we dream of becoming and what life allows us to be.