Customer Reviews

Middlemarch (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(89)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I took up this book because it was on a booklist of the 100 best books written, and I have to agree. It took awhile to get into it because there's a great deal of expository writing at the beginning, but stick with it and you'll be introduced to some fascinating characters in the town of Middlemarch.

Dorothea Brooke is a young woman about to take a much older husband, determined to find purpose in her life by assisting him with his life's work, a book which is to a definitive guide to all the mythologies of the world. When she begins to suspect her husband's work is little more than empty piffle, how will she find her way?

Mr. Lydgate is a hotshot young physician determined to do great works from the small town of Middlemarch. Thwarted by small town suspicion and politics, and increasingly saddled by debt incurred by a pretty young wife, how will he cope as his life's dream slips away?

Fred Vincy is the son of a town merchant determined to see him made a gentleman. He's paid for Fred to recieve a gentleman's education at Oxford with the intention that Fred will join the Church. Fred knows the Church isn't for him, but isn't sure what else to do, nor how to tell his father his education was for naught.

These are just three of a huge cast of characters, all of them fascinating in their own way as their lives intersect. The book feels more like a documentary than a novel, and you grow to feel as if the characters could be your own friends and neighbors. Highly recommended, I know this is going to be one of my favorite books.

Yes, that is a strong statement, but I believe Middlemarch to be the best novel written in English. And English is a rich language, overflowing with worthy works from both sides of the Atlantic, India and beyond. The only novel as a close contender on my list is Jane Eyre, with its fearsome symmetry and romantic passion.
George Eliot has been the bane of students everywhere who suffer reading Silas Marner in high school. But later on, you, like me, may develop a taste for the classics and this book will reward you richly.
The story is about Dorothea, a young, idealist woman, born to a good family with a modest fortune of her own. She is a prime catch on the wife market--money, family name, good looks. Her parents are deceased and her friends and uncle seek to pair her up with a local baron as the ideal mate. But Dorothea, bookish, religious and dreamy, has other ideas. She chooses, instead, a superannuated cleric who finally decides to marry as he feels mortality and ill health upon him. Casaubon, the vicar of a nearby rural church is a good match except....he's old, ugly and what the heck is he doing marrying such a young beauty. But Dorothea, who's imagining a sort of superior father figure who could "teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it" wakes up to far less than a reality of marital bliss. And there's an added complication created by her unworthy husband that has dire consequences for the young Dorothea.
The subsequent examination of marriage as a partnership in hell is written with stunning modernity. Eliot not only creates the disastrous marriage of Dorothea to Casaubon, but also pairs, as a comparison, Lydgate, a doctor and his frivolous, vain, uncaring wife. The relationship of marriage to society is never more well drawn, but the internal suffering of people trapped in loveless marriage is written with sympathy and cunning insight. Eliot herself had a live-in relationship with Henry Lewes, who could not divorce his wife. She undoubtedly wrote from personal experience. The insight into human nature, such as jealousy, disappointment, recrimination, loss of trust and a feeling of desperation are themes that anyone who has ever been in a relationship will recognize as truth. If you find classic literature hard going, watch the mini-series created based on the book. Then, knowing the general plot, you might enjoy the structure and language of the novel more.

George Eliot, (nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans), wrote a literary masterpiece with "Middlemarch." I was forced to read this in school at an age when term papers and grades meant more than absorbing the riches this novel contains. I recently gave it another shot, lured back into 19th century English lit. by easier reads, like Jane Austen, whose work I love, and the Brontes. But I don't want to compare apples and oranges. Let it suffice to say, I got back to "Middlemarch" 30 years later. And it was/is so worth the re-read!

Ms. Eliot created, with this book, an entire community in England in the mid-1800s and called it Middlemarch. She populated this provincial town with people of every station, local squires and their families, tradespeople, the rising middle class, (Middlemarch, right?), & the poor and destitute, ruthless and honest. She crowded them together, with all their ambitions, dreams and foibles, in this magnificent literary soap opera, and wove a wonderful web of plots and subplots. Ms. Eliot also wrote scathing social commentary and used great wit.

