May 31, 2023·edited Jun 1, 2023Liked by Fran Hoepfner
Thanks everyone for Middlemarch May! I had such a wonderful time! My overall thoughts are just that the book is so rewarding to read! Everything felt so fully realized and connected and considered and full of love! I loved how everyone's meanness and pettyness was balanced by their kindness. I loved how Bulstrode, while being a huge stinker, was loved by wonderful Harriet Vincy making us have to see good in him too. I loved Rosamond!! I think she felt so real and unfortunately I took her side a lot even when I could tell she was being horrible. Sorry, Lydgate! Ultimately so hilarious to me that Rosamond only had daughters, of COURSE she could only produce perfect little imitations of herself.
I thought it was so satisfying that when we meet Lydgate, Eliot says "As easily as there may be stupidity in a man of genius if you take him unawares on the wrong subject" and then we watch Lydgate make the wrong choice under pressure every single time for the rest of the book. I got stuck at the Green Dragon for a while because I was so scared of the outcome.
The conversation between Farebrother and Fred about Fred taking up gambling again was maybe my favourite of the book. Even though the book told me repeatedly that Fred and Mary are maybe the happiest people in Middlemarch, I'm still a Mary/Farebrother truther. BUT I do think Mary choosing Fred because Farebrother "could do better without [her]" was kind of the thesis statement of the book to me. Everyone got maybe not what they wanted, but what they needed in the end. Everyone ended up alright (even poor sad Tertius who fixed gout, buck up champ and stop talking to your wife about how much you would rather be married to Dorothea).
Finally, one of my favourite jokes of the last two sections was
"'It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year ago,' said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness, but because he needed something strong to say.
'Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable,' said Celia"
King and Queen of Just Saying Things, you will always be legendary.
omg I highlighted that last little bit too! "because he needed something strong to say" really had me going... sometimes it really be like that....
The Lydgate plotline is so satisfying, if not totally tragic, and I think when I eventually reread it will be the part of the book I will be most attuned to. Thank you for reading!
Thank you Fran for #MiddlemarchMay... I really enjoyed this, and I've never vibed with a book club before. (I don't know if I mentioned, I read the Penguin Classics edition, and I recommend that imprint if you don't mind hardcovers.)
I found myself completely blown away by the final chapters, specifically the scene where Rosamund and Dorothea "clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck." Also when Dorothea assures Will she will "learn what everything costs." 🥺
Each ending felt true and earned for each character, although I found Lydgate's to be extremely sad... RIP sweetie, I hope there are no debt collectors in heaven...
Some stray favorite moments:
1) When Mary explains why she likes Fred: "I should never like scolding any one else so well."
2) "There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it." Whew.
3) When Eliot notes as an aside that Sir James is Dorothea's best friend it really made me appreciate how unusual and well-drawn their dynamic is. I thought he'd end up being an antagonist based on their initial failed courtship and instead she took it in a much more interesting direction.
I think James not approving of Dorothea's marriage to Will is one of the more elegantly handled little divides towards the end of the book: sometimes your friends will really to struggle to come around on a partner and that is quite brutal! I almost wish that part had been fleshed out a little more, or perhaps not mediated by the women, but when isn't stuff mediated by women...
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by Fran Hoepfner
I loved that shipwreck quote, especially because it so beautifully contrasted with this earlier quote about Lydgate and Rosy: "But a deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and the silence between them became intolerable to him; it was if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other."
Thrilled with the finale - Eliot is on an absolute heater for the entirety of Book 8, and every character’s ending feels narratively and thematically satisfying in a way that elevates everything that came before. TY Fran for the culture and the community!!
I ~really~ love the contrast between the beautiful scene of Mrs. Bulstrode literally lifting Mr. Bulstrode out of his shame (“Look up, Nicholas”) and the subsequent scene of Rosamond responding to Lydgate’s failures by wishing she had Will instead. It’s not that Bulstrode is more deserving of grace than Lydgate (quite the contrary), but Mrs. Bulstrode is just more resigned to her role as a wife in this society than Rosy, for better and for worse. Bulstrode and Lydgate are both bad husbands in different ways, but Bulstrode was always nice to his wife, which made the ultimate difference. It’s also nicely bookended by Lydgate coming back and playing the safe harbor to Rosy after she’s devastated by all the (glorious) Will/Rosamond stuff. These little people and their big feelings!!
Instantly one of my favorite closing passages of all time, and the “hidden life” quote is such an optimistic twist on that earlier passage about Dorothea privately willing the good of the world from her limited existence. I also adored when it was used as the end title quote in Malick’s “A Hidden Life” (and it almost unlocks as much of that movie as it does of MM), but I had no idea it was from this! What a treat, and what a perfect way to put an uplifting button on such a sprawling work.
That's a great point about Bulstrode: Mrs. Bulstrode and Harriet Vincy really help him out of his sadness. If nothing else, he is still allied with women. I loved that Dorothea tries with Lydgate, and that he is both too proud and too depressed to really take her on. Their interactions were some of my favorite. Maybe in another universe they're the two who are meant to be..
