Does Dorothea lose Casaubon's money?
Yes. By marrying Will she triggers the codicil and gives up the estate, but retains her own smaller income and gains the companionship she was denied.
What becomes of Lydgate?
He leaves Middlemarch, becomes a fashionable and financially successful doctor, regards himself as a failure, and dies at fifty; Rosamond later remarries comfortably.
Do Fred and Mary marry?
Yes. Fred proves himself in Caleb's profession, writes a practical farming book with Mary, and ultimately gains Stone Court without depending on Featherstone's will.
Is Bulstrode punished for Raffles's death?
He is publicly disgraced and leaves Middlemarch. The law does not convict him, but his authority collapses and Harriet shares his exile.
What is the novel's final judgment on Dorothea?
Her life is not publicly heroic, yet her sympathy and choices diffuse through other lives; Eliot makes unrecorded goodness a real historical force.
Themes and What the Ending Means
Idealism and usefulness: Dorothea and Lydgate begin with grand purposes but learn that moral worth depends on the practical forms those purposes take.
Marriage and misrecognition: The central marriages are built from projections that later harden into disappointment or are corrected through honesty.
Money and dependence: Inheritance, debt, professional income, and property determine which ethical choices characters can afford to make.
Reputation: Middlemarch's public judgment can expose wrongdoing, punish innocence, or turn ambiguity into apparent fact.
Interdependence: No plot remains separate: private actions alter institutions, households, and opportunities far beyond their intended targets.
Historic and unhistoric lives: The finale rejects fame as the only measure of consequence and honors diffuse acts of care.