Middlemarch

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Crappy Edition
Review: I've been buying Norton Critical Editions for years, I guess because I got used to them in college, but this will probably be the last one.

The paper is superthin and has too much show-through, making it a strain to read the very small, cramped, long-lined type. The text had a surprising number of typos--not historical misspellings left in because they were in Eliot's original version, but outright stupid mistakes that the proofreader should have caught. The cover stock is soft and flimsy and dogeared instantly; the jacket is ugly.

I would have enjoyed reading this excellent book a lot more if the physical object itself had been less disappointing. Treat yourself to a nicer edition (which will probably cost a lot less, anyway), and borrow the library's copy if you want to read the critical articles.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: This book is wonderful from start to finish. Eliot deserves rank with the great classic writers. She has created fully realized characters about whom one comes to care. Her writing is pure 19th century--long descriptions and careful, insightful observations. I realize in today's world that we want things presented with "more matter and less art" but to find the art of Eliot, it is well worth wading through the 800-plus pages. This ranks up there with the best books I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: An Underappreciated Classic
Review: George Eliot (actually Mary Ann Evans) created a remarkable story. One would think a 794 page story would have to contain a fair amount of filler. Yet Mary Ann Evans had so much to say, so much humor to share, insight to express, and story to relate that no less than 794 pages would have sufficed. This is a tremendous book.

Rating:
Summary: Less Would be More
Review: "Middlemarch," George Eliot's magnum opus, is a work that should have had the firm hand of an editor. Coming in at 838 pages, it is really about a 450 page work. Heavily padded with the author's observations and philosophizing, and interminable detail on sometimes minor characters,it reminds me of slogging through a rain-soaked, ploughed field until the final one-third of the novel.

One main plot thread is that of the fatally flawed Nicholas Bulstrode who, though drawn to Christian religious sentiment, has feet of clay that ultimately destroy his plans for fame and honor. It is the destruction of Bulstrode that provides the most interesting story line in the novel. Bulstrode has, in his nefarious past, deeply wronged Will Ladislaw who comes to the town in the form of a cousin to the man, the Reverend Edward Casaubon, who will become Dorothea's first husband. Dorothea Brooke, the other main plot thread, is a super virtuous, moderately wealthy woman of puritan values and a naive zeal for service to some great cause. unfortunately,Dorothea's zeal overcomes her good sense, in spite of considerable advice from friends, and she marries Casaubon who she sees as a man with a mission. Unfortunately, Casaubon has not the ability to carry out the mission that he has chosen but he will be resolutely supported by the virtuous Dorothea in spite of her recognition of his short-comings. Fortunately, the Reverend dies early in the story, leaving Dorothea rather impressive wealth to carry out good intentions. Unfortunately, the Reverend puts a poison pill in his will that seems at first to thwart the virtuous Dorothea's desire to take the also virtuous Will Ladislaw for her second husband. Fortunately, Dorothea's virtue has no bounds and the Reverend's poison pill will have little ultimate effect.

Mingled with these threads and bulking up the novel, not always to its benefit, are a number of other threads of miscellaneous colors. There is the young physician, Dr. Lydgate, who is newly arrived and thus jealously regarded by the established physicians of the town. Lydgate is of good character but poor judgement and so is deservedly punished by becoming inextricably snarled in the destruction of Bulstrode, giving the virtuous Dorothea a chance to demonstrate her virtue by saving Lydgate from total destruction. There is the Vincy family which has produced a son, Fred, and daughter, Rosamond (who marries Lydgate in the course of the novel), of imperfect character who thus impact other persons in the story to their detriment. Again the virtuous Dorothea rides to the rescue by demonstrating to Rosamond what the true character of a wife should be. An almost entirely separate story is that of Caleb Garth and his family who represent the Victorian ideal, hard-working, pastoral people of the earth whose morality exceeds that of the wealthy (except, of course, for the virtuous Dorothea.) Caleb and his daughter, Mary, demonstrate that pastoral virtue by saving Fred Vincy from himself. There is the struggling parson, Mr Farebrother, supporting his sister, mother and aunt who resorts to penny-ante gambling to eke out his finances; the virtuous Dorothea saves him from himself. There are many other minor characters, one of which is instrumental in the downfall of Bulstrode, but the ones discussed above represent the bulk of the story lines in the novel.

