@ayjay’s real blog reflects on how Middlemarch is (among other things) a story of just-missed possibilities, and how life is just like that. Obviously, (he says), Dorothea and Lydgate were the ideal couple, but it was just that the time was wrong.
One of the best things for me about Middlemarch is that it works out neither tragically, nor with the right lovers perfectly paired off and the loose ends tied up. Like most of our lives, it resolves into things being kind of OK.