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thelizabeth 's review for:
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
Editing 4/5/13: Updating the rating -- Middlemarch, I can't stay mad at you!
.
This is probably going to take me the rest of the year to read, but I'm hoping that it is "the right text for the moment."
.
Ok first of all, I can't believe I read this in only 7 weeks. That's gold-medal championship reading, for me! And of course, it means that at many times, it was a great pleasure. Somewhere roughly halfway through, I had a good week or two just gobbling the chapters right up.
Stillllll. You know what I did here? I rounded it down. Ugh I knowww. I'm the worst. It's not right. But there it is, that's all the stars I got in my little sack for today. This may not have really been a 3-star read, fairly, but I think in some ways it's going to sit on my shelf forever as a 3-star book. I can't explain. But I'll try.
Honestly, the problem may have been that I already love George Eliot. I already know that she produces sharp insight and an immense depth of both criticism and empathy for her characters, which are just brilliant skills for a novelist, and I adore them. But so far, where I've loved these qualities the most is in the first novel I read, which also brings with it such overwhelming feelings I thought that I would just claw my face off. (And still feel that way every time I revisit it. How is my face still attached??)
And that's not what's going on here in Middlemarch. Which is ok. I perceive that it's doing something different, and that's fine. I looked forward to reading her most famous book partly because I had a dim idea of what Dorothea's conflicts are in it, and because I presumed that the feeling in this work must be the greatest. But frankly, its greatness is for other reasons, and a bit like when I read Mrs. Dalloway recently (though not as frustratingly), it reads a little bit like English class.
You stand back and admire this book more than you fall to the bottom of a well with it. And the second thing is my favorite thing when I read. I prefer irrevocably dropping into wells to soberly observing, oh what a grand scope of setting, each character is the center of their own story, two protagonists carrying through, though honestly only one has a lot to say and it's the one I like less. And is that a poetic medical metaphor I see?
I do admire a lot here. The basic idea, wherein she begins her book with the courtships and marriages of these characters rather than ending the book there, is good. In fact I was a bit impatient waiting for the terrible marriages to mount. Oh, so terrible, these marriages! Yes! Let the illusion of happiness disintegrate before my eyes! But still... it's pat, to a point. The conflicts are rendered in extremely rich detail, but nothing surprises you.
And though the scope is impressive, carrying so many characters as well as (mildly) threading them through current events, there is always the problem of wishing more time was spent with the characters you like best, instead. Lydgate, I wanted him to shut up a while, oh just take a break with your professional quandaries, gracious. Dorothea, I wanted to hear from her every day. One of the best parts of the book takes place during the outstanding disappointment of Dorothea's honeymoon, and this was just perfect, and what I wished the whole book was like. Her every thought (as well as that of her husband's) is fleshed out with cutting realism, and it's marvelous. All the time spent in less interesting thoughts (such as Lydgate's confused career politics) just made me antsy.
Similarly, the peripheral characters went both ways. Clearly the most incredible work is done on Rosamond, who marries Lydgate and makes just about the worst wife of all time. Eliot spares not one gram of Rosamond's conniving selfishness and perceived blamelessness, and it is just damning, and amazing. I'd have been pleased to read even more about her. Interestingly, she isn't so much a villain to the story (despite ruining a ton of things), as a straightforward portrait all her own. I also liked her goony brother Fred, mostly for the way he constantly screws up his relationship with the excellent Mary Garth and is somehow always forgiven for it. (He really shouldn't be.) The Garth family rules, and I loved all the time spent with them. Mary and Fred probably gave me the most pause for thought of anyone that isn't Dorothea.
Dorothea, though... I couldn't love her well enough. I understood her best when she was with other people, often poorly relating to them, but I was rarely moved by her as described on her own. I appreciate deeply her search for her cause, but really the "St. Theresa of Nothing" theme falls away, despite her attempts to sacrifice. And after I finished this, I went to look at Romola again, and happened across a passage describing her similar conflict in so much the same exact speech and tone as Dorothea's that it left me with some distaste. I don't think an author's wrong to repeatedly explore a certain strong feeling, but it made me less impressed with what I did get from Middlemarch.
And the major conflicts aside, there is some boring nonsense in the storylines that we have to spend a lot of time with. Fred's inheritance, Bulstrode's scandal, Will's apparent connection to basically everybody by the end. Lydgate's denial and battle with his debts was a good path, but didn't actually sting as much as I thought it should. (I read that he and Rosamond may have been conceived as a latter-day Bovary, but that aspect didn't have quite the element of total downfall as in the original.) Also I really, really, really didn't want to spend 100 pages debating for whom Lydgate would cast his vote for hospital chaplain. Like really not in the slightest. Maybe it wasn't literally 100 pages, but boy it read like it. Which is a nutshell that works.
Still and all I marked about 50 pages that said something excellent, and I'll reread them all. One of the best showed up in the first few scenes, an admonishment from James: "'You give up from some high, generous motive.'" Ouch.
But my favorite, I think: "There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us."