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by Fran Hoepfner
I honestly think they are! A throwaway line I can't remember from when they first met made me think they'd end up together. And that's another great point about Lydgate. It's interesting that Bulstrode needs to be saved by women, whereas Lydgate's saving grace is a woman who finally needs him
The adult sibling relationship Between Bulstrode and Harriet Vincy is actually really interesting and kind of beautiful - like the way she intervenes on Lydgate and Rosamond's behalf too. Really emphasises how women were expected to have influence via their husbands or other men, and how canny women had to be to make that happen
Totally right, and it definitely plays out elsewhere too (Rosy, Dorothea, Mrs. Garth, etc.). And that's the funny thing about Bulstrode - whenever he was talking to someone else (usually his wife), I'd forget who was talking and just be kinda charmed by him, until I'd remember he's sort of a scoundrel. But there's goodness in there!
I annoyingly missed last week's comments due to Chaos and now have a migraine so I will be circumspect but, a few points:
1. Henry James' review of this book is famous in part for starting the "Ladislaw vs. Lydgate" debate which continues to rage amongst academics and readers of the book. I think this is very silly. But the review is gold:
"[Ladislaw] is, we may say, the one figure which a masculine intellect of the same power as George Eliot's would not have conceived with the same complacency; he is, in short, roughly speaking, a woman's man. It strikes us as an oddity in the author's scheme that she would have chosen just this figure of Ladislaw as the creature in whom Dorothea was to find her spiritual compensations. ... We are doubtless less content with Ladislaw, on account of the noble, almost sepulchral, relief of the neighboring figure of Lydgate, the real hero of the story. ... Lydgate is so richly successful a figure that we have regretted strongly at moments, for immediate interests' sake, that the current of his fortunes should not mingle more freely with the occasionally thin-flowing stream of Dorothea's. ... Lydgate is a really complete portrait of a man, which seems to us high praise. It is striking evidence of the altogether superior quality of George Eliot's imagination that, though elaborately represented, Lydgate should be treated so little from what we may roughly (and we trust without offence) call the sexual point of view."
For centuries since people have been complaining that Dorothea and Lydgate should have gotten married, because Ladislaw is too girly. Thank you Henry.
2. Because I missed this last week: did you all discuss, or not, the fact that Dorothea and Casaubon definitely did not ever sleep together. The sexual lives of these characters can't be talked about explicitly but they are so important to their behavior! Will Ladislaw, despite what Henry would have us believe, is HOT and Dorothea is HORNY. Lydgate and Rosamond also making bad decisions for this reason. Life was rough before the advent of divorce.
3. People/academics also get very bothered by the ending, because Dorothea "just" marries Will and has kids and is a mom, rather than going on to do something remarkable with her life. I also think this is silly and misapprehends the entire point of the book. The novel is about failure: everyone with ambitions fails to accomplish them and everyone is forced to either face up to their own flaws (Fred) or make some kind of major comprise (Lydgate, Rosamond, Ladislaw in a certain way). (Well, not Celia and Sir James, but they're too normal to have pathos.) I didn't appreciate this as a 20-year-old but when I read it as a slightly older person this became immediately clear to me. Eliot's genius is that this book about thwarted ambitions, failure, and bitter disappointment still makes you feel so expansively generous toward people. She loves everybody and makes you love them, too. (Daniel Deronda does not inspire this level of affirmation.)
I wrote my (bad) master's thesis using Stanley Cavell's Pursuits of Happiness as a frame, comparing the love plots to comedies of remarriage. His thesis in that book revolves around the characters in those screwballs being children and often existing (or retreating to) an Edenic place (Connecticut, usually). Middlemarch is a kind of Eden for the characters in this novel, and I don't think it's any coincidence that the two main couples leave it by the end — or that Fred and Mary, the purest of the lot, are allowed to stay. But that's life! You can't go home again. And as the last couple paragraphs in the epilogue — the best thing ever written in English for my money — point out, life is made up of people who don't get written about or remembered, and they matter anyway.
OK I am really laughing at Ladislaw being a woman's man... I guess if you want a guy to be frustrating! None of these characters feel particularly skewed to any gender preference: I maintain the hottest guy the book offers is Fred Vincy, who learns to be normal through the act of farming, or whatever. Lydgate could learn a thing or two there.
We did not discuss that Dorothea and Casaubon never had sex, but to me that feels so obvious from Ladislaw's Rome entrance onwards, if only because I can't separate it out from Room with a View and the way in which meeting a guy in Italy when you've never had sex and suddenly you want to have sex is ruinous. That Ladislaw is kind of a pill only enhances Dorothea's desire for him, as best I can gauge, because he's negotiably annoying, whereas Casaubon was so committed to his own principles. I could never figure out if Fred and Mary had already had sex, or if they just loved each other as children do. "They explored each others bodies" - me on AO3 or whatever writing Fred/Mary fic.
Being annoyed Dorothea "just" gets married is on par with being annoyed Jane gets with Rochester... you don't have to agree with it to acknowledge that's how the book is working and what it says about what the character wants and compromises on behalf of!!!!
