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Loading... Middlemarch (1872)by George Eliot
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(42) Books I've read (11) Favorites (1) Books Set in Rome (52) AP Lit (109) My TBR (5) Plan to Read Books (19) 100 (50) Books Read in 2014 (2,157) Realism (9) Best family sagas (238) EU Fiction: 1950-2022 (210) A Book You Were Supposed To Read In School But Didn’t I'm not sure Middlemarch is actually the George Eliot book I was supposed to read in college. Eight hundred pages seems overly long for an undergraduate Brit Lit survey class. Regardless, I didn't expect to enjoy reading it any more than I would have had I identified the novel from that long ago syllabus. Then I started reading. And kept reading. And ripped through this tale of a bucolic English village in less than a week, sandwiching reading between my fulltime job and binge-watching two episodes of Better Call Saul every night. Middlemarch is the story of Dorothea Brooke, a young woman who marries a much older man under the mistaken impression he will enlarge her world by including her in his intellectual pursuits. It is also the story of Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor who marries an attractive, self-centered woman whose refusal to face financial realities threatens to heap emotional misery on top of their financial difficulties. Woven around these two tumultuous relationships are a host of Middlemarchers searching for happiness in the midst of everyday life. Eliot narrates an entertaining tale that teeters on the brink of disaster yet manages to provide a happy ending for most of those deserving of one. Among the timeless themes she explores are sons disappointing their fathers, pious men hiding scandalous past behavior, jealousy, innocent husbands and wives harmed by their spouses' actions, ignorant strangers believing the worst about an innocent man, and acts seemingly harmful to a character turning out to be best for him after all. My only criticisms of Middlemarch are that Eliot sometimes intrudes into the story where she would be better off letting her characters lead us to the wisdom she seeks to impart, and that several tedious scenes could be cut out of the novel and leave it none the worse. These are small complaints which shouldn't influence your decision to read this grand story which Virginia Woolf accurately referred to as an "English novel written for grown-up people". I started reading this book with absolutely no idea what it was about, and I loved it so much that I don't want to spoil that innocence for prospective readers. So what I'll try to do is to explain some of the things I love about George Eliot's writing. Firstly, the characters are so brilliantly drawn. They all have inner lives which motivate their actions and which are complex, contradictory and relatable. Eliot has a very sly way of describing a character in the terms in which they're seen by the rest of the world while hinting that another interpretation is available. So she might relay the general contempt that the character is held in by the Middlemarch community, but eventually you notice that the narrator herself only describes the character in neutral terms. Thus a character who could have easily become a cartoon villain has some hinted-at depth, which will invariably be fleshed out later. Then there is the prose, which is so witty and so full of quotable lines. OK, as was the fashion at the time, there are a lot of double and even triple negatives, but otherwise the prose is very engaging. And Eliot is so clearly in control of what she's doing, and using style to deliver her message with perfect clarity. For instance, every now and again, out of nowhere, Eliot will refer to the reader in the second person, or in the first person plural ("we") and the effect on me was so profound that I laughed out loud and shook my head when I read it. It's not always a major point she's making, but it always has a perfect impact. The dialogue is wonderful, with each pair of characters having their own way of talking to each other. Apart from a bit of rendered vernacular, which always irritates me, the dialogue isn't overdone. Yes, Mr Brookes is ridiculous, and a source of comedy, but he consistently speaks the same way and his mode of expression is not beyond the realms of my experience. And, although there's much more to praise, the politics, history and wisdom that pervade the book add so much to the experience. The introduction of the edition I read (which I read after reading the novel, of course) casts some question over Eliot's status as a feminist, but to me she is clearly a feminist in the sense that she is carefully recording women's conditions at that time. The narrator doesn't cast judgement, to my eye, but simply states the field of action that was open to women at that time and explores the consequences of this. OK, one point on content: I think this is a novel about decisions, but what makes it wonderful is that each decision is carefully motivated and explained. Eliot provides so much insight into each character's ideas and feelings that I often found myself momentarily convinced of the merits of even the worst decisions that characters made. Then, with a similarly sympathetic eye, Eliot follows through on the consequences of those decisions and the character's continued attempts to justify them. So, it feels absurd for me to pass my judgement on such a brilliant piece of literature, written almost 150 years ago, but it touched, moved and entertained me in a profound way. I loved this book so much, I named a cat after the author. The