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3.66k reviews for:
Middlemarch: (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics)
George Eliot
4.06 AVERAGE
3.66k reviews for:
Middlemarch: (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions) (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classics)
George Eliot
4.06 AVERAGE
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
Good story and well-developed characters, but ponderous statements by the authorial voice about the human condition.
I wish I could give it 3 1/2 stars because I liked the second half of the book much better than the first 200-300 pages. It just kinda dragged along, but I plowed on since I was reading it for an English class. I loved the finale where she puts everything into perspective. She talks about hidden lives and unvisited graves to say that life really isn't about making a name for oneself or becoming successful, but it is all about how we impact those around us.
4.5/5
Although there are chapters that feel dull and slow, this book is almost completely redeemed by the many exquisite moments that made me physically confused as to how language could do what it was doing!
George Eliot really knows how to construct a sentence, and makes an art out of it. She is very unpoetic and not lyrical at all, and I don’t know how to describe her writing other than very good, saturated prose. Some of her insights were deep but also precise and witty and she manages to put into words things that I never could, but always think about. Readers complain about Eliot’s long sentences and philosophising and the way she occasionally imposes herself and her judgements into the narrative, but for me this was the best aspect of 'Middlemarch'.
Sometimes she will draw attention to the fact that she is constructing the story in an unsettling, metatextual way, using the first person and asking questions about historical fiction (which is what it is), or about judgements we are likely to make, or she has made for us, about the characters. There is that famous moment at the beginning of Chapter 29, which opens, ‘One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea – but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage?’ (p.312) Again, in a much later part, the plot is interrupted: ‘Enough. We are concerned with looking at […] from Mr Bulstrode’s point of view’ (p.564).
That being said, compared with my favourite philosophical bits, Eliot’s dialogue is just not as good, and sometimes not compelling enough for me. In the first quarter of the book I often felt she was spending too much time with minor characters that I didn’t care about, and their debt problems, and I wanted to know much more about Celia, for example. However, although in the moment 'Middlemarch' can get a bit tedious, on a wider scale (and it is a very wide scale; this is a rather long novel!) I could see how all of these sub-plots were being built up and carefully woven together to reach the most satisfying ending where the sub-plots found a strange, poignant unity.
I found it interesting how Eliot wants to make us sympathise with Dorothea, who is very pious and intellectual but also strong in her own quiet way, but judge and condemn Rosamond, who is presented as naive, too feminine and self-centred and always intruding upon difficult situations with no sensitivity. This characterisation was done well but I actually found myself very fond of Rosamond even in her most frivolous and egotistical moments. When she is first introduced she insists, “Brothers are so unpleasant” (p.125) and “I cannot see why brothers are to make themselves disagreeable, any more than sisters” (p.127). I think she is subversive and threatening to patriarchy because she both fails at the maternal role (something not entirely within her control but the narrative sort of blames her for it) and over-performs femininity.
What this book has to say about marriage is incredible for the 1870s! In the ‘Finale’ chapter, George Eliot says, ‘Marriage, which had been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning’ (p.890), and so she sets up Dorothea’s hasty marriage to Mr. Casaubon in the first part as the start of many problems that drive the narrative, not the end. So many marriages and relationships are developed, and the parallels and contrasts between them puts each into perspective very powerfully. In my annotations, my shorthand for this was “joining up the dots!”
Something I started to pick up on throughout my reading of 'Middlemarch' was the various private, domestic spaces like Dorothea’s boudoir, the drawing-room, the library, chairs, windows, etc. These spaces are where lots of “scenes” play out, and lots of crying is done, and characters can transparently feel their feelings (for the reader) but also confront each other and have proper conflict. Also I loved how you could feel the past “scenes” of each space permeating throughout it and being mixed in with the current “scenes”. For example, the library at Lowick will always be haunted (for Dorothea and the reader) by Casaubon and his cold, closed-minded academia.
I really enjoyed the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter; this seems to be a convention that was very common in 19th century novels and I don’t really come across it now other than in some pretentious academic texts. I suppose it lends itself well to the serialised/multi-volume novel form, as each chapter would have a self-contained significance and people would be more likely to think about the epigraph at the beginning and what it has to say about the chapter. The epigraphs definitely helped to expand the scale of the drama. If anything, all the references to other literature made my bookish little heart very happy.
Generally what I think is impressive about George Eliot’s writing is the way she manages to paint individual characters so strongly and delve deep into their inner lives but without explicitly relating their thoughts. There were some moments where I genuinely felt her writing to be a precursor to Virginia Woolf’s “stream of consciousness”, as some people call it (but I wouldn’t). Then, at a larger scale, she manages to connect characters to each other and the community of Middlemarch. Then, at the next level, the shifting culture and politics of 1830s England, particularly the Reform Act of 1832 (when it is set, and it was published in the 1870s, close after the Second Reform Act of 1867) is carefully interwoven into the plot about the characters. Then, finally, she expands even further to encompass all of human nature and the love and flaws and complexities and contradictions. And all of these levels/scales are easily reached by George Eliot in just one juicy paragraph about a character!