I really love Will partly because, I'm sure, I read the book at such an impressionable age... at 20 his fickleness didn't seem so unreasonable! And he (and she) are so young that it really isn't so bad. But I also think what's so appealing about that relationship to me is that they both learn something from each other and then change as a result (like in the great romcoms, back to Cavell) -- unlike with Casaubon as you say who is intractable and expects her to just do what he says.
I do think too that even though the James review is very silly there is something right beneath his complaining which is that Will is not super macho and in that way different from most other love interests in novels up to this point. All of Austen's male leads are appropriately manly even if they are also funny or fallible, the Brontës all go for Byronic types... and etc. Will is a less strong personality than Dorothea and is described as kind of a skinny guy with lots of curly blond hair... she really invented a new type! Interestingly James puts in every possible type of macho man in Portrait of a Lady, they're all disasters, and the only appealing man is the heroine's sickly cousin (who is definitely queer and not very traditionally manly).
I am so glad someone brought up the Casaubon sex thing... the flip side of it though is like, she's so obsessed with her duty to him as a wife, wouldn't she try for it? Some questions may be better left unanswered
In the book I linked to somewhere in this thread, Parallel Lives, the author has a big section explaining how little women (of a certain class) in this period even like... knew what sex was... great anecdote from Edith Wharton (who came later) trying to get her mother to explain to her what the duties of a wife were before she got married, clearly having clocked that SOMETHING was up, and her mother refusing to explain. There are a couple examples in the book of unconsummated marriages, which must have happened more than we'd think, and the wives kind of knowing something was wrong but not quite knowing what at least at the beginning... crazy to think about now! But I think it's totally plausible in Dorothea's case because she's such a naif. And then of course she feels even more woebegone and useless... and confused by the situation with Will. The fact that everybody was getting married in this state and then couldn't get divorced is so nuts although affairs were I think pretty common in the upper classes as a solution because like... what else are you going to do.
PPS Just caught up reading everyone else's comments which are so lovely... Fran thank you for organizing this, a triumph! I haven't ever managed to be in a book club and couldn't manage to get to one in person now and this has been so satisfying (not least because you picked my favorite book hahaha). As we were talking about the first week there is just something extra satisfying about these big books... greater effort and greater reward. Excited for the next one :)
PS Fran I read Wuthering Heights last year for the first time since college -- I had liked it at the time but much less than Jane Eyre, which remains one of my faves of all time -- and imo it slaps. But I also spoke to a friend from grad school last summer who's now teaching Victorian lit to undergrads and they all apparently choose to write about Anne Brontë when given the option of the three, which is a situation I find so confusing I need to dedicate time and study to understanding what the hell is going on.
I need to finally revisit WH.. it's one of Phil's favorites, and I would really like to appreciate it instead of just being mildly annoyed every time I try to reconsider it.
I remember reading it in college and being like "wow crazy that anyone thinks this book is romantic because everyone involved is a complete psycho" and upon rereading it... pretty much the same response! It's deeply fucked up in a pretty shocking way for the time and I think gets regularly misread because actually processing how dark it is is not palatable to people
I definitely preferred it as a scary story to a love story, but felt like the latter got in the way of the former... maybe my own unfair framing, though
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by Fran Hoepfner
I also enjoyed reading along with the group! Rosamond was really trying my patience but I appreciate that she clears up confusion between Dorothea and Will (however begrudgingly?). I also loved the epilogue at the end and would definitely read more of Eliot’s books after this.
Thank you Fran for this superior reading opportunity! I found a new favorite in a book I never would have tried and the community comments have been the highlights of my weeks :]
I also hated Wuthering Heights so solidarity there
I found the seventh book excruciating but it was all redeemed by book eight - it's been good all along of course but the payoff at the ending made it all worth it. I was at an awards show on Saturday night and I have a maybe too clear memory of tipsily telling a uni acquaintance at the after party about Middlemarch and how it would be the best book hed ever read. I loved the hidden life quote and movie but I did feel a little disappointed that it wasn't buried deep in section 6 or something so I could have felt more pleased with myself for discovering it. I need to watch more Terence Malick movies.
I lost it at this description of Dorothea's two husband's "the Casaubon cuttle fish fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing master" which convinced me that George Eliot probably entertained her friends with brutal insults of her enemies.
I think the empathy for Bulstrode is interesting - the way the story depicts his sense of guilt and fear is so compelling, his justifications for his actions. Such an astute way to see how we all revise the story we're living in so it says something good about ourselves - the strong desire to be a consistent person. The "gossip spreads slowly" scenes were SO well done, especially with how Rosamond and Mrs Bulstrode are affected, all that nuanced commentary around what a wife is supposed to be.
I also particularly noticed the pastoral/natural worl elements in this section, especially when Dorothea and Will are together. It kind of reminded me of how the natural environment is depicted in the very atmospheric setting of Hardy's The Woodlanders. I.e. "the evergreens were showing the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening sky " and "far off in the bending sky was the pearly light: and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labour and endurance". The bending sky!!! It's just great, and indicates Dorothea's dogged insistenve at being part of something bigger than herself -her longing to be busy even when she is so lonely and everyone wants her to be a normal.widow who does little things with her money and cleaves to their expectations.
