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George Eliot’s Middlemarch
It’s been a while since I posted a book review. The main reason is I’ve been immersed in George Eliot’s massive novel, Middlemarch.
I’m a big fan of nineteenth-century British literature; Charles Dickens is my favorite author. I also like Wilkie Collins and Anthony Trollope. It takes a while to get into the rhythm of these Victorian writers – they use ten words when five would suffice, and they love double and triple negatives in their sentences! I had never read anything by George Eliot, but I recently came across a couple of essays extolling the virtues of Middlemarch, and the BBC lists it as the greatest British novel, so I decided to check it out.
It’s a wonderful tale. Consisting of eight “books” of approximately 120 pages each, Eliot chronicles the day-to-day lives and interactions of several prominent families who live in the town of Middlemarch and its surrounding country. I read the Penguin Classics edition, edited by Rosemary Ashton. I found Ashton’s notes invaluable since Eliot peppers her writing with all kinds of allusions to classical and contemporaneous authors. There are also many free ebook versions (the standard ebooks one is here), but they do not have Ashton’s notes.
The novel begins with Miss Dorothea Brooke, a very idealistic young woman who is convinced she is put here on Earth to perform good works for people. She is beautiful, but she never flaunts her looks; on the contrary, she does her best to dress as plainly as possible. She and her sister, Celia, are orphans who live with their kindly uncle, Mr. Arthur Brooke. Dorothea is one of the most eligible young women in the county, but she decides to marry the Rev. Edward Casaubon. He is much older than her, he is utterly humorless, and he has spent most of his life researching a book he’s writing that will explain how all the ancient myths of various cultures relate to Christianity. In Dorothea’s eyes, he is a brilliant scholar whose work will be world-changing. In reality, he’s a second-rate scholar merely treading over the same ground earlier researchers covered.
Dorothea’s uncle tries to dissuade Dorothea from marrying Mr. Casaubon, but she is extremely willful and set on being his adoring research aide and devoting her life to his work. A neighbor, Sir James Chettam, would love to marry Dorothea, but she won’t give him the time of day. Sir James ends up marrying Celia, who is much more down-to-earth and sensible than her sister.
Another main character is Tertius Lydgate, a young and idealistic doctor who is a recent arrival in Middlemarch. He has hopes of finding and developing new ways of treating illnesses, and he is not interested in getting bogged down in marriage until he makes a name for himself. He’s not interested, that is, until he meets the extraordinarily pretty Rosamond Vincy, daughter of the mayor of Middlemarch. Every young man in the area is in love with her, and she knows it. She has dreams of climbing the social ladder and she is attracted to Dr. Lydgate primarily because he is related to Sir Godwin Lydgate, a nobleman who lives far away.
Rosamond’s brother, Fred, is a lovable rapscallion who has gotten himself into debt through gambling. His family has spent a lot of money educating him to be a clergyman, but he has his sights set on inheriting an estate from a curmudgeonly and perverse old man, Peter Featherstone. Fred’s in love with Featherstone’s caregiver, Mary Garth. She and Fred have been friends since childhood, but she sees through him and won’t consider marrying him until he grows up and proves he can provide for a family.
Mary’s father, Caleb Garth, is a hardworking man who manages estates for the landowners. He doesn’t charge enough for his labors, but he loves work for its own sake. As he advises Fred Vincy,
“You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that— if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is— I wouldn’t give twopence for him”— here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers—“ whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.”
George Eliot. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (Kindle Locations 11025-11030). Standard Ebooks. Kindle Edition.
Another main character is Will Ladislaw, who is Mr. Casaubon’s cousin. He is a young artist who is not sure what he wants to do with his life, but he is immediately smitten when he first meets Dorothea. He never does anything to compromise her reputation, and she sincerely enjoys his company.
There is also the vicar Camden Farebrother, who lives with his mother and aunt. He is a wonderfully fair-minded man who looks for the best in everyone while dispensing helpful advice. On the other hand, Middlemarch is home to Nicholas Bulstrode who is a banker and extremely pious “Methodistical” Christian. He’s also a hypocrite of the worst sort.
Rounding out the community are the Cadwalladers, Elinor and Humphrey. He is a rector, and his wife is a straight-talking woman who likes to dabble in matchmaking.
All of these families and characters are connected to each other in a complex web, such that whatever actions one person takes will have big consequences on others. For example, Fred Vincy asks Caleb Garth to guarantee his gambling debts until he inherits Peter Featherstone’s estate, because old Featherstone has made it clear Fred is his favorite. Things don’t go according to plan, however, and poor Caleb has to cover the debt with money he and his wife had saved for their children’s education.
