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3.63k reviews for:
Middlemarch: (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics)
George Eliot
4.06 AVERAGE
3.63k reviews for:
Middlemarch: (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics)
George Eliot
4.06 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a really beautiful book. Amazing language and fascinating characters.
This was such a tough book to get through for me. I really had to force it which is something I haven't done with a book in a long time. I think it really boiled down the victorian era writing. Some authors I can get through it and it doesn't phase me but I just couldn't find myself caring about any of the characters at all.
This is a work of genius - 4.5 stars!!!
Mary Ann Evans, the woman that you are.... This novel is phenomenal and I had so much fun getting into it. Dorothea, the precious angel, is one of my favorite female characters of all time, I wish to be her when I grow up (notwithstanding the bad marriages ofc). I love how all the men are just bumbling idiots and causing literally all the problems, while the exploration of female society, while nuanced, makes it clear that the women are just innately better. 10/10
Mary Ann Evans, the woman that you are.... This novel is phenomenal and I had so much fun getting into it. Dorothea, the precious angel, is one of my favorite female characters of all time, I wish to be her when I grow up (notwithstanding the bad marriages ofc). I love how all the men are just bumbling idiots and causing literally all the problems, while the exploration of female society, while nuanced, makes it clear that the women are just innately better. 10/10
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Middlemarch is a limitless work and as near perfect as a novel gets. Vast three-dimensional characters populate a sweeping land.
Elliot advances the plot until the final sentence and this masterclass book may include every life lesson one can experience. Perhaps the best Victorian novel? Perhaps the greatest work of the 19th century? No accolade is too high for Middlemarch.
This work should be firmly planted in the Mt. Rushmore of literature. It's a mature novel for a mature reader. Not snooty mature, but these characters develop, grow, fall and soul-search in serious ways. We stay gripped and in awe throughout.
Elliot advances the plot until the final sentence and this masterclass book may include every life lesson one can experience. Perhaps the best Victorian novel? Perhaps the greatest work of the 19th century? No accolade is too high for Middlemarch.
This work should be firmly planted in the Mt. Rushmore of literature. It's a mature novel for a mature reader. Not snooty mature, but these characters develop, grow, fall and soul-search in serious ways. We stay gripped and in awe throughout.
I loved this book so much. If you are into period pieces at all, if you like Charles Dickens, if you want a great story with some laughs and clever plotlines, then you need to read this classic!
Gorgeous George: at 800+ pages Middlemarch is that sort of daunting Victorian pile some of us put off until late middle age. Well here I am and it’s about time I scaled the didactic Marian Evans, who is full of life’s lessons. Despite the rubicund flourishes that were essential to a writer in her time (paid by the word, had to give value for money, originally a magazine serial, would have been writing for Hollyoaks these days blah blah), Eliot is astonishingly modern - in her thinking if not the way she expresses it. On marriage, she sees with a clear eye: “Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for his own happiness,” and of course when it comes to quarrelling being shut down as a woman is “....even m ore exasperating in marriage than it is in philosophy.”
The beauty of Middlemarch is its self-awareness and ability to live with paradox. Eliot, herself a creature of contradiction (not even the name was her own) was a woman living in a man’s world, a Midlander with an awareness of the parochialism of regional life. Middlemarch explores a time of change and reform which Evans was broadly in favour of, but not without regret for what was being left behind. She describes the deep ignorance and fear of change as part of the character of non-metropolitan English people, and an abiding sense of ‘that London’ as a place of devilment, foreign manners and perdition, with sympathy - even as someone who had lived and still made her living there: “the unreformed provincial mind distrusted London”. It still does...
But most of the enjoyment of this book is in the descriptions of everyday life in a small town with its friendships, alliances, politics and jealousies - “amiable vanity..knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent to us”, and pithy descriptions of people who are big fishes in small ponds such as Fred Vincy, “heir to nothing in particular”.
The awkwardness and social embarrassment of offering a favour for a favour could be 21st century in its earth swallow me up mode - “That he should ‘mention his case’ - imply that he wanted specific things, at that moment, suicide seemed easier.” Similarly, small town ‘speak as you find’ when people feel free to add their unwelcome opinions, is dispatched: “To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct or their position; and a robust candour never missed an opportunity to be asked for its opinion.”
Sharp, opinionated and dry, without the sentimental religiousity that Mars much of the era’s output (she was, refreshingly, a humanist), Middlemarch is a timely read that proves that if anything, a miss is as good as a mister.
The beauty of Middlemarch is its self-awareness and ability to live with paradox. Eliot, herself a creature of contradiction (not even the name was her own) was a woman living in a man’s world, a Midlander with an awareness of the parochialism of regional life. Middlemarch explores a time of change and reform which Evans was broadly in favour of, but not without regret for what was being left behind. She describes the deep ignorance and fear of change as part of the character of non-metropolitan English people, and an abiding sense of ‘that London’ as a place of devilment, foreign manners and perdition, with sympathy - even as someone who had lived and still made her living there: “the unreformed provincial mind distrusted London”. It still does...
But most of the enjoyment of this book is in the descriptions of everyday life in a small town with its friendships, alliances, politics and jealousies - “amiable vanity..knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent to us”, and pithy descriptions of people who are big fishes in small ponds such as Fred Vincy, “heir to nothing in particular”.
The awkwardness and social embarrassment of offering a favour for a favour could be 21st century in its earth swallow me up mode - “That he should ‘mention his case’ - imply that he wanted specific things, at that moment, suicide seemed easier.” Similarly, small town ‘speak as you find’ when people feel free to add their unwelcome opinions, is dispatched: “To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct or their position; and a robust candour never missed an opportunity to be asked for its opinion.”
Sharp, opinionated and dry, without the sentimental religiousity that Mars much of the era’s output (she was, refreshingly, a humanist), Middlemarch is a timely read that proves that if anything, a miss is as good as a mister.