This article accepts some critics` view that evangelical feminism existed side by side with Enlightenment feminism during the nineteenth century. That women were different from men, and in general, inferior to them was a Victorian commonplace. According to these critics` views, Enlightenment feminism and evangelical feminism explode this commonplace, but they do so in opposing ways: Enlightenment feminism by denying difference, evangelical feminism by extolling virtues rooted in female experience and culture. This paper asserts that Eliot`s feminism is based on evangelical feminism, which concentrates on extolling feminine characteristics. Additionally, I argue that Eliot admits the good points of Enlightenment feminism such as equal rights, autonomy, and self-realization, while still maintaining the feminine characteristics as useful and essential values. Eliot`s feminism can be seen as eclectic and synthetic, merging opposite streams of feminism of that time. A close study of Dorothea Brooke`s moral development would confirm these aspects of Eliot`s feminism Dorothea Brooke, heroine of Middlemarch, embodies the values of femininity which Eliot considered important. The power to enter into the feelings of others and to suspend judgement of others, are the virtues found in Dorothea`s moral viewpoint. By the novel`s end, however, she is confronted with moral dilemmas in which her ethic of care or responsibility for others does not work for herself or for hers. Dorothea learns that living for others does not always mean being good, nor does living for herself always mean being selfish. The concepts of rights, autonomy, and self-realization, previously understood by Dorothea to belong only to the masculine realm, are realized as important in her own life as well.