I've read that line over dozens of times already. That is the right text for the moment. So. I'm not giving up on George Eliot anytime ever.
.
This is probably going to take me the rest of the year to read, but I'm hoping that it is "the right text for the moment."
.
Ok first of all, I can't believe I read this in only 7 weeks. That's gold-medal championship reading, for me! And of course, it means that at many times, it was a great pleasure. Somewhere roughly halfway through, I had a good week or two just gobbling the chapters right up.
Stillllll. You know what I did here? I rounded it down. Ugh I knowww. I'm the worst. It's not right. But there it is, that's all the stars I got in my little sack for today. This may not have really been a 3-star read, fairly, but I think in some ways it's going to sit on my shelf forever as a 3-star book. I can't explain. But I'll try.
Honestly, the problem may have been that I already love George Eliot. I already know that she produces sharp insight and an immense depth of both criticism and empathy for her characters, which are just brilliant skills for a novelist, and I adore them. But so far, where I've loved these qualities the most is in the first novel I read, which also brings with it such overwhelming feelings I thought that I would just claw my face off. (And still feel that way every time I revisit it. How is my face still attached??)
And that's not what's going on here in Middlemarch. Which is ok. I perceive that it's doing something different, and that's fine. I looked forward to reading her most famous book partly because I had a dim idea of what Dorothea's conflicts are in it, and because I presumed that the feeling in this work must be the greatest. But frankly, its greatness is for other reasons, and a bit like when I read Mrs. Dalloway recently (though not as frustratingly), it reads a little bit like English class.
You stand back and admire this book more than you fall to the bottom of a well with it. And the second thing is my favorite thing when I read. I prefer irrevocably dropping into wells to soberly observing, oh what a grand scope of setting, each character is the center of their own story, two protagonists carrying through, though honestly only one has a lot to say and it's the one I like less. And is that a poetic medical metaphor I see?
I do admire a lot here. The basic idea, wherein she begins her book with the courtships and marriages of these characters rather than ending the book there, is good. In fact I was a bit impatient waiting for the terrible marriages to mount. Oh, so terrible, these marriages! Yes! Let the illusion of happiness disintegrate before my eyes! But still... it's pat, to a point. The conflicts are rendered in extremely rich detail, but nothing surprises you.
And though the scope is impressive, carrying so many characters as well as (mildly) threading them through current events, there is always the problem of wishing more time was spent with the characters you like best, instead. Lydgate, I wanted him to shut up a while, oh just take a break with your professional quandaries, gracious. Dorothea, I wanted to hear from her every day. One of the best parts of the book takes place during the outstanding disappointment of Dorothea's honeymoon, and this was just perfect, and what I wished the whole book was like. Her every thought (as well as that of her husband's) is fleshed out with cutting realism, and it's marvelous. All the time spent in less interesting thoughts (such as Lydgate's confused career politics) just made me antsy.
Similarly, the peripheral characters went both ways. Clearly the most incredible work is done on Rosamond, who marries Lydgate and makes just about the worst wife of all time. Eliot spares not one gram of Rosamond's conniving selfishness and perceived blamelessness, and it is just damning, and amazing. I'd have been pleased to read even more about her. Interestingly, she isn't so much a villain to the story (despite ruining a ton of things), as a straightforward portrait all her own. I also liked her goony brother Fred, mostly for the way he constantly screws up his relationship with the excellent Mary Garth and is somehow always forgiven for it. (He really shouldn't be.) The Garth family rules, and I loved all the time spent with them. Mary and Fred probably gave me the most pause for thought of anyone that isn't Dorothea.
Dorothea, though... I couldn't love her well enough. I understood her best when she was with other people, often poorly relating to them, but I was rarely moved by her as described on her own. I appreciate deeply her search for her cause, but really the "St. Theresa of Nothing" theme falls away, despite her attempts to sacrifice. And after I finished this, I went to look at Romola again, and happened across a passage describing her similar conflict in so much the same exact speech and tone as Dorothea's that it left me with some distaste. I don't think an author's wrong to repeatedly explore a certain strong feeling, but it made me less impressed with what I did get from Middlemarch.
And the major conflicts aside, there is some boring nonsense in the storylines that we have to spend a lot of time with. Fred's inheritance, Bulstrode's scandal, Will's apparent connection to basically everybody by the end. Lydgate's denial and battle with his debts was a good path, but didn't actually sting as much as I thought it should. (I read that he and Rosamond may have been conceived as a latter-day Bovary, but that aspect didn't have quite the element of total downfall as in the original.) Also I really, really, really didn't want to spend 100 pages debating for whom Lydgate would cast his vote for hospital chaplain. Like really not in the slightest. Maybe it wasn't literally 100 pages, but boy it read like it. Which is a nutshell that works.
Still and all I marked about 50 pages that said something excellent, and I'll reread them all. One of the best showed up in the first few scenes, an admonishment from James: "'You give up from some high, generous motive.'" Ouch.
But my favorite, I think: "There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us."
I've read that line over dozens of times already. That is the right text for the moment. So. I'm not giving up on George Eliot anytime ever.