Take a photo of a barcode or cover
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
Calling anything the “greatest” seems silly and pointless, but I have never been so tempted.
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I could not give this book less than 5 stars. Firstly it feels like a massive achievement to have got through it, even if it was on audiobook. I never expected to enjoy it so much.
I had a very difficult and stressful couple of weeks and being able to fall into this immersive account of a different time and place saved me.
George Eliot's dissection of her characters' personalities and the events as they unfold is so astute and witty. It's hard to believe that she just made all these people up as they feel so real. Dorothea was my favourite as I admired her optimism, strong ideals and naïveté, but every character was so well fleshed out that I feel like I know them and missed them once I finished the book.
Luckily my library app has some other George Eliot audiobooks which I can't wait to get started on! I would love to make it through her entire catalogue before I die.
I had a very difficult and stressful couple of weeks and being able to fall into this immersive account of a different time and place saved me.
George Eliot's dissection of her characters' personalities and the events as they unfold is so astute and witty. It's hard to believe that she just made all these people up as they feel so real. Dorothea was my favourite as I admired her optimism, strong ideals and naïveté, but every character was so well fleshed out that I feel like I know them and missed them once I finished the book.
Luckily my library app has some other George Eliot audiobooks which I can't wait to get started on! I would love to make it through her entire catalogue before I die.
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Eliot herself uses the metaphor of a web throughout the novel, but I prefer to see it as a knot at the center of several separate reaching ropes. Each character is their own rope or string. They are disconnect, bound to external bases and tied together, very loosely, in the center. This is all in the first book. Causabon-Dorothea-Ladislaw is established briefly, as is Fred-Mary and Fred’s relationship with both Featherstone and Bulstrode, as is Rosamond-Lydgate. All of these ropes tied in pairs then those pairs tied together too.
What Eliot does is stretch the knot, it’s fibers straining so we can see the details of the strain these relationships cause as they bump against each other. Her control of such separate narratives under the umbrella of a cohesive, finely crafted story is masterful. In a book with some incredible moments of language, it is perhaps her greatest intellectual achievement. This is because the loose but vital interweaving of the storylines is the point of the novel. Middlemarch is, at its core, a thorough sociological study. Its method reveals people to be hyper-political beings in private just as much as they are in public.
Eliot understood the dynamics of relationships and the different personalities and leveraging of power people utilize. She also understood the natural appeal of these political games. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch as an outsider and expected to stay out of its politics being a man of medicine, but he too is soon drug in. There is no field devoid of politics, even the science of medicine.
It’s another testament to Eliot that Middlemarch is hardly mentioned by name in the first six books of the novel, but still functions as a living breathing entity. Without being addressed directly, Middlemarch has a personality and a pulse and even opinions that engulf everyone that lives in it.
There is almost too much to say about a book so large and dense and important, so I’ll note the through-line in these observations: subtlety. As she blends the stories, as she makes Middlemarch come alive, as she builds drama, as she boils her characters to their epiphanies (Dorothea doesn’t reveal she loves Ladislaw until page 836 in my edition) she does all of it in barely perceptible ways. Seismic shifts are put in motion in the course of simple conversations (conversation that Eliot also masters, finding the perfect simile for every feeling and reaction in every exchange) and their payoffs are delayed until their logical ends, not in the most frantically dramatic ways.
Like her didactic ending — which is hopeful with a touch a damning — Eliot’s writing mimics the meekness of her heroes and it’s resonant effect is just as powerful and reaching.
P.S.
Some notes on favorite moments:
When Brooke chastises Dagley for his son trespassing and Dagley refuses to punish his own son at the request of another man its a poignant reminder from Eliot that the only people who don’t play these political games are the lower classes. Dagley refuses to play by his landlords rules or how to his whims. It’s admirable and rightfully leaves you feeling sour.
Dorothea staying with James and Celia and their new baby is a scene almost too perfect. Hardly have I ever felt a character become so crystallized in a single moment. Here is Dorothea living like a ghost just observing the homely life she thought she wanted with Causabon and all it does is depress her further. The housewife with child is not the life for her, at least not with Causabon. She is a different person from this moment — more sure of herself, more focused in her efforts, and its spurred by a perfectly realistic moment of epiphany.
There is a passage on page 780 of my edition that says "Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Causabon. He smiled much less; when he said ‘Exactly’ it was more often an introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of him - all the more because he was really her best friend. He disagreed with her now." — just a perfect passage about the transition of Chettam from doting suitor to genuine friend. Also one of those fun moments in reading in which you hear authors speak to each other through the page and in turn through time. My point: Virginia Woolf almost certainly liked George Eliot.
What Eliot does is stretch the knot, it’s fibers straining so we can see the details of the strain these relationships cause as they bump against each other. Her control of such separate narratives under the umbrella of a cohesive, finely crafted story is masterful. In a book with some incredible moments of language, it is perhaps her greatest intellectual achievement. This is because the loose but vital interweaving of the storylines is the point of the novel. Middlemarch is, at its core, a thorough sociological study. Its method reveals people to be hyper-political beings in private just as much as they are in public.