Rosamond Vincy is contrasted throughout the novel with Dorothea. Where Dorothea is self-sacrificing to a fault when it comes to trying to please her husband, Rosamond is totally selfish. She sees Tertius only as a means to an end – namely rising in society – and when his medical practice runs into difficulties, she is utterly unsympathetic to his efforts to economize.
Like most Victorian novels, Middlemarch is fairly lengthy – my edition is 830 pages. However, I enjoyed losing myself in all the affairs of this community. Eliot is a master of portraying the emotional turmoil various characters suffer when they encounter setbacks. Every single character matures and grows in the course of the novel, even the religious hypocrite Bulstrode. Dorothea develops from a willful and overly idealistic young woman into a thoughtful, sensitive, and truly charitable person.
I also greatly enjoyed Eliot’s humor expressed in the gossip of Mrs. Cadwallader. Here she is discussing with Sir James Chettam and her husband how unfortunate it is that Dorothea Brooke has settled on marrying Edward Casaubon:
“Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you would rather dine under the hedge than with Casaubon alone. You have nothing to say to each other.”
“What has that to do with Miss Brooke’s marrying him? She does not do it for my amusement.”
“He has got no good red blood in his body,” said Sir James. “No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.
“Why does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying,” said Sir James, with a disgust which he held warranted by the sound feeling of an English layman.
“Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains. They say, when he was a little boy, he made an abstract of ‘Hop o’ my Thumb,’ and he has been making abstracts ever since. Ugh! And that is the man Humphrey goes on saying that a woman may be happy with.”
“Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes,” said the Rector. “I don’t profess to understand every young lady’s taste.”
George Eliot. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (Kindle Locations 1335-1345). Standard Ebooks. Kindle Edition.
Middlemarch is a fascinating portrait of how societal conventions prevent people from openly expressing themselves. Time after time, conflicts and misunderstandings could have been prevented if pride or elaborate concern for a person’s honor hadn’t gotten in the way. Poor Mr. Farebrother is the most open and kindly character in the book, and he never is able to tell the woman he loves that he would like to marry her.
I find it fascinating that George Eliot in real life was in a long-term relationship with a married man. Middlemarch is an in-depth study of marriage: what makes a successful one, what can destroy one, what to consider when choosing one’s partner for life. As Dorothea says to Rosamond near the end of the novel,
“Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than— than those we were married to, it would be no use”— poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language brokenly—“ I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear— but it murders our marriage— and then the marriage stays with us like a murder— and everything else is gone. And then our husband— if he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life—”
George Eliot. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (Kindle Locations 15641-15645). Standard Ebooks. Kindle Edition.
Is Middlemarch the greatest British novel of all time? I was really impressed with the excellence of Eliot’s writing – her deep psychological portrayals of her characters, her careful weaving of the subplots into a satisfying whole, and her encyclopedic knowledge of political and cultural trends of 1830s England. I’m not prepared to say it’s the greatest British novel, but it’s very, very good. It’s also a novel that I feel sure I will reread again with even more pleasure than it gave me this first time.
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Thanks for the comments and excerpts, @Fractad. I’ve also just finished a re-reading of the novel, and of that same Penguin Classics hardcover edition. That edition is just the right size for the hands, has a nice typefont, has a red ribbon so what could go wrong?, and the end-notes are, as you say, excellent. One thing the notes drove home for me was George Eliot’s apparent interest in, and grasp of, history of medicine. And thank goodness for those notes when the subject of the Reform Bill and general Parliamentary politics of 1829-1830 popped up, as it did constantly.
I’m with you on becoming “immersed” in this novel. Readers should not be shy of picking up this Thick Victorian Novel: it is a page-turner with hilarious dialogue. At the same time, the themes are timeless, and stick with you after reading. Are there character traits, or cultural quirks, or other attributes that seem to you just like what we see today when looking around at our friends, family, and neighbors?
I’m glad you liked my review, @jzdro! Yes, Eliot obviously was well-versed in all the politics of the time. You pose a good question: human nature doesn’t change. I think we all know a Rosamond and a Bulstrode. And if we are fortunate to have a Dorothea or a Caleb among our acquaintances, we are blessed.
Perchance you read Dorothy Sayers? While washing dishes I recalled Sayers’s phrase from Gaudy Night, the mystery novel set in a women’s College of Oxford in the 1930s: one’s proper job. In a way it is complementary to Mr. Caleb’s Garth’s admonitions to Fred. It is the notion that each individual has a proper job; one must find out what it is and pursue it without fear; one cannot be happy in a life stuck in what is not one’s proper job.
So what about the Middlemarch characters?
