Middlemarch question

I don't know if she did (though I'm sure she was very well read) but I think since she wasn't really referring to Ladislaw in a political sense but more in the personal sense she may well have simply come up with that little insightful observation on human nature on her own. Eliot was certainly insightful.?

I think there is a strong Eliot-Marx connection. Certainly Marx and George Henry Lewes have a thread between them, Marx was familiar with the Lewes' "Review" (he called Lewes the Goethemann because Lewes was an expert on Goethe). Lewes and Marx were both Hegelians, both Sociologists---all Lewes and Marx and Eliot all spoke German, and coexisted in London's literary circle. Then there is Eliot's class consciousness, vivid critiques of capitalism (Silas Marner could have been written by Gorky) and Daniel Deronda (1876), packed with fiery philosophical Jewish figures. Eliot had a fearsome curiosity, an endless appetite for ideas. I'm 99% certain that Eliot read Marx and Marx read Eliot. It is striking to find here and there a stray Marxist phrase in a Victorian novel, but it's not really surprising. I only wonder if they ever met!

I don't know if the line comes from Marx or not... I think his history repeating line comes from the "18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon", which may have been written after Middlemarch, or maybe not.

That said, I reckon Eliot would probably have read at least something by Marx, as she was apparently very interested in German philosophers and did read them in the original German because she was brainy.