emily1602 's review for:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

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Eliot is a genius!! This is my second time reading this book. I was on vacation in Peru and carried the hardback copy with me everywhere. Saw similarities between characters here and the ones from a movie (Heretic) I watched on the plane. A couple of thoughts this time around: I wonder if Eliot, in writing this 800 page long book, ever worried that she was devoting herself to something as quixotic as Casaubon did (her sympathy for everyone, while still creating some selfish villains is incredible), I hated Rosamond more than Bulstrode and wonder how much of that was a bit of misogyny (found myself thinking that she should just shut up and listen to her husband lol-also made me think about how social structures of the time encouraged that kind of misogyny-it is not as if Rosamond could have gone and made her own money/paid off her own debt) and how much was the fact that Rosamond never realizes she has done anything wrong, while Bulstrode does. Anyway, the book makes you look at the world more kindly, and more intelligently I think.