Eliot understood the dynamics of relationships and the different personalities and leveraging of power people utilize. She also understood the natural appeal of these political games. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch as an outsider and expected to stay out of its politics being a man of medicine, but he too is soon drug in. There is no field devoid of politics, even the science of medicine.
It’s another testament to Eliot that Middlemarch is hardly mentioned by name in the first six books of the novel, but still functions as a living breathing entity. Without being addressed directly, Middlemarch has a personality and a pulse and even opinions that engulf everyone that lives in it.
There is almost too much to say about a book so large and dense and important, so I’ll note the through-line in these observations: subtlety. As she blends the stories, as she makes Middlemarch come alive, as she builds drama, as she boils her characters to their epiphanies (Dorothea doesn’t reveal she loves Ladislaw until page 836 in my edition) she does all of it in barely perceptible ways. Seismic shifts are put in motion in the course of simple conversations (conversation that Eliot also masters, finding the perfect simile for every feeling and reaction in every exchange) and their payoffs are delayed until their logical ends, not in the most frantically dramatic ways.
Like her didactic ending — which is hopeful with a touch a damning — Eliot’s writing mimics the meekness of her heroes and it’s resonant effect is just as powerful and reaching.
P.S.
Some notes on favorite moments:
When Brooke chastises Dagley for his son trespassing and Dagley refuses to punish his own son at the request of another man its a poignant reminder from Eliot that the only people who don’t play these political games are the lower classes. Dagley refuses to play by his landlords rules or how to his whims. It’s admirable and rightfully leaves you feeling sour.
Dorothea staying with James and Celia and their new baby is a scene almost too perfect. Hardly have I ever felt a character become so crystallized in a single moment. Here is Dorothea living like a ghost just observing the homely life she thought she wanted with Causabon and all it does is depress her further. The housewife with child is not the life for her, at least not with Causabon. She is a different person from this moment — more sure of herself, more focused in her efforts, and its spurred by a perfectly realistic moment of epiphany.
There is a passage on page 780 of my edition that says "Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Causabon. He smiled much less; when he said ‘Exactly’ it was more often an introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of him - all the more because he was really her best friend. He disagreed with her now." — just a perfect passage about the transition of Chettam from doting suitor to genuine friend. Also one of those fun moments in reading in which you hear authors speak to each other through the page and in turn through time. My point: Virginia Woolf almost certainly liked George Eliot.
I read through 900 pages for the sake of Dorothea I’ll say it. This novel was witty, pleasant and interesting on a historical point of view ( concerning the amount of reform at the time ). I have to admit 200 pages could have been cut very easily. Also I hated the 200 pages dealing with the money scandal. I thought that it could’ve been a sub plot for like 20 pages not 200.
emotional
lighthearted
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I went into this book with zero expectations. I discovered that Audible was offering a month's free trial of unlimited streaming of "romance" novels, and I used it as an opportunity to power through as many classics that happened to fall into that category as possible. Middlemarch just happened to be one of the free ones available with the subscription.
This book has solidified George Eliot as one of my favorite character writers of all time, and has also called into question Audible's ability to categorize books. If anything, this novel is more about the travails and awkwardness of marriages between flawed people than about the triumph of love.
Where Jane Austen tends to make her characters into caricatures through the almost comedic exaggeration of their flaws, Eliot writes ordinary but memorable people with believable virtues and vices. The people of Middlemarch act according to their character traits, and end up in exactly the position that would be a normal consequence of that choice, much to their own surprise. I really enjoyed watching them war against their own natures to set things right again.
This novel was particularly absorbing because there are no Deus ex Machina moments for the residents of Middlemarch. Their circumstances are the consequences of their own behavior and the choices made by their loved ones, and only their own actions can effect changes. (It seems like George Eliot had a very clear opinion on the idea of fate/destiny.) These people and their lives felt real to me. I'm going to miss Dorothea and Lydgate.....but probably not Rosamund.
This book has solidified George Eliot as one of my favorite character writers of all time, and has also called into question Audible's ability to categorize books. If anything, this novel is more about the travails and awkwardness of marriages between flawed people than about the triumph of love.
Where Jane Austen tends to make her characters into caricatures through the almost comedic exaggeration of their flaws, Eliot writes ordinary but memorable people with believable virtues and vices. The people of Middlemarch act according to their character traits, and end up in exactly the position that would be a normal consequence of that choice, much to their own surprise. I really enjoyed watching them war against their own natures to set things right again.
This novel was particularly absorbing because there are no Deus ex Machina moments for the residents of Middlemarch. Their circumstances are the consequences of their own behavior and the choices made by their loved ones, and only their own actions can effect changes. (It seems like George Eliot had a very clear opinion on the idea of fate/destiny.) These people and their lives felt real to me. I'm going to miss Dorothea and Lydgate.....but probably not Rosamund.