I love the gossip spreads slowly scenes. I was reminded of aspects of one of my other favorite books, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, which has these intercallary chapters where you're just checking in with other people going through similar things as the Joad family -- often not connected narratively, like they are here, but it paints are larger, stranger world beyond what we know to be our anchorhold.
May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023Liked by Fran Hoepfner
I also loved the descriptions of nature! I noticed them especially when Mr. Bulstrode was out looking at Stone Court. I thought "the evenings were delicious in that quiet spot, when the new hay-ricks lately set up were sending forth odors to mingle with the breath of the rich old garden. One evening, while the sun was still above the horizon and burning in golden lamps among the great walnut boughs" was so surprisingly sensuous for a passage about noted ascetic, Mr. B.
Also when Dorothea and Will were kissing in the library and we LITERALLY got a cameo by Casaubon's ghost? ("The rain 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") Incredible.
I'm amazed at Eliot's ability to have it both ways, that she can have locations called, like, "Freshitt" and "Stone Court" -- seemingly kind of terrible -- and then render them very beautiful during scenes of introspection or emotional swell. It's really lovely.
Dorthea and Ladislaw finally having their moment during the storm is so magical, the line “While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit each of them up for the other–and the light seemed to be the terror of hopeless love.” really knocked me out.
I love this little tale and the photo of the annotations really did me in. There is something so special about reading somebody else's notes in a book esp someone you love even if they are mundane. <3
Little epilogues are very charming to me. When I was a kid I loved when a movie-- I'm thinking especially of The Sandlot-- would tell you what happened to all the characters after, and I was glad to have one in Middlemarch. Maybe Eliot would have been able to write "...that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs" without the epilogue, but I thought that was a perfect way to end the novel and the structure made it feel natural.
I really liked Middlemarch. More than any other book I've read it captured the fatalism of being young and feeling like every decision you make might be the wrong one, only for time to prove you wrong. I loved Fran's comment about how many of the couples united because of the intervention of a third party. There were many times during my read that I was not appreciative of the town itself and I really did not enjoy this novel as a historical novel, but the setting was perfect in that it made magnified every decision a character made and made every wrong one (i.e. marrying Casaubon) feel cataclysmic. Eliot seems to believe, though, that the world is kind and will introduce order over time. That's the kind of optimism I can get behind
Thanks for putting this on! I never would have read Middlemarch without the nudge; I'm really happy that I did (and at least slightly proud that I kept up)
Thank you for reading!! I also associate little epilogues with books for young people -- this isn't not a book about youth/for young people, so it all winds up being quite fitting!
Little epilogues are like the end of a movie based on a true story where they tell you want happened to the real people and you get the expansive feeling that no life can be contained in any medium, that things must happen off the screen and off the page. I'm thinking of the end of Pride, particularly, which made me so emotional but also (iirc) Cool Runnings
I am so sorry I couldn't participate in Middlemarch May as much as I originally intended (May is rough on the life of a teacher who is also finishing a grad school semester), but I have loved reading every post and comment like a creepy lurker! It really reminded me how much I loved this book when I read it in college, which in the intervening years has felt like I was gaslighting myself somehow. But no! It's funny and modern and great! Victorian lit is sometimes the best! Thank you for hosting this, and thank you to Claire for sharing that lovely grandpa story. I look forward to being a more active participant in [insert book title] May next year!
That's okay!!! Being a teacher this month was not easy (I write from experience, myself!) but happy to have you nonetheless, as both a Middlemarch May lurker and a WH hater.
A student I taught almost 10 years ago & I still send each other memes back & forth about how much we hate WH/Heathcliff. Although I do appreciate Heathcliff's commitment to trolling everyone who even remotely slights him.
When Rosamund decided to write the letter to rich Uncle Godwin without telling Lydgate I did let out an audible "OH NO". I was quite surprised by how thrilling the situation surrounding Raffles' death ended up being, Bulstrode sticking just the key for the liquor cabinet through the crack of the door at night is so next-level sketchy. I loved getting some more Caleb Garth in these last couple of books, his excitement for Fred and Mary's future really shines during the darkness of the Lydgate/Bulstrode drama, and even made me end up feeling pro-Fred. The "sympathizing with X" meme is so true and Eliot's skill for observation, which especially stands out in that astonishingly moving epilogue, is basically unmatched in my mind.
"She put her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet good-by without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it superficially."
Thanks, Fran for organizing the book club and bringing Middlemarch into my life, and to everyone for their incredibly insightful commentary throughout the month. It really was great getting to experience my first book club this way.
Bulstrode is sketchy, but the second the townspeople kept calling him a Jew I had to come to the defense of my guy (from either real or supposed period-accurate antisemitism).
I saw you add the movie to watchlist! I am gonna check out the miniseries but then let's talk about which - if any - of these is a strong adaptation. I need more MM!!! Thank you for participating!
