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3.65k reviews for:
Middlemarch: (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics)
George Eliot
4.06 AVERAGE
3.65k reviews for:
Middlemarch: (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics)
George Eliot
4.06 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-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
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
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
I wanted to like this but it was just so slow that it was a slog to get through. When the book ended, there wasn't any great excitement or disappointment. There was just relief that I was done with this one.
I love this book because Eliot's compassion is so enormous. Mercy gives the story its structure: a typical passage will tell you what a character said, then what they were thinking that led them to say it, then give you an aphorism showing that the character's behavior is surprisingly typical of humans generally. The characters' flaws are exposed so that we can embrace them as part of our shared human weirdness and collective absurdity.
The mercy is sometimes easy to miss, maybe, because it comes with so much sadness. The failures in the book are big and loud and hard to tolerate. Lydgate fails as a doctor and reformer, and his marriage is a kind of hell. Bulstrode, the Ted Haggard of the book, also ends up in a kind of hell. Raffles, the closest thing to a villain in the book, is creepy because he makes such empathetic noises while ruining lives.
The victories are not as satisfying as the failures are hurtful. Fred gives up his education, his family's respect, and his profound love of doing nothing all day (it's only the last sacrifice that really saddens us) to deserve Mary. More painfully, although Dorothea gets Will and wins back the grudging respect of her family, she spends her life in the background, rather than being the mover she hoped to be. Most painfully, Farebrother helps his less deserving rival win Mary, and goes back to his life as a clergyman, a second-choice career, and his lonely integrity. Farebrother's story is a victory, I think, but it's only by contrast with Bulstrode and Lydgate's stories -- where we see the cost of lost integrity -- that we can see it that way.
Empathy is what determines who wins and who loses here. Lydgate gets into debt because he can't get business because no one likes him because -- however laudably -- he picked fights with everyone in town. Bulstrode is vulnerable to suspicion because for decades he has put himself above his neighbors, leaving them ready to believe the worst. Celia is charmingly idiotic because she thinks her baby refigures the world for everyone the way he does for her; Brooke is idiotically charming because he agrees with whoever's speaking to him. Will deserves Dorothea because he's the one person in the world who cares what she feels: he sees her in an awful marriage and imagines what it might feel like to be her, where James Chettham imagines what it would feel like to be Dorothea's husband.
The final pleading passage asks us to be thankful for the dim, aching victories that Dorothea and a few others manage, because that's what good looks like here: little forgotten victories of compassion that make the world half tolerable. Dorothea's incredible visit to Rosamond gives Rosamond the one good moment of her life, and saves Dorothea and Will from a life of loneliness. (Which they'd amply shown us they were heading for. Don't be passive aggressive! That's the moral of that subplot.)
I think Eliot's compassion is the reason the novel, giant as it is, describes no major life events: there are no marriages, no births, no deaths directly described. Two characters have miscarriages, but we hear about them only in retrospect. The marriages of Dorothea and Lydgate are left completely out. We never even learn what it was Rosamond said to Will that caused all the ruckus, although it causes the climactic crisis of the book. These big events aren't described because they don't matter: everything depends on the visits we make to our enemies, or the conversations we fail to have with our spouse.
The reviews I've looked at seem to focus on how Middlemarch shows people to be prisoners of circumstances and the influence of others. That's fair: that sadness is what triggers compassion. But if there weren't more, we'd just have a book called "Life Sucks," which we don't need, or anyway we could get from Philip Roth. It's about how we rise above those prisons, and what rising above looks like, and how much it hurts.
The mercy is sometimes easy to miss, maybe, because it comes with so much sadness. The failures in the book are big and loud and hard to tolerate. Lydgate fails as a doctor and reformer, and his marriage is a kind of hell. Bulstrode, the Ted Haggard of the book, also ends up in a kind of hell. Raffles, the closest thing to a villain in the book, is creepy because he makes such empathetic noises while ruining lives.
