Is Middlemarch really a "study of provincial life"?

What a tangled web we weave: as Bulstrode sits watching over the very ill Raffles, his blackmailer, he hopes and prays that Raffles will die, ending his troubles; calls in Lydgate, whom he'd just deeply insulted by refusing to loan him 1,000 pounds. Lydgate arrives and is cool and distant of course, but he's an honest professional and gives a sensible course of action for helping Raffles, whom he diagnosis as suffering from alcohol poisoning (obviously). Bulstrode, feelign remorse, relents and gives Lydgate the 1,000 pounds. Bulstrode leaves Raffles in the care of one of his servants, and when the servant obviously misunderstands the dosages he lets her proceed, thus killing Raffles (I covered a muder case once that was kind of similar - a nurse charged with homicide for administering too much morphine, while the dr. washed his hands of the matter.) But as it happens, Raffles had blabbed about Bulstrode's evil past, and word gets out in Middlemarch, and the people get suspicious, thinking not only that Bulstrode wanted Raffles killed, but that he paid Lydgate the 1,000 to do the deed (Lydgate's been running around town paying off his debts). So now not only is Bulstrode besmirched, justifiably, as truth will out - but Lydgate is also, and it does look pretty bad for him; it will be almost impossible for him to prove his innocence. Another great example of the tight weave of Eliot's plot, and her attention to both character details and to the social and political life of the community; the subtitle of Middlemarch is, I think, "a study of provincial life" - she is very sly and knows how dry and dull this sounds. This novel is much more than a study - but on the other hand, part of its beauty is to show the complexity of life in a seemingly "simpler" time and place.