I think the one on LB is actually the mini-series or at least *a* miniseries, but I'm also very curious to see how it adapts. I do think if I knew Rufus Sewell played Ladislaw while reading I would have liked him less.
As someone who did not participate in middlemarch may (shot myself in foot by trying to read Proust before grad school but only getting 150 p in so far.........) I have loved reading these posts :)
I MADE IT THROUGH MIDDLEMARCH MAY!! and it only took me until the eighth of June :)
Is it too late, have we moved on? perhaps. but i really feel like i went through something so I thought I would share ANYWAY.
I'm so glad I faced my fear of this huge imposing novel because I genuinely had a great time! I found it very hard in the beginning and really had to push (listen to the audiobook) but somewhere around Book 3 something had shifted and suddenly I couldn't stop talking about Middlemarch. I love love love Dorothea like a dear friend of mine. And maybe I am too simple and boring but I'm partial to Will Ladislaw and their whole storyline was my favorite: "a first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an opening to comedy" lmao
These discussion posts have been so vital in challenging my tendency to not be able to sympathize at all for characters i do not like (Eliot practically begging for me to consider Casaubon and I just don't want to???) BUT by the end I am surprisingly fascinated by Rosamond even though i find her slightly villainous. Her conversation with Dorothea is maybe my favorite scene in the whole book.
Fran, I loved Middlemarch May! I would like to nominate Independent People by Halldor Laxness for the next May read. First, because it is a pro labor epic, appropriate for May Day. Second because it is a forgotten classic that is right in the Fran Mag wheelhouse. Third because it’s one of the best description of adolescence I’ve read. Fourth, because I love it and I need more people to talk about it
Thanks everyone for Middlemarch May! I had such a wonderful time! My overall thoughts are just that the book is so rewarding to read! Everything felt so fully realized and connected and considered and full of love! I loved how everyone's meanness and pettyness was balanced by their kindness. I loved how Bulstrode, while being a huge stinker, was loved by wonderful Harriet Vincy making us have to see good in him too. I loved Rosamond!! I think she felt so real and unfortunately I took her side a lot even when I could tell she was being horrible. Sorry, Lydgate! Ultimately so hilarious to me that Rosamond only had daughters, of COURSE she could only produce perfect little imitations of herself.
I thought it was so satisfying that when we meet Lydgate, Eliot says "As easily as there may be stupidity in a man of genius if you take him unawares on the wrong subject" and then we watch Lydgate make the wrong choice under pressure every single time for the rest of the book. I got stuck at the Green Dragon for a while because I was so scared of the outcome.
The conversation between Farebrother and Fred about Fred taking up gambling again was maybe my favourite of the book. Even though the book told me repeatedly that Fred and Mary are maybe the happiest people in Middlemarch, I'm still a Mary/Farebrother truther. BUT I do think Mary choosing Fred because Farebrother "could do better without [her]" was kind of the thesis statement of the book to me. Everyone got maybe not what they wanted, but what they needed in the end. Everyone ended up alright (even poor sad Tertius who fixed gout, buck up champ and stop talking to your wife about how much you would rather be married to Dorothea).
Finally, one of my favourite jokes of the last two sections was
"'It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year ago,' said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness, but because he needed something strong to say.
'Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable,' said Celia"
King and Queen of Just Saying Things, you will always be legendary.
omg I highlighted that last little bit too! "because he needed something strong to say" really had me going... sometimes it really be like that....
The Lydgate plotline is so satisfying, if not totally tragic, and I think when I eventually reread it will be the part of the book I will be most attuned to. Thank you for reading!
Thank you Fran for #MiddlemarchMay... I really enjoyed this, and I've never vibed with a book club before. (I don't know if I mentioned, I read the Penguin Classics edition, and I recommend that imprint if you don't mind hardcovers.)
I found myself completely blown away by the final chapters, specifically the scene where Rosamund and Dorothea "clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck." Also when Dorothea assures Will she will "learn what everything costs." 🥺
Each ending felt true and earned for each character, although I found Lydgate's to be extremely sad... RIP sweetie, I hope there are no debt collectors in heaven...
Some stray favorite moments:
1) When Mary explains why she likes Fred: "I should never like scolding any one else so well."
2) "There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it." Whew.
3) When Eliot notes as an aside that Sir James is Dorothea's best friend it really made me appreciate how unusual and well-drawn their dynamic is. I thought he'd end up being an antagonist based on their initial failed courtship and instead she took it in a much more interesting direction.
I think James not approving of Dorothea's marriage to Will is one of the more elegantly handled little divides towards the end of the book: sometimes your friends will really to struggle to come around on a partner and that is quite brutal! I almost wish that part had been fleshed out a little more, or perhaps not mediated by the women, but when isn't stuff mediated by women...
I loved that shipwreck quote, especially because it so beautifully contrasted with this earlier quote about Lydgate and Rosy: "But a deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and the silence between them became intolerable to him; it was if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other."
"learn what everything costs"... brb crying...
