Book review
Rereading with bookgroup Jan 2017. Man this book is long.
I FINISHED!
It’s my experience that finishing this book the FIRST time is not all that difficult. The first time I read it, back in my early 20s when I was first falling in love with Victorian classics, was not extremely challenging. I had more time. I think I had more brain power (though obviously less life experience) and more enthusiasm for a challenge. The story was new, I love long books and lots of characters.
What’s making me so chuffed at finishing this reading is the fact that I slogged through it for the 3rd time, in my early 40s, with less of all of those things I mentioned above. I feel that each year and each child has (and continues to) leach brain cells, energy, time and enthusiasm (!) and life is challenging enough without adding a tiny-type 837 page work of philosophy albeit in novel form.
Somebody call the wahmbulance. I need a moral courage infusion! Nah, that was before I finished. I must have gotten said infusion because I DID finish!! Which is more than I did a couple of years ago when I thought I wanted to read it again and fizzled out after a couple hundred pages.
Anyway, Middlemarch. George Eliot. Miss Mary Ann I do love you so. Even if you make me feel a little provincial, unlettered, untutored, illiterate, unformed. That’s okay, I have years before me to do a little better. And just because I feel just a little bit that way, I am also incredibly inspired by your writing. Reading Middlemarch makes me want to revisit the rest of your books that I love also so very much. Adam Bede. Daniel Deronda. The Mill of the Floss (I loved that so much I remember wanting to name my first daughter Maggie…but Dickens won out and she’s Rachael instead). Felix Holt. All once good friends of mine, but we’ve lost touch.
It’s fun when an author and/or characters beg to be spoken to. I want to do a little chatting.
Dorothea, you dreamer you. You’re so weird. Mr. Casaubon? G-R-O-S-S! Obviously as the very young and sheltered woman you are you know nothing of people and sex. Ew. Ok, just had to throw that in there because, really, we’re all thinking it. But seriously, in my day and age you are so unutterably inexplicable. From the reactions of your friends, you were fairly mysterious in yours as well. To wish to “do something with your life” so much that you marry a man at least 25 years older than you just to be a sort of secretary/caretaker to him? It’s mind boggling. Such subservience, such abstinence, such unnecessary devotion.
I am so thankful that I have so many more choices of what to do with my life almost 200 years later. While I chose the same mode of life (marriage, family) I have so many more outlets for influence. No one says that I have decent ideas “for a woman” (your Uncle Brooke’s references to women are rather infuriating and yet you are so respectful to him).
Thank you for your example in the way you love your neighbors and think the best of people. The way you showed compassion for silly Rosamond is priceless.
I have no ambition to be “great in the eyes of the world” but if I could aspire to something, I might wish to hear the same words of me as were written of you at the end:
“[Dorothea’s] finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on historic acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
I’m not sure Will entirely deserves you, but, he loves you and I’m so happy you found love.
Mr. Casaubon, you selfish, childish old wretch. I don’t find a single thing about you to like, even though I do find a bit of pity. I feel much the same as Celia, you dried up old thing. Heaven forbid I ever find myself so set in my ways as you. It’s interesting to me that you had enough real human feeling in you to even be jealous. You’re very much the same person as Rosamond, except old, male, “learned” and ugly. You sad, strange little man. I pity that you couldn’t see what a treasure you had, that your “project” was more important to you than your wife or anything else.
Lydgate, you are a complex man. So idealistic. So eager to do a big, noble thing. You were beginning to see your dreams come true. You got distracted. You made a horrible life-partner choice. A pretty flower face with china doll blue eyes doesn’t always a good helpmeet make. Life beat you down. I’m so sorry that people are so hard to convince when attempting something new. Your wife beat you down. I appreciate that you didn’t want, and tried not, to wound her. I would have been tempted to separate and send her back to her father’s house and press on alone. It made my heart hurt a bit to see you, you brave, strong man, cry and get no response of feeling in your wife except coldness. Instead you made the choice that so many strong and kind men make. To put self and career dreams and fame and fortune aside to provide a comfortable, safe living for your family. I’m proud of you for being kind enough to give Rosamond what she wanted at the expense of your dreams. That’s a hard, hard choice to make. I’m kind of glad you got to die at an early age so you didn’t have to live with her and with feeling like you’d failed yourself until old age.
