Customer Reviews

Middlemarch (Oxford World's Classics)

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I must admit that I was intimidated for years by this novel. It sat on my shelf for ages, neglected in favor of "easier" books to read. Once I started it though, I couldn't put it down.

I generally read really quickly, but you really should take your time with every word of this novel. Otherwise you miss sentences like the following:

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." !!!!!!!!!!! AMAZING.

Not to mention a lushly romantic plot that really tears you apart. I couldn't believe how breathless I was during the interactions of two of the main characters. Deeper messages aside, this was an emotional experience. I read Middlemarch like I read novels that will not be in print more than 10 years. So don't be intimidated by the density of the prose like I was!

I have been wanting to read this classic for a long time, and I've finally done it. Why did I wait so long?

Middlemarch is primarily the story of Dorothea Brooke - a woman who wants to make the world a better place at a time when women were not encouraged to have ideas outside of their own homes. This ardent desire leads her to make some poor choices, and some admirable ones.

This book is also a story about marriage. We see how Dorothea's marriage turns out - her sister Celia's marriage (Celia is the typical woman of her day), Rosamund's (the spoiled town beauty) marriage, and the marriage prospects of Mary Garth, a poor working girl.

The author helps us to get inside the minds of her characters, which helps us to decide if we like them or not, or if we've made similar choices too. Often I found myself sympathizing with a character I initially disliked, because I was helped to see their emotions.

It's very much a grown up book. If I had read this in my teens I would not have gained as much from the reading. There's no "and they lived happily ever after" here - Eliot keeps the story grounded.

If I had to sum up Middlemarch, I'd say Eliot gives us an inside view of the lives of women in her day. There's also quite a bit of political talk, helping us see what it must have been like to live in England while so much was starting to change.

For me, this book was just about perfect. One day I'd like to re-read it because I know there are some things I missed this time around.

Recommended for those who like classic literature with a lot of depth. Some have called this book "Jane Austen for grown-ups" and while I love Jane Austen very much, I think I have to agree with that.

George Eliot hasn't yet gained the modern pop success of Jane Austen or Edith Wharton, but I think its only a matter of time before she catches on in a big way and we see a big. lush movie version of Middlemarch.

For now, dont be put off by her novels of great Victorian size. If you are used to the broad comic brushstrokes of Charles Dickens, you will find Eliot a much subtler artist. She paints very subtle shades of emotion and morality.

If you have already read Middlemarch, you should seek out Virginia Woolf's essay on Eliot in her book, The Common Reader. Also, Eliot figures highly in Sandra Gilbert's study of Victorian literature, The Madwoman in the Attic.

This review is for the Oxford World's Classics edition of Middlemarch. When choosing to read a classic novel, it can be very difficult to decide which edition is the best one to read. If you're considering tackling Middlemarch, I'd recommend this edition for several reasons. First, the novel is packaged with a helpful introduction and a chronology of George Eliot's life. There are also endnotes to the text, but, unlike some editions, there aren't too many endnotes--usually about 1 for every couple pages. This will keep you from flipping back to the endnotes every paragraph, which can be very disruptive to a good reading experience. Second, the paperback is well-constructed and can stand up to some rough treatment. This is important for such a long novel that is likely to be part of your life for several weeks at least. This paperback can take a beating without falling apart. Finally, the volume is fairly compact without sacrificing paper quality. The pages are thin in order to keep the size manageable, but they can stand up to underlining and highlighting. All in all, this is a good choice of an edition if you've decided to tackle this masterpiece.

Middlemarch is an enduring classic and I will always love it. I know the book is long, but it's one of those books that you will be proud to display on your bookshelf. This particular edition was really helpful; the editor's notes were illuminating and the book provided translations and context where needed. I have read the book before without editor's notes and having those explanatory notes really name a big difference. Also, this particular edition was really affordable.

A confession: I'm a bit cynical about classics, and have no particular fondness for 19th century British lit. I was genuinely surprised at how much I loved Middlemarch. The first time I read it, I plowed through it in about 48 hours (my professional editor of an aunt made the mistake of telling me I couldn't do it) - and, actually, while that may sound like a terrible idea, this is a book that would be easy to start and stop and start and stop and give up on because you've forgotten everything. I found myself truly immersed in these character's lives, rooting for them and groaning at them and feeling like I really know them - and you do, because George Eliot was truly a master. While Jane Austen shows human quirks through... less flattering, often irritating means (I confess that I usually find myself driven away by my desire to punch her characters), Eliot observes the characters honestly ("study" is indeed the right description) but in a way that makes you love them more, not less. And, of course, Eliot's words and near-flawless, with countless descriptions and moments that I had to go back and reread out of sheer awe.