Thrilled with the finale - Eliot is on an absolute heater for the entirety of Book 8, and every character’s ending feels narratively and thematically satisfying in a way that elevates everything that came before. TY Fran for the culture and the community!!
I ~really~ love the contrast between the beautiful scene of Mrs. Bulstrode literally lifting Mr. Bulstrode out of his shame (“Look up, Nicholas”) and the subsequent scene of Rosamond responding to Lydgate’s failures by wishing she had Will instead. It’s not that Bulstrode is more deserving of grace than Lydgate (quite the contrary), but Mrs. Bulstrode is just more resigned to her role as a wife in this society than Rosy, for better and for worse. Bulstrode and Lydgate are both bad husbands in different ways, but Bulstrode was always nice to his wife, which made the ultimate difference. It’s also nicely bookended by Lydgate coming back and playing the safe harbor to Rosy after she’s devastated by all the (glorious) Will/Rosamond stuff. These little people and their big feelings!!
Instantly one of my favorite closing passages of all time, and the “hidden life” quote is such an optimistic twist on that earlier passage about Dorothea privately willing the good of the world from her limited existence. I also adored when it was used as the end title quote in Malick’s “A Hidden Life” (and it almost unlocks as much of that movie as it does of MM), but I had no idea it was from this! What a treat, and what a perfect way to put an uplifting button on such a sprawling work.
That's a great point about Bulstrode: Mrs. Bulstrode and Harriet Vincy really help him out of his sadness. If nothing else, he is still allied with women. I loved that Dorothea tries with Lydgate, and that he is both too proud and too depressed to really take her on. Their interactions were some of my favorite. Maybe in another universe they're the two who are meant to be..
I honestly think they are! A throwaway line I can't remember from when they first met made me think they'd end up together. And that's another great point about Lydgate. It's interesting that Bulstrode needs to be saved by women, whereas Lydgate's saving grace is a woman who finally needs him
The adult sibling relationship Between Bulstrode and Harriet Vincy is actually really interesting and kind of beautiful - like the way she intervenes on Lydgate and Rosamond's behalf too. Really emphasises how women were expected to have influence via their husbands or other men, and how canny women had to be to make that happen
Totally right, and it definitely plays out elsewhere too (Rosy, Dorothea, Mrs. Garth, etc.). And that's the funny thing about Bulstrode - whenever he was talking to someone else (usually his wife), I'd forget who was talking and just be kinda charmed by him, until I'd remember he's sort of a scoundrel. But there's goodness in there!
I annoyingly missed last week's comments due to Chaos and now have a migraine so I will be circumspect but, a few points:
1. Henry James' review of this book is famous in part for starting the "Ladislaw vs. Lydgate" debate which continues to rage amongst academics and readers of the book. I think this is very silly. But the review is gold:
"[Ladislaw] is, we may say, the one figure which a masculine intellect of the same power as George Eliot's would not have conceived with the same complacency; he is, in short, roughly speaking, a woman's man. It strikes us as an oddity in the author's scheme that she would have chosen just this figure of Ladislaw as the creature in whom Dorothea was to find her spiritual compensations. ... We are doubtless less content with Ladislaw, on account of the noble, almost sepulchral, relief of the neighboring figure of Lydgate, the real hero of the story. ... Lydgate is so richly successful a figure that we have regretted strongly at moments, for immediate interests' sake, that the current of his fortunes should not mingle more freely with the occasionally thin-flowing stream of Dorothea's. ... Lydgate is a really complete portrait of a man, which seems to us high praise. It is striking evidence of the altogether superior quality of George Eliot's imagination that, though elaborately represented, Lydgate should be treated so little from what we may roughly (and we trust without offence) call the sexual point of view."
For centuries since people have been complaining that Dorothea and Lydgate should have gotten married, because Ladislaw is too girly. Thank you Henry.
2. Because I missed this last week: did you all discuss, or not, the fact that Dorothea and Casaubon definitely did not ever sleep together. The sexual lives of these characters can't be talked about explicitly but they are so important to their behavior! Will Ladislaw, despite what Henry would have us believe, is HOT and Dorothea is HORNY. Lydgate and Rosamond also making bad decisions for this reason. Life was rough before the advent of divorce.
3. People/academics also get very bothered by the ending, because Dorothea "just" marries Will and has kids and is a mom, rather than going on to do something remarkable with her life. I also think this is silly and misapprehends the entire point of the book. The novel is about failure: everyone with ambitions fails to accomplish them and everyone is forced to either face up to their own flaws (Fred) or make some kind of major comprise (Lydgate, Rosamond, Ladislaw in a certain way). (Well, not Celia and Sir James, but they're too normal to have pathos.) I didn't appreciate this as a 20-year-old but when I read it as a slightly older person this became immediately clear to me. Eliot's genius is that this book about thwarted ambitions, failure, and bitter disappointment still makes you feel so expansively generous toward people. She loves everybody and makes you love them, too. (Daniel Deronda does not inspire this level of affirmation.)