danger of raised expectations. Middlemarch has received so many accolades (for example, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151204-why-middlemarch-is-the-greatest-bri... that its place in the canon is undisputed. And while there is no doubt that Eliot's characters have more psychological verisimilitude than, say, Dickens or Dostoevsky, I found Middlemarch to be more impressive than profound. It's an elaborate rehashing of the marriage plot, with more characters than Austen could juggle. It also anticipates Woolf and the modernists, in that it tries to avoid that character as caricature trap that so many early novelists fall into. Eliot really strives for complexity here. The fatal flaw is that Dorothea is too saintly to be realistic. Compare her to someone like Alyosha Karamazov, who really is in the business of helping people and denying himself happiness. Dorothea's marriage with Will, in the end, is a letdown - Eliot makes her more conventional than we would expect, from her first marriage to Casaubon. There is some commentary on womanhood that I totally missed, along with the vein of humor throughout that only faintly registered with me. I did really enjoy the character of Mary Garth - she seems to be a stand-in for Eliot, with her biting wit and plain looks. Characters like Rosamond, Dorothea, and Ladislaw live in the ethere. Belongs to Publisher SeriesEveryman's Library (854-855) Gouden Reeks (6) — 13 more Modern Library Giant (isbn) Oneworld Classics (125) Penguin Clothbound Classics (2011) Penguin English Library, 2012 series (2012-09) Perpetua reeks (72) Is contained inThe Works of George Eliot: Vol. I - Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Romola; Vol. II -- Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial life, Daniel Deronda; Vol. III -- Felix Holt, The Radical, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob,Scenes from Clerical Life by George Eliot (indirect) 90 Masterpieces You Must Read (Vol.1): Novels, Poetry, Plays, Short Stories, Essays, Psychology & Philosophy by Various George Eliot Six Pack - Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede by George Eliot Works of George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, Adam Bede, Middlemarch, The Lifted Veil & more. (mobi) by George Eliot George Eliot's Works: Adam Bede/Daniel Deronda/Felix Holt and Clerical Life/Middlemarch/Mill on the Floss/Romola (6 vols) by George Eliot Novels of George Eliot in Five Volumes with Illustrations: Adam Bede; The Mill in the Floss; Silas Marner; Clerical Life; Felix Holt; Middlemarch by George Eliot George Elliot Works: 7 books - Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Daniel Deronda, Romola, Impressions of Theophrastus Such..., Silas Marner, Felix Holt, the Radical (George Elliot Works, 7 of ? in set) by George Elliot George Eliot Collection: The Complete Novels, Short Stories, Poems and Essays (Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Lifted Veil...) by George Eliot The Works of George Eliot, Cabinet Edition, 19 volumes: Adam Bede; Romola; Middlemarch; Mill on the Floss; Daniel Deronda; Scenes of Clerical Life; ... by George Eliot George Eliot's Works (Six Volumes): Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Middlemarch, The Mill On the Floss, Daniel Deronda, Felix Holt (The Radical), The Spanish Gypsy, Jubal and Other Poems, Romola, Theophrastus Such by George Eliot The Complete Novels of George Eliot - All 9 Novels in One Edition: Adam Bede, The Lifted Veil, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Brother Jacob, ... the Radical, Middlemarch & Daniel Deronda by George Eliot George Eliot's Works 5 Volumes Romola,The Mill On The Floss,Middlemarch,Daniel Deronda,Felix Holt by George Eliot ContainsHas the adaptationIs abridged inHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyThe Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life by Edward Mendelson Philosophy and the Novel: Philosophical Aspects of "Middlemarch", "Anna Karenina", "The Brothers Karamazov", "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" by Peter Jones George Eliot: Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch (Icon Reader's Guides to Essential Criticism) by Lucie Armitt The Business of the Novel: Economics, Aesthetics and the Case of Middlemarch (Literary Texts and the Popular Marketplace) by Simon R. Frost Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel : A Study of George Eliot's Creative Method (Illinois Studies in Language and Literat by Jerome Beaty Character and Ethical Development in Three Novels of George Eliot—Middlemarch, Romola, Daniel Deronda by Heather V. Armstrong Has as a supplementHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guideHas as a teacher's guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
HTML: Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is exactly what it claims. Its multiple plots center around the inhabitants of a fictitious Midlands town and their evolving relationships to each other. It is critical of social class, ambition and marriage, and religion. It is commonly considered one of the masterpieces of English writing, and Virginia Woolf described it as "the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". .No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.8Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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Personal character, family obligation, independent thought, influences for good, and one's duty to self and others play out in a small town on the stage where friendship and marriage, their reality or possibility, shape destinies. (