'Middlemarch' is a hefty book, but it is worth the time, I promise.
Although there are chapters that feel dull and slow, this book is almost completely redeemed by the many exquisite moments that made me physically confused as to how language could do what it was doing!
George Eliot really knows how to construct a sentence, and makes an art out of it. She is very unpoetic and not lyrical at all, and I don’t know how to describe her writing other than very good, saturated prose. Some of her insights were deep but also precise and witty and she manages to put into words things that I never could, but always think about. Readers complain about Eliot’s long sentences and philosophising and the way she occasionally imposes herself and her judgements into the narrative, but for me this was the best aspect of 'Middlemarch'.
Sometimes she will draw attention to the fact that she is constructing the story in an unsettling, metatextual way, using the first person and asking questions about historical fiction (which is what it is), or about judgements we are likely to make, or she has made for us, about the characters. There is that famous moment at the beginning of Chapter 29, which opens, ‘One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea – but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage?’ (p.312) Again, in a much later part, the plot is interrupted: ‘Enough. We are concerned with looking at […] from Mr Bulstrode’s point of view’ (p.564).
That being said, compared with my favourite philosophical bits, Eliot’s dialogue is just not as good, and sometimes not compelling enough for me. In the first quarter of the book I often felt she was spending too much time with minor characters that I didn’t care about, and their debt problems, and I wanted to know much more about Celia, for example. However, although in the moment 'Middlemarch' can get a bit tedious, on a wider scale (and it is a very wide scale; this is a rather long novel!) I could see how all of these sub-plots were being built up and carefully woven together to reach the most satisfying ending where the sub-plots found a strange, poignant unity.
I found it interesting how Eliot wants to make us sympathise with Dorothea, who is very pious and intellectual but also strong in her own quiet way, but judge and condemn Rosamond, who is presented as naive, too feminine and self-centred and always intruding upon difficult situations with no sensitivity. This characterisation was done well but I actually found myself very fond of Rosamond even in her most frivolous and egotistical moments. When she is first introduced she insists, “Brothers are so unpleasant” (p.125) and “I cannot see why brothers are to make themselves disagreeable, any more than sisters” (p.127). I think she is subversive and threatening to patriarchy because she both fails at the maternal role (something not entirely within her control but the narrative sort of blames her for it) and over-performs femininity.
What this book has to say about marriage is incredible for the 1870s! In the ‘Finale’ chapter, George Eliot says, ‘Marriage, which had been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning’ (p.890), and so she sets up Dorothea’s hasty marriage to Mr. Casaubon in the first part as the start of many problems that drive the narrative, not the end. So many marriages and relationships are developed, and the parallels and contrasts between them puts each into perspective very powerfully. In my annotations, my shorthand for this was “joining up the dots!”
Something I started to pick up on throughout my reading of 'Middlemarch' was the various private, domestic spaces like Dorothea’s boudoir, the drawing-room, the library, chairs, windows, etc. These spaces are where lots of “scenes” play out, and lots of crying is done, and characters can transparently feel their feelings (for the reader) but also confront each other and have proper conflict. Also I loved how you could feel the past “scenes” of each space permeating throughout it and being mixed in with the current “scenes”. For example, the library at Lowick will always be haunted (for Dorothea and the reader) by Casaubon and his cold, closed-minded academia.
I really enjoyed the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter; this seems to be a convention that was very common in 19th century novels and I don’t really come across it now other than in some pretentious academic texts. I suppose it lends itself well to the serialised/multi-volume novel form, as each chapter would have a self-contained significance and people would be more likely to think about the epigraph at the beginning and what it has to say about the chapter. The epigraphs definitely helped to expand the scale of the drama. If anything, all the references to other literature made my bookish little heart very happy.
Generally what I think is impressive about George Eliot’s writing is the way she manages to paint individual characters so strongly and delve deep into their inner lives but without explicitly relating their thoughts. There were some moments where I genuinely felt her writing to be a precursor to Virginia Woolf’s “stream of consciousness”, as some people call it (but I wouldn’t). Then, at a larger scale, she manages to connect characters to each other and the community of Middlemarch. Then, at the next level, the shifting culture and politics of 1830s England, particularly the Reform Act of 1832 (when it is set, and it was published in the 1870s, close after the Second Reform Act of 1867) is carefully interwoven into the plot about the characters. Then, finally, she expands even further to encompass all of human nature and the love and flaws and complexities and contradictions. And all of these levels/scales are easily reached by George Eliot in just one juicy paragraph about a character!
'Middlemarch' is a hefty book, but it is worth the time, I promise.
I'm in two minds about this book. Part of what has dragged it down for me is that I read it over a year so I felt it dragged too much and I just failed to get into it. It's a good story, but a bit too verbose for me and it never excited me. I read on ahead the last few weeks of our bookclub schedule because I was so glad to get done with reading it, not a good sign.
emotional
funny
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