The fortunes of Middlemarch are rising in this new era when machines and trains - fast, available transportation - are changing the world, the economy, the politics. Rigid social codes, the British class system, is in danger of being breached. Folks are out to make a quick buck, or a shilling - anything to acquire wealth and enhance social position.

Dorothea Brooks lives in Middlemarch. She is an intelligent, sensitive young woman, who wants to dedicate her life to important endeavors. She does not want to settle for a typical marriage and family, but looks toward a more noble cause. As a woman, a professional life is not open to her, nor is the pursuit of intellect, outside of marriage. She weds the elderly Rev. Casaubon, a cold, narcissistic man, thinking that by assisting him with his scholarly research and writing, she will find happiness.

Dr. Lydgate comes to Middlemarch to begin his medical practice there. He is an idealist, who has dreams of finding a cure for cholera and opening a free clinic. He meets blonde and beautiful Rosamund Vincie, who fancies him for a spouse...along with a new house, new furniture, an extensive wardrobe, etc.

A dashing, romantic Will Ladislaw, nephew of Rev. Casaubon, enters the story, as does Rosie's brother Fred, who wants desperately to marry his Mary, but is out of work and in debt. This cast of richly drawn characters continues to grow with the introduction of Mary's family, the Garths, the banker Bulstrode, friends, relations, and an evil villain or two.

This complex novel and portrait of the times, is one of the best reading experiences I have had in a long while. And it didn't hurt at all! :))

I have had a copy of this book on my shelf for years without reading it. It was so very thick, the print so small, the pages so thin! It looked dauntingly long and dull.

But when I finally picked it up out of a sense of obligation (after all, I majored in English, and it is a highly acclaimed classic) I was amazed to find myself laughing out loud on the very first page!

Dorothea, Eliot's heroine, is SO very earnest, SO idealistic and ardent! She would never be so tawdry as to fuss with her hair and dress, or wear (gasp!) jewelry in public! She is interested only in bettering the lives of the poor in their neighborhood (you could visualize her at the fore of a modern anti-war protest). But when her sister draws her into trying on their mother's old jewelry, the pure beauty of an emerald ring inspires her to decisively choose it as her own. And she stubbbornly ignores any inconsistency between that decision and her ideals.

But her idealism traps her into marriage with a man who is not at all what she believes. She sees him as a paragon of learning, questing the seas of knowledge with fearless curiousity. In actuality, he turns out to be a cautious and small-minded scholar, drily obsessed with minor points of criticism on others works. Poor Dorothea strives to find ways to hold constant in her love in the face of ugly truth. And when she meets young Will Ladislaw, a man of similar idealism and energy, she fights to stay on her moral high ground. Thank goodness the dry old scholar dies! But even after death, he manages to poison the possibility of Dorothea and Will ever making a life together.

Around this couple swarm their relatives and acquaintances, and others quests for their best lives. Each couple and each character is amusing and absorbing in their own way.

Eliot's characters are introduced and drawn so very well that each personality is fully believable and real. But beyond that, Eliot looks at all of them, the best and the worst, from a viewpoint of loving and gentle amusement. Her pithy comments are hilarious, but never malicious. She draws the reader into her own frame of mind, and invites us to look at the variety of our fellow humans with compassion and laughter.

In spite of its length, and several dizzy plunges into despair, this is a light and lively story, very readable and heartwarming.

Bottom line: Think Tolstoy and Shakespeare, but with a gossipy daytime soap opera feel, wrapped in a BBC cloak.

Full opinion: A writer and editor for the past 20 years, I thought I was facile with words. But the dexterity and perceptiveness of Mary Anne Evans (pen name George Elliot) makes me feel clumsy and dull. if you care about writing, don't miss this book. It's sort of like watching Cirque du Soleil and thinking, "Humans can do *that*? Dang, I sure have been underestimating my potential. I wonder what more I can do." It's elevating.