The victories are not as satisfying as the failures are hurtful. Fred gives up his education, his family's respect, and his profound love of doing nothing all day (it's only the last sacrifice that really saddens us) to deserve Mary. More painfully, although Dorothea gets Will and wins back the grudging respect of her family, she spends her life in the background, rather than being the mover she hoped to be. Most painfully, Farebrother helps his less deserving rival win Mary, and goes back to his life as a clergyman, a second-choice career, and his lonely integrity. Farebrother's story is a victory, I think, but it's only by contrast with Bulstrode and Lydgate's stories -- where we see the cost of lost integrity -- that we can see it that way.
Empathy is what determines who wins and who loses here. Lydgate gets into debt because he can't get business because no one likes him because -- however laudably -- he picked fights with everyone in town. Bulstrode is vulnerable to suspicion because for decades he has put himself above his neighbors, leaving them ready to believe the worst. Celia is charmingly idiotic because she thinks her baby refigures the world for everyone the way he does for her; Brooke is idiotically charming because he agrees with whoever's speaking to him. Will deserves Dorothea because he's the one person in the world who cares what she feels: he sees her in an awful marriage and imagines what it might feel like to be her, where James Chettham imagines what it would feel like to be Dorothea's husband.
The final pleading passage asks us to be thankful for the dim, aching victories that Dorothea and a few others manage, because that's what good looks like here: little forgotten victories of compassion that make the world half tolerable. Dorothea's incredible visit to Rosamond gives Rosamond the one good moment of her life, and saves Dorothea and Will from a life of loneliness. (Which they'd amply shown us they were heading for. Don't be passive aggressive! That's the moral of that subplot.)
I think Eliot's compassion is the reason the novel, giant as it is, describes no major life events: there are no marriages, no births, no deaths directly described. Two characters have miscarriages, but we hear about them only in retrospect. The marriages of Dorothea and Lydgate are left completely out. We never even learn what it was Rosamond said to Will that caused all the ruckus, although it causes the climactic crisis of the book. These big events aren't described because they don't matter: everything depends on the visits we make to our enemies, or the conversations we fail to have with our spouse.
The reviews I've looked at seem to focus on how Middlemarch shows people to be prisoners of circumstances and the influence of others. That's fair: that sadness is what triggers compassion. But if there weren't more, we'd just have a book called "Life Sucks," which we don't need, or anyway we could get from Philip Roth. It's about how we rise above those prisons, and what rising above looks like, and how much it hurts.
emotional
funny
relaxing
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:
No
2.5 stars
I found this book, while quite emotionally intelligent in its writing, long winded, verbose and overall quite dull.
I found this book, while quite emotionally intelligent in its writing, long winded, verbose and overall quite dull.
It took me a month of reading it but it’s worth it! This novel is indeed, as Woolf said, a victorian novel for adults. It fascinates me how Eliot described every character in detail. This novel doesn’t only tell that a couple finally got married but it goes farther than that: what happens next. Middlemarch, a town where everyone knows and is connected with each other, what one does will have impact to others.
My favourite couple is Fred and Mary! They’re so sweet together!
But i dislike Rosamond Vincy/Lydgate. She’s so narcissistic. Dorothea is brave: giving it all up for love. If I were her I’d travel the world instead.
Middlemarch has simple become one of my favourites! If you struggle in book 1 already, I’d say: don’t give up! But don’t force read it. Take it slow. I find that this novel requires full attention and you can’t simply speed read it.
IF I may wish that George Eliot had done: I wish that she had written this novel a bit longer about Dorothea's life after she married her second husband. I find it to be too short
My favourite couple is Fred and Mary! They’re so sweet together!
But i dislike Rosamond Vincy/Lydgate. She’s so narcissistic. Dorothea is brave: giving it all up for love. If I were her I’d travel the world instead.
Middlemarch has simple become one of my favourites! If you struggle in book 1 already, I’d say: don’t give up! But don’t force read it. Take it slow. I find that this novel requires full attention and you can’t simply speed read it.
IF I may wish that George Eliot had done: I wish that she had written this novel a bit longer about Dorothea's life after she married her second husband. I find it to be too short