You can read Middlemarch without a care about English literature or history (though the latter will help), you can read it if you hate Eliot's contemporaries and have never read a 500+ page book in your life, you can read it if you're a teenager or an adult, optimistic or jaded. It really is one of the best things I've ever read, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I'm a huge fan of George Eliot, and this was the first of her works I read. I actually cried when I turned the last page. The story is truly several stories in one. Perhaps it centers around two motherless sisters who have been raised by their uncle, an estate owner in the habit of turning a blind eye to the concerns of his tenants. Dorothea, his eldest niece, is humble young woman, beautiful and unaware of it, and self-denying to a fault. Her sister is somewhat more trivial but her admonitions to her sister to lighten up and enjoy herself are not without merit. Amidst the vast pool of characters are also the idol youth Fred Vincey, who might just turn right if the woman he loves would give him any encouragement. Mr. Lydgate is a new doctor in town, anxious to introduce new reforms in medicine and hospital management, and he, a sworn bachelor, soon finds himself in the clutches of the adventuring, but all in all well meaning Rosamond Vincey. In the background scandal and conflict are brewing and our dear Mr. Lydgate must keep himself above water. To me, however, the story is about Dorothea. Her self denying ways land her in an unhappy marriage to a man who will not be pleased (the self-important prig.) In the mean time, she becomes acquainted with his young nephew and they form a rather intense friendship. When the husband dies, and he wills away all of her inheritance should she form any kind of alliance with Mr. Ladislaw, it seems she is doomed never to find happiness, despite her enduring endeavours to be a good influence to all around her.

This book, to me, is a testament to the power of good influences. Dorothea is quite possibly my favourite heroine of all time.

This novel by Mary Ann Evans - nom de plume, George Eliot - who lived with a man out of wedlock for most of her life and who throughout her adult life was a confirmed nonbeliever - or "nullifidian" as she would say - proved a difficult one for me to spend a week rereading. I am, no doubt, overly impressionable about literature and oversensitive to the world in which I inhabit whilst in an author's grasp. But I was clinically depressed through, say, the last few hundred pages of the book, and then felt my eyes tear in tender exultation through the final thirty. Those few hundred pages are necessary, I see again now, for making this book into a true work of art rather than a soap opera or soap box speech, but the strain on the reader - or this reader - is well-nigh unbearable. What Ms. Evans does here is to build up a moralistic universe in her provincial Middlemarch filled with humbug and cant and then bring it crashing down around the sometimes tawdry cast of characters which she deftly creates.

For, make no mistake, the true heroes of this book are Dorothea ("Gift of the gods" in Greek) and Ladislaw (an obviously somewhat domesticated version of the poet Shelley). They are the hub of the wheel around which all the other spokes revolve. They are, with their ardent natures and spiritual longings, the characters that linger - at times like guttering candles - in the back of the reader's mind all through this heavy weave of a novel. We are conscious all along of the "real" life going on as it does in the "pallid quaintness" of Dorothea's "blue-green boudoir":

"Nothing had been outwardly altered there; but while the summer had gradually advanced over the western fields beyond the avenue of the elms, the bare room had gathered within it those memories of an inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or bad angels, the invisible yet active forms of our spiritual triumphs or spiritual falls."

In the meantime (i.e., through the greater part of the novel) Ms. Evans painfully yet deftly guides us through what she at one point calls "the irony of events." So immersed do we become in the tedious banalities of the inward lives of the characters, the human misery and spiritual stolidness of these village worthies that the entire world comes to seem a very washed-out realm indeed. So that when things finally do come around for Dorothea and Ladislaw, the cosmos of Middlemarch is turned upside-down in a wondrous moment:

"The wind was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind: it was one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle pause with a certain awe."----For Lo! The two soul-mates of the novel have - the ultimate taboo in a world ruled by class, money fears and concerns, petty gossip and scandal that can ruin one - tremblingly, kissed!

The reader can have no idea how breathtaking and world-shattering this moment is from this review. It comes after hundreds of pages in which the one has been dragged through the spiritual wasteland of Middlemarch, in which men and women have had their souls and livelihoods crushed by the mundane and quotidian, described by Ms Evans with Inquisitorial detail. One has begun to wonder if love, yes love, exists at all in the world.

For, again, it is exalted, Romantic love with which Ms. Evans is primarily concerned, thrown into sublime relief by her detailed, plodding description of the drab world. To lift a phrase from the last sentence in the book, it is for those who have "lived faithfully a hidden life" - much as Ms. Evans did - which the rest of the world scorns, for whom this book is written.

I read this as part of my studies but it is a beautifully set and written piece by Eliot. It is an 800 odd page book but is one that musn't be rushed, it is a book that must be savoured and lingered over as it truly is a work of art in its own right. Even if you are not a fan of literary works, this book is a must because Eliot is a genius of her age and many of her ponderings are things that even we as people of the 21st century can find relevant. I can only say read it because this book is worth the many hours of toiling, even worth the time bearing the ghastly Casaubon.

Middlemarch is not an "easy" read as it requires attention to the footnotes, and is 800 pages. It is an excellent study of women's places in British society in the 19th century. It made me grateful to live in modern times, and not be subject to the control of a autocratic husband. The long sections on politics did not interest me much, but I found it necessary to follow them in order to fully understand the story. Even so, it is a great novel, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.