Instructiveness aside, it's a delicious and suspenseful tale of colliding personalities, each drawn such that we understand their innermost thoughts, particularly the ones they wouldn't share with others and, most fascinating of all, the ones they won't even admit to themselves. Since this book was written in England in the 1800s, it's shocking how accurately the author captures the experience of today's American 20-somethings. The oppression of women is no more, thank goodness, but the general makeup of our innermost selves apparently is unchanged.

Warning:The prose may feel heavy at first, since sentences are longer and more complex than what is considered "good writing" by today's standards. But it grows on you, and in your everyday life you may begin to grieve for the intricacy of expression that we Americans entirely skip in the name of efficiency.

For those who come to MIDDLEMARCH for the first time and wonder what to make up the more than 900 pages of text, they might look at the clue that George Eliot provides both in the subtitle "A Study of Provincial Life" and in her Prelude. The former suggests indeed a study of life within the narrow confines of middle class life in England before the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, yet the massive weight of the text implies that it will be a telescoped examination of that life. It is almost as if Eliot wished to place Middlemarch on a microscopic slide and then blow up the image to fit an IMAX screen, from which the reader could see, hear, and feel the images jump off the pages in unforgettably realistic power. In her Prelude, Eliot writes of a hypothetical woman that prefigures Dorothea Brooke: "Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity." Such a "life of mistakes" of the book's major and minor characters when combined with the epic sweep vision of a small slice of English society produce the book's essential theme: no one in the book is meant to be seen as heroic or even tragic because Eliot's deterministic philosophy does not allow them to overcome the stifling hand of a vision of life that hints at only the wispy illusion of success but delivers only the inevitability of failure. In such a climate, neither heroes nor tragic figures can thrive.

Part of the reason that readers have trouble keeping straight the huge cast of characters is due to Eliot's original means of publishing. MIDDLEMARCH did not start out as a fully-conceived nor finished product. Eliot had planned to write a series of connected novels, beginning with Dorothea Brooke, but after simultaneously writing two of them, she saw that their tightly interlocking themes would complement one another if they were presented as a continuous whole, so she began to publish them as a serial. She was quite successful, so much so that her publisher reminded her that in order not to let her panting public forget who was who, she had to include--or at least mention--each character on a regular basis.

Eliot divides the book into four storylines. The first deals with the aspirations of Dorothea Brooke and her disastrous marriage to Edward Casaubon. The second relates the attempt by Dr. Lydgate to establish a successful medical career that also is demolished by an unwise marriage. The third tells of the many travails of Mary Garth. And the final explains the rise and fall of the banker Bulstrode. Each of these main characters represents types of the middle class that made up the social strata with which George Eliot was so familiar. As they interact with each other, Eliot depicts their respective struggles to achieve success or happiness. These attempts usually begin with marriage or high hopes. Dorothea Brooke suffers disillusion with her husband after only a few months. Casaubon, for his part, endures the agony of knowing that his Great Book is truly the piece of trash that Dorothea rightfully suspects it to be. What emerges in the reader after completing the book is a sense of knowledge of the inner lives of the book's characters and of accrued impressions of life on a vast scale, but what is lacking is the realization that no one in MIDDLEMARCH has learned anything of value except perhaps that fate is a game of chance with the deck stacked against humanity. The reader further acknowledges that God has pulled a disappearing act, leaving the residents of Eliot's world to fend for themselves. And since the characters of MIDDLEMARCH do not change, then neither does its readers. The final judgment on MIDDLEMARCH is that it shows in a universe of detail and character delineation the interlocking lives of characters who suffer mightily, but in whose suffering fall short either of heroism or tragedy.

Although the sentences are often long and interwoven with several ideas within them to the point where I had to read some over, this book is still to me a monumental piece of artistry in the way it is written, the story developed and the creation of characters I was totally intrigued with. I don't think this is a book for the casual reader however but for someone that can really appreciate the art of weaving words into a tapestry. At times I was just awestruck by the brilliance of the work. Several months later, I still am. What a brilliant mind (in my view.)