Rosamond, you spoiled brat! You absolutely self-centered, nothing exists except how it relates to my happiness little vixen! I don’t like you, not one bit. You seem to have decent parents. You seem to have had a good education. Your brother Fred got over himself and changed his ways so it doesn’t seem that it was really your upbringing that made you such a snob. You are apparently one of those people who never see beyond your own nose. Everyone around you are just objects, things to help you or obstacles in your way. What were you playing at with Will Ladislaw? Cat and mouse? Or did you really hope for a lover? It’s true that he was stupid to hang about you, but you were stupid to think he meant any more by it than you did. Rosie, my dear, you had the power, as many women do, of making or breaking the man you married. You chose to break. Despicable. He could have been great, but you wanted expensive fish.
Will, I’m not sure you’re real. You’re the worst drawn character of the lot. Are you, in her desperate need for love and an understanding heart, a figment of Dorothea’s fertile imagination? You have no real character although you did shine when you told Mr. Bulstrode where to stick his filthy money. Thanks for doing that. I’m glad things worked out for you in the end, for Dorothea’s sake. I don’t think you have a lot of moral character or backbone. I definitely think Dorothea wears the pants in your family. But that’s okay, she’s pretty smart.
Celia, I like you. I think you wear the pants in the family too. You have good sense and aren’t afraid to share it.
Mr. Bulstrode, I’m sorry that you had to learn the very hard way that you can’t cover a sin by a multitude of good works. You can repent, go forth doing good, and then all is well whether you add a mite or multitude of works. But also, you very carefully crafted your good works and equally as carefully neglected or despised good things you might have done thought were of no worth (in your opinion). I know you were quite the “religious” man. I’m sure you read your Bible. Did you skip over 1 Corinthians 13?
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
I’m thankful that in you, however, we have the example that even a rascal still has feelings, still can show remorse, and can really use a loving, loyal heart to stand by them. What a blessing for you that you had one. I think you married above you both times. Your wife is a saint. She had charity. I hope you eventually learned it from her.
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As for the rest of the Middlemarch characters, you were all enjoyable to read about. I loved little Miss Noble and Ben Garth and other little characters who rounded out the firesides.
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In modern days, I believe a book could not be written this way. An editor would scratch out all the political, medical, farming & religious bits with a big red pen. Nobody wants to think about things like that anymore, especially with every opinion under the sun plastered on social media every single second. I guess that’s not entirely true, it would just have to be written in a different manner, with all sorts of garish and thrilling and misleading and biased and probably disgusting details of horrors and murders and sex and all the other vulgar garbage of today. I guess that’s why some of us do go back to this type of book. Not to mention that we’re not, these days, all into acting for the greater good instead of our own good. Or for forgiving people. Or even for doing the right thing. Can you imagine the scene between Rosamond and Dorothea in a modern novel? CATFIGHT! Well, first of all, for sure Dorothea would have found Will and Rosie in bed instead of sitting somewhat close together on the couch. Ha ha.
But it’s true that the more philosophical bits that don’t seem super pertinent to the storyline is why this kind of book is such a slog these days, especially on a re-read. At least the first time it’s culturally and historically interesting, but not so much again. We just don’t have the attention span.
And yet…I do spend much of my time in books like this because of all the really real stuff in them. Real people, real emotion, real action, real life. There was right and wrong once. Good and bad, and the real outcome of the real things that we humans do. As opposed to our novels these days, which are about fake ultra-self-centered people doing acting in horrible fantasies because of fake “feelings” in fake life without many real consequences.
People are really pretty decent, even now, although future anthropologists studying our generation from our literature will maybe not think so. What an interesting job that would be.
- Goodreads rating – 4.00
- SUMMARY – K