I wrote my (bad) master's thesis using Stanley Cavell's Pursuits of Happiness as a frame, comparing the love plots to comedies of remarriage. His thesis in that book revolves around the characters in those screwballs being children and often existing (or retreating to) an Edenic place (Connecticut, usually). Middlemarch is a kind of Eden for the characters in this novel, and I don't think it's any coincidence that the two main couples leave it by the end — or that Fred and Mary, the purest of the lot, are allowed to stay. But that's life! You can't go home again. And as the last couple paragraphs in the epilogue — the best thing ever written in English for my money — point out, life is made up of people who don't get written about or remembered, and they matter anyway.
OK I am really laughing at Ladislaw being a woman's man... I guess if you want a guy to be frustrating! None of these characters feel particularly skewed to any gender preference: I maintain the hottest guy the book offers is Fred Vincy, who learns to be normal through the act of farming, or whatever. Lydgate could learn a thing or two there.
We did not discuss that Dorothea and Casaubon never had sex, but to me that feels so obvious from Ladislaw's Rome entrance onwards, if only because I can't separate it out from Room with a View and the way in which meeting a guy in Italy when you've never had sex and suddenly you want to have sex is ruinous. That Ladislaw is kind of a pill only enhances Dorothea's desire for him, as best I can gauge, because he's negotiably annoying, whereas Casaubon was so committed to his own principles. I could never figure out if Fred and Mary had already had sex, or if they just loved each other as children do. "They explored each others bodies" - me on AO3 or whatever writing Fred/Mary fic.
Being annoyed Dorothea "just" gets married is on par with being annoyed Jane gets with Rochester... you don't have to agree with it to acknowledge that's how the book is working and what it says about what the character wants and compromises on behalf of!!!!
I really love Will partly because, I'm sure, I read the book at such an impressionable age... at 20 his fickleness didn't seem so unreasonable! And he (and she) are so young that it really isn't so bad. But I also think what's so appealing about that relationship to me is that they both learn something from each other and then change as a result (like in the great romcoms, back to Cavell) -- unlike with Casaubon as you say who is intractable and expects her to just do what he says.
I do think too that even though the James review is very silly there is something right beneath his complaining which is that Will is not super macho and in that way different from most other love interests in novels up to this point. All of Austen's male leads are appropriately manly even if they are also funny or fallible, the Brontës all go for Byronic types... and etc. Will is a less strong personality than Dorothea and is described as kind of a skinny guy with lots of curly blond hair... she really invented a new type! Interestingly James puts in every possible type of macho man in Portrait of a Lady, they're all disasters, and the only appealing man is the heroine's sickly cousin (who is definitely queer and not very traditionally manly).
I am so glad someone brought up the Casaubon sex thing... the flip side of it though is like, she's so obsessed with her duty to him as a wife, wouldn't she try for it? Some questions may be better left unanswered
In the book I linked to somewhere in this thread, Parallel Lives, the author has a big section explaining how little women (of a certain class) in this period even like... knew what sex was... great anecdote from Edith Wharton (who came later) trying to get her mother to explain to her what the duties of a wife were before she got married, clearly having clocked that SOMETHING was up, and her mother refusing to explain. There are a couple examples in the book of unconsummated marriages, which must have happened more than we'd think, and the wives kind of knowing something was wrong but not quite knowing what at least at the beginning... crazy to think about now! But I think it's totally plausible in Dorothea's case because she's such a naif. And then of course she feels even more woebegone and useless... and confused by the situation with Will. The fact that everybody was getting married in this state and then couldn't get divorced is so nuts although affairs were I think pretty common in the upper classes as a solution because like... what else are you going to do.
PPS Just caught up reading everyone else's comments which are so lovely... Fran thank you for organizing this, a triumph! I haven't ever managed to be in a book club and couldn't manage to get to one in person now and this has been so satisfying (not least because you picked my favorite book hahaha). As we were talking about the first week there is just something extra satisfying about these big books... greater effort and greater reward. Excited for the next one :)
thank you so much for all the knowledge and info and support and love!!!!
PS Supplemental reading that may be of interest to people who read along this month -- I'm not too far into this but it's great so far and Eliot is one of the featured characters: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Parallel-Lives-by-Phyllis-Rose/9781911547525
I read this book a couple of years ago- truly fascinating and literal case studies as to why the Victorians were insanely fucked up as a people.
PS Fran I read Wuthering Heights last year for the first time since college -- I had liked it at the time but much less than Jane Eyre, which remains one of my faves of all time -- and imo it slaps. But I also spoke to a friend from grad school last summer who's now teaching Victorian lit to undergrads and they all apparently choose to write about Anne Brontë when given the option of the three, which is a situation I find so confusing I need to dedicate time and study to understanding what the hell is going on.
I need to finally revisit WH.. it's one of Phil's favorites, and I would really like to appreciate it instead of just being mildly annoyed every time I try to reconsider it.
I remember reading it in college and being like "wow crazy that anyone thinks this book is romantic because everyone involved is a complete psycho" and upon rereading it... pretty much the same response! It's deeply fucked up in a pretty shocking way for the time and I think gets regularly misread because actually processing how dark it is is not palatable to people
WH is one of my favorite books and I do think the key to enjoying it is to see it as a fucked-up ghost story and not a love story!