I have often wanted to read Middlemarch but was intimidated by the length. The first few chapters are tedious and overwritten; I nearly gave up at some points but I always thought, "I got this far, I might as well go further." I was generously rewarded: by the end of the book, I was sorry I had finished it and sad that I would no longer read about these characters who had become so intimate to me. That's my measure of a masterpiece. I felt as if I'd lost some friends in the main characters when I closed the book -- friends who taught me some things about life.

The main reason I was bored in the first few chapters was because I found Dorothea Brooke so unbelievably "good" and "pious." I could not relate at all to the character who seemed one-dimensional. And I was not surprised or sympathetic when she had deluded herself into marriage with Mr. Causabon, the epitome of "ivy tower" arrogance. But I believe now that George Eliot's early depiction of Dorothea sets us up to realize that we all often are youthful and idealistic when we are young and believe passionately in "saving the world" -- and to parents we probably seemed irritatingly naive. Even with the best of intentions, as Eliot shows, we often fall short because of societal restrictions and mistakes we make in life; and then we "grow up." In the final analysis, George Eliot makes her point well: we can inspire people and change their lives with one act of kindness and by doing good in our community in our quiet ways. I started out rolling my eyes at Dorothea and ended up wanting to emulate her in my own life.

I am surprised that so many people think the story centers around Dorothea. What makes this novel so compelling and fascinating is George Eliot's extraordinary accomplishment in creating an entire village with complex characters so different and yet so similar to each other. I would say this story is as much about Lydgate, Rosamond, the Vincys, Fred and Mary, the Garths, Mr. Causabon, the Chettams, Will Ladislaw et al as it is about Dorothea.

In my copy of the book, there is a quote by Virginia Woolfe that says, to paraphrase, that this book is a great English novel written for adults. This is so true! I am a die-hard Jane Austen fan, but the one major flaw I see with Austen is that her novels are about courtship and end at marriage and thus are easier to write (though in my wildest dreams I could never write as brilliantly as Jane Austen). Courtship is often exciting, romantic, and idealistic. But marriage, and any long-term relationship, involves compromise, trials and tribulations, tests of a couple's strength, or the events that reveal the weakness of their bond. This novel examines the full range from courtship through all the peaks and valleys of marriage and the difficulties within all relationships. Along the way, you find yourself sympathizing with each character, even while you realize you loathe what he/she is doing, his/her point of view. What's amazing is that within this complex set of characters lies complexity within each person.

There is so much to comment on, but the novel is so rich I can't do it justice so I recommend everyone to read it just once.

I spent two months with Middlemarch. It is not a particularly difficult book to read, but it must be read without distractions. It is a very dense novel and requires great concentration to read it because of the tremendous amount of details contained within it. The astonishing ability of Elliot to create both characters and the setting of the book makes it an astonishing work of fiction.

In particular, the character of Rosamond Vincy is one of the elegant pieces of dissection of any character in English literature. Her failed relationship with Lydgate is at times almost painful reading as it either reflects either oneself or people you know. Like all good reading, it becomes a commentary on your own life and makes you reconsider your views.

I read the Penguin classics version with some commentary and I found the notes to be invaluable as well as the bibliography.

George Eliot was the greatest sculptor of characters. She could do grand magic with words. Through the words of George Eliot, we know each and everyone of the characters in her novel with intimate details and deep sympathy - we could see their faces up close: now they blushed, or darkened, or twitched, or pouted, or lighted up, or looked bewildered. She expressed the most difficult, the most ambiguous, and the most awkward feelings with precision, charm and force. In Middlemarch, the story had a simple, rambling plot, put together to support the cast of characters Eliot lovingly sculpted. Many argue that Middlemarch is one of the greatest novels of all times. Yes, I agree.