Mr. Brooke: is in his proper job but flubbing it; jumps to not-proper-job and flubs that worse;
Dorothea: looking for the proper job in all the wrong places;
Celia: sees proper job, is correct:
Sir James Chettam: in proper job, as are his female advisory committee members;
Mr. Farebrother: not at all in his proper job; does not jump but things eventually get a little better for him despite that;
Tertius Lydgate: not in his proper job, because he alienates everybody with his manners; seeks his proper job but does not realize that his way of pursuing it is doomed to failure; ends up at last not at all in his proper job;
Whatshername, oh yes, Rosamund: too self-absorbed for any job whatsoever;
Fred Vincy: narrowly avoids the wrong job; ends up with Mr. Garth in his proper job, but not before we all nearly have a stroke waiting for this to happen;
Mary Garth: in her proper job; steadfastness finally rewarded by an even more proper, and prosperous, job;
Mr. Casaubon: not in his proper job, but terrified and panicked by any idea of anyone else saying so, himself included;
Mrs. Cadwallader: just where she ought to be. Happy is the woman who has found her work!!
Related to this is that scene you quoted so nicely, of Mr. Garth giving Fred excellent advice on how to get on happily in work. It is excellent, clear, particular advice.
Nobody gives Dorothea any advice like that. Nobody helps her to figure out her proper job. So she blunders along by herself. She has good principles and intelligence, but indifferent schooling and indifferent advisors. Her algorithm is the only one she’s got, and it comes up with the result that she should marry Casaubon. She jumps right into the wrong situation. That kind of thing keeps happening, of course, human nature being what it is.
The TV series is beautifully cast.
Nice summary/review. The book is excellent; I like Eliot very much. Middlemarch is only one of her great novels and she also wrote nonfiction. She was a woman very much ahead of her time. Not sure I’d call it the greatest English novel, but it would surely be in a top 10.
jzdro mentioned the TV series. If it’s the BBC one, I concur. It’s from the early 1990s, so before BBC/PBS started politically correcting everything. I watched it well after reading the book, which is something I always recommend.
You have summed up each character beautifully! And yes, I’ve read all of Sayers’ Wimsey mysteries, which I loved. I’m into Ngaio Marsh mysteries now.
I was wondering if the series was worth watching. Thanks for your recommendation.
It seems to me I was required to read Silas Marner in high school, or maybe it was college, so I have read a little of George Eliot, but I remember hardly anything and don’t know anything at all about her geopolitics. Are there any hints as to why it’s called Middlemarch, given the proto-imperialistic connotations and possible internal contradictions of the word? (Middle-Ukraine might have been too obscure for the time and place.)
I see there actually was a Middle March, in Spain. Wikipedia: List of Marches.
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This reminds me of 6 months that I spent working in Milan in the mid-80’s. It was long before Kindle, of course, and so I didn’t want to waste luggage space for books. And as you might imagine, English language books in Italy were NOT inexpensive.
The English bookstore in Milan carried classics and some popular novels. I was watching my lire, so I needed to get the most words for my money. The classic Victorian novels were essentially the same price as the current novels – but the classics were 800+ pages and the contemporary ones were less than 400. So ….. classics it was!
The various Marches were the border regions, patrolled by royal troops marching up and down along them to keep invaders out. Think the Welsh Marches, or the Scottish Marches. They are by definition out at the periphery of the royal domains.
Middlemarch is far from London, especially culturally. You might think of it as a place out in the middle of the Marches somewhere – the middle of nowhere.
Small but mighty, Middlemarch repels invaders. By the end of the tale they have repelled or expelled Lydgate, Ladislaw, and when they find out that he is a ringer, the dread Bulstrode himself. Then they settle back into their lives, incidentally doing their best to ignore the railroad-building going on.
I can totally relate. When I was a kid in the 70s, I saw that I could pick up Ivanhoe for $0.95, as opposed to most paperbacks going for $2 to $4. So, I read Ivanhoe, and it was fantastic!
That’s just the sort of thing I was looking for. Thank you!
My first copy of Ivanhoe looked like this:
The next time I went to the library, I checked it out.
Thank you for this review.
I’ve watched the BBC series, but not read the novel. The second time I watched it through, even though I had remembered it as a good watch, I’d forgotten how sad it was. I just can’t stand to watch what Rosamund does to that decent doctor in her ignorance and selfishness.
Yep @sawatdeeka she is something else, isn’t she? Their marriage is sort of a symmetrical opposite of the marriage of Dorothea (who gives her all to an undeserving) and Casaubon (who is fine with that.)
It’s amazing to me how a novelist can delineate character so effectively that it gets you in the gut, while simultaneously doing so in a way that creates structure – plot structure and theme structure – that the reader can enjoy on a completely different level.
I visualize plot as a shiny bright sparkly mobile, perfectly balanced without being rigidly symmetrical, hung from a delicate chain that is the setting, and twirling slowly in a breeze made of beautiful language.