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sarah_richmond 's review for:
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
I don't think it has ever taken me so long to finish a book. I'm an instant gratification addict and Middlemarch is a novel that requires hours of slow investment and intense concentration. While reading, I found myself closing the book, laying it gingerly just out of view, and reaching for the remote control. For shame, Sarah! So, in a way, reading Middlemarch became a kind of rehabilitation for my current lifestyle. I used it to try build up my long suffering skills of focus and patience , I used it to wean myself off reaching for my smartphone every five minutes.
Reading long novels is like finding yourself with a new adoptive family. When you spend weeks with the same characters, you become so invested in their lives, so used to their mannerisms that when you turn the last page, it's like losing friends. Middlemarch is a slow burning epic about marriage. From Dorothea to Celia to Rosamond, the lives of the strong willed and strongly flawed women of Middlemarch were defined through their marriages and their life choices. The men were just as varied - from Fred to Tertius, Will and Edward Casaubon, all had their own dreams and failures, and all were resolute in their views of how their women should behave.
George Eliot is often considered a literary genius. I would agree. Her word puppetry makes her imense cast of characters leap off the page, her wit made me often laugh out loud. She was bold, a feminist and ,most surprisingly to me, an atheist. Quite early on in reading Middlemarch, I was suddenly struck by how little religious moralising there was. In classic novels of that period, religious values and morality is often forced upon the reader. Middlemarch still talked widely about religion - it's impossible to talk about the times without the religion that so tightly controlled the era - but with an interesting sort of respectful apathy. I immediately went off to read up about Eliot and what I found out about her character made me admire her immensely. To be an atheist at that time was to run the risk of social exclusion, and being labelled a heretic. Go Georgie - I LOVE me some strong women!
I am glad I read Middlemarch. Would I read it again? ...I don't know. I don't think I would? It's a frustrating feeling - to have loved a book, but also to feel a huge sense of relief that I actually made it out alive.
Reading long novels is like finding yourself with a new adoptive family. When you spend weeks with the same characters, you become so invested in their lives, so used to their mannerisms that when you turn the last page, it's like losing friends. Middlemarch is a slow burning epic about marriage. From Dorothea to Celia to Rosamond, the lives of the strong willed and strongly flawed women of Middlemarch were defined through their marriages and their life choices. The men were just as varied - from Fred to Tertius, Will and Edward Casaubon, all had their own dreams and failures, and all were resolute in their views of how their women should behave.
George Eliot is often considered a literary genius. I would agree. Her word puppetry makes her imense cast of characters leap off the page, her wit made me often laugh out loud. She was bold, a feminist and ,most surprisingly to me, an atheist. Quite early on in reading Middlemarch, I was suddenly struck by how little religious moralising there was. In classic novels of that period, religious values and morality is often forced upon the reader. Middlemarch still talked widely about religion - it's impossible to talk about the times without the religion that so tightly controlled the era - but with an interesting sort of respectful apathy. I immediately went off to read up about Eliot and what I found out about her character made me admire her immensely. To be an atheist at that time was to run the risk of social exclusion, and being labelled a heretic. Go Georgie - I LOVE me some strong women!
I am glad I read Middlemarch. Would I read it again? ...I don't know. I don't think I would? It's a frustrating feeling - to have loved a book, but also to feel a huge sense of relief that I actually made it out alive.