Eliot chose to write her novel as the omniscient observer, giving her the chance to comment on anything she chose to and this is probably the weakness of the novel and the cause of its excessive length. She gives her readers little chance to form their own judgements, carefully analyzing her characters' faults and mistakes in judgements and adding extensive philosophical commentary. Take for example her description of Mr Farebrother's reaction to another man of the cloth who has bested him in getting a position which would have greatly reduced Mr Farebrother's need for outside income:

"But Mr Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before. The character of the publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments or the dulness of our own jokes. But the Vicar of St Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this - that he could escuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him."

Eliot has to some extent defeated her own moralizing in this novel. Although Dorothea is a viruous woman, in the end it is always the fact that she has wealth that enables her to carry out solutions to problems.

Eliot had not the ability of her contemporary, Charles Dickens, to draw memorable characters such as Fagin and the Artful Dodger but she included a much wider social swath and intensity of emotion than that of her predecessor, Jane Austen. Jane Austen, however, gave her readers more room for their own judgements and could write with an intoxicating style - for days after reading "Emma" I caught myself thinking in Austen's modality and tempo. Although Harold Bloom has included Eliot in his Western Canon, I could not bring myself to give her that status on the basis of "Middlemarch" as he seems to do. In my opinion, a reader would spend time to better effect by reading two or three of Eliot's shorter works such as "Adam Bede" and "Silas Marner."

Rating:
Summary: More Brilliant than Jane Austen
Review: This delightful and intriguing novel, which takes place in the small town of Middlemarch, is far more than a trio of love stories, personal entanglements, and breeding ground of secrets. Middlemarch is also an interesting commentary on period views on gender and class issues. A pleasure to read and you will be wiser!

Rating:
Summary: Elliot is inside your head.
Review: How is it that I am the first person to write a reveiw for, arguably, one of the greatest novels ever written in the English language? Perhaps I am simply the first to write a review for this edition (which, by the way, is superb: the notes are meticulous and fascinating; the introduction is probing and insightful).

Middlemarch is much more than a novel, it is a work of cutting insight into the deepest pathos of Human Nature. I have never (albeit I'm only 21) read a book so psychologically accurate as this. One gets psychological accuracy with Tolstoy, but surely one loses something in the translation. Middlemarch is like Tolstoy for the Native English speaker. It is written in that much-dreaded-by-students Victorian form, however, if you are willing to be patient and persistent, you will find yourself absorbed with the lives of the characters that inhabit this fictional English Province. The plot twists and gossipy townspeople are enough to keep the more shallow reader interested; but if you are keen on depth and understanding the nuances of human nature, then this book is sure to captivate you. Not that there is anything wrong with being either shallow or deep; I constantly found myself intrigued by the townspeople's gossip and the scandals, as well as finding myself pondering some of the puzzling behavior of the characters and (most of the time) identifying with them. I am under the belief that this book must be considered one of the finest works ever written in the English language. But I am simply a college student in the midwest and have no weight of influence to encourage the avid reading of Middlemarch; I suggest you consult Virginia Woolf's thoughts on the matter. She describes Middlemarch as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." If that is not convincing enough, Hermione Lee suggests that Middlemarch is "The most profound, wise and absorbing of English novels... and, above all, truthful and forgiving about human behaviour."

Nota Bene: If you consider yourself a humanist, Middlemarch is a necessity!

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent
Review: I am in awe of George Eliot. She has constructed a narrative that is uncommonly perceptive and literate about both the subtle and quirky level of individual motivation and the larger forces of society which form the arena in which human lives play themselves out. Middlemarch is a provincial English town during Victorian times and Eliot selects a broad range of characters from every level of society to illustrate her themes. Prominent among these themes are the way in which the ambitions of potentially extraordinary achievers can be constrained by a poor choice of affiliation, most notably bad marraiges. She also addresses the role of women, the way that wealthy landowners determine the quality of life for the poor, and presents insightful portraits of a number of personality types. It is often a very funny book as well, as she exposes the foibles of the pompous and self-deluded which subtle and unerring accuracy.

This is not a light read. This is a long, dense novel, but I found something fascinating on nearly every page.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the effort.
Review: I had to read "Middlemarch" for a Victorian literature course, and I approached it with certain trepidation: it's a tome, for a start, and by the time I braved it, I'd heard pretty much everyone in the class muttering about how dense and difficult it was. I had that reaction, too, for about 100, or even 200 pages. But I fell in love with it slowly. You have to almost re-learn how to read when you approach a novel like Middlemarch; it was not written to cater to short, wandering attention spans. But the brilliance of this book gradually reveals itself. Eliot is subtle and serious, but she is also witty and very humane, and in "Middlemarch" she tackles so much: science, art, religion, politics, love, morality.
I noticed by the end of the course that everyone who had previously been whining about this book had come to feel a certain sense of awe toward it. "Middlemarch" certainly demands a lot of time and thought to fully appreciate, but it's not difficult to understand why this is considered the great Victorian novel.

Rating:
Summary: One of the great works of Victorian literature
Review: Virginia Woolf once said that "Middlemarch" was the first novel written for adults and she is correct. With the exception of Fielding's "Amelia" this is one of the first books to marry off its heroine before the first 150 pages and to let the audience realize the consequences of not examining the real nature of one's future mate.

The book is set in the reform period and all of the main characters are intent of carrying out some measure of reform. Dorothea Brooke wants to make poverty as appealling as wealth, Dr. Lydgate wants to reform medical care to eliminate diseases with the latest methods. Dorthea's uncle Mr. Brooke wants to get elected to parliament on the "reform ticket," Mr. Casaubon, who later marries Dorothea, wants to reform scholarship by producing something called "The Key to the World's Mythologies."

It probably will not spoil the book by revealing that none of these reforms are realized. All are wrecked by human nature and flaws in the characters themselves. The only person who succeeds is Mary Garth who manages to reform Fred Vincey who begins as a rascal, bellowing for something called a marrow bone for breakfast and then transforms into a likable figure. This I think is key to what is afoot in Middlemarch. Before society can really be reformed, human nature needs to be so regulated as to permit a more general reform of society. Some may dismiss this as a simplistic solution, but it is no more a simplistic approach than those theories that ignore human nature as they build castles in the air, just like the people of Middlemarch.

I must confess that I found this book slow going at first. I think that the key to the book is that Eliot does not consider any particular character as the mouthpiece of her ideas (for a while I thought Dorothea was meant to be Eliot herself, but she is too great an artist to make this kind of mistake). No, this is Eliot's best book and rightly so. She does not cheat in the characterization which is one of the strengths of the book. This makes her work shine through nearly 150 years later.

Rating:
Summary: George Eliot¿s Humble Servant
Review: I really stand in awe of Ms Eliot's tremendous talent. I would not like to be classified among those modern day literary critics who indicate that a certain author's plots aren't worth much, but the books are saved by their wonderfully constructed sentences. But there is no doubt that GE is a master of the language. She is a writer of profound elegance who shows a deep understanding of human psychology. All that said I am pleased to say that she can also write a darn good story.

Middlemarch is one of many Victorian novels that presents the plight of women during that period (how many other women were out there with writing talent that were stifled, I wonder). There are three plots in the novel that examine male and female relationships and the role that both sexes play during courting and marriage, and we learn how women were treated with condescension if they voiced an opinion on something. But this is not a gothic romance novel. It is a beautifully written story of the social milieu of English provincial life around 1830.

There is a certain law that pertains to Victorian novels: If a character is married early in the novel, then that marriage is doomed to failure. Middlemarch follows the law scrupulously. You must be married in the book's waning pages if you want to live happily ever after. Dorothea is a wealthy young woman who marries a scholastic, elderly clergyman because she wants to gain knowledge at the feet of a master. Unfortunately he is a dried up fig with no ability to communicate wisdom. He dies but leaves Dorothea with a burdensome restriction in the will: she can not marry a man that she also loves. Dr. Lydgate marries a dim and self centered woman who sees a husband solely as a provider of a fine life style. And poor drifting Fred courts a plain, but bright commoner who will continue to reject his advances until he settles down and finds a career for himself.

Now maybe that plot outline makes you yawn, but it is the way that George Eliot tells it that makes the difference. She presents a crystal clear picture of these people and their lives and society and even politics. And despite her stately language GE has an engaging, subtle humor to her writing. Mr. Crabbe, the glazier, loved joining the group for gossip, and is described as one "who gathered much news and then groped among it dimly."

My copy of Middlemarch is the Norton Critical Edition, and I highly recommend it. It contains and extra 150 pages of Ms Eliot's letters about the book; her notes laying out the story; and some interesting contemporary and current reviews and analyses of the novel. Henry James, liked it, but had some criticisms of the lead characters, which I found myself (sort of)agreeing with. It's a great supplement to a great novel.