I definitely preferred it as a scary story to a love story, but felt like the latter got in the way of the former... maybe my own unfair framing, though
Yes completely!!
I also enjoyed reading along with the group! Rosamond was really trying my patience but I appreciate that she clears up confusion between Dorothea and Will (however begrudgingly?). I also loved the epilogue at the end and would definitely read more of Eliot’s books after this.
Thank you for Middlemarch May
🌼🌸🪷💐🌷🌹🌾🪻
Thank you Fran for this superior reading opportunity! I found a new favorite in a book I never would have tried and the community comments have been the highlights of my weeks :]
I also hated Wuthering Heights so solidarity there
I found the seventh book excruciating but it was all redeemed by book eight - it's been good all along of course but the payoff at the ending made it all worth it. I was at an awards show on Saturday night and I have a maybe too clear memory of tipsily telling a uni acquaintance at the after party about Middlemarch and how it would be the best book hed ever read. I loved the hidden life quote and movie but I did feel a little disappointed that it wasn't buried deep in section 6 or something so I could have felt more pleased with myself for discovering it. I need to watch more Terence Malick movies.
I lost it at this description of Dorothea's two husband's "the Casaubon cuttle fish fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing master" which convinced me that George Eliot probably entertained her friends with brutal insults of her enemies.
I think the empathy for Bulstrode is interesting - the way the story depicts his sense of guilt and fear is so compelling, his justifications for his actions. Such an astute way to see how we all revise the story we're living in so it says something good about ourselves - the strong desire to be a consistent person. The "gossip spreads slowly" scenes were SO well done, especially with how Rosamond and Mrs Bulstrode are affected, all that nuanced commentary around what a wife is supposed to be.
I also particularly noticed the pastoral/natural worl elements in this section, especially when Dorothea and Will are together. It kind of reminded me of how the natural environment is depicted in the very atmospheric setting of Hardy's The Woodlanders. I.e. "the evergreens were showing the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening sky " and "far off in the bending sky was the pearly light: and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labour and endurance". The bending sky!!! It's just great, and indicates Dorothea's dogged insistenve at being part of something bigger than herself -her longing to be busy even when she is so lonely and everyone wants her to be a normal.widow who does little things with her money and cleaves to their expectations.
I love the gossip spreads slowly scenes. I was reminded of aspects of one of my other favorite books, Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, which has these intercallary chapters where you're just checking in with other people going through similar things as the Joad family -- often not connected narratively, like they are here, but it paints are larger, stranger world beyond what we know to be our anchorhold.
The bending sky <3 thank you for reading!!
I also loved the descriptions of nature! I noticed them especially when Mr. Bulstrode was out looking at Stone Court. I thought "the evenings were delicious in that quiet spot, when the new hay-ricks lately set up were sending forth odors to mingle with the breath of the rich old garden. One evening, while the sun was still above the horizon and burning in golden lamps among the great walnut boughs" was so surprisingly sensuous for a passage about noted ascetic, Mr. B.
Also when Dorothea and Will were kissing in the library and we LITERALLY got a cameo by Casaubon's ghost? ("The rain 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") Incredible.
I'm amazed at Eliot's ability to have it both ways, that she can have locations called, like, "Freshitt" and "Stone Court" -- seemingly kind of terrible -- and then render them very beautiful during scenes of introspection or emotional swell. It's really lovely.
Dorthea and Ladislaw finally having their moment during the storm is so magical, the line “While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit each of them up for the other–and the light seemed to be the terror of hopeless love.” really knocked me out.
Very Joe Wright P&P...
Claire: Grandpa Sydney rules! Ty for sharing!
Thank you, he was a very special guy!
I love this little tale and the photo of the annotations really did me in. There is something so special about reading somebody else's notes in a book esp someone you love even if they are mundane. <3
Little epilogues are very charming to me. When I was a kid I loved when a movie-- I'm thinking especially of The Sandlot-- would tell you what happened to all the characters after, and I was glad to have one in Middlemarch. Maybe Eliot would have been able to write "...that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs" without the epilogue, but I thought that was a perfect way to end the novel and the structure made it feel natural.
I really liked Middlemarch. More than any other book I've read it captured the fatalism of being young and feeling like every decision you make might be the wrong one, only for time to prove you wrong. I loved Fran's comment about how many of the couples united because of the intervention of a third party. There were many times during my read that I was not appreciative of the town itself and I really did not enjoy this novel as a historical novel, but the setting was perfect in that it made magnified every decision a character made and made every wrong one (i.e. marrying Casaubon) feel cataclysmic. Eliot seems to believe, though, that the world is kind and will introduce order over time. That's the kind of optimism I can get behind
Thanks for putting this on! I never would have read Middlemarch without the nudge; I'm really happy that I did (and at least slightly proud that I kept up)
Thank you for reading!! I also associate little epilogues with books for young people -- this isn't not a book about youth/for young people, so it all winds up being quite fitting!
Little epilogues are like the end of a movie based on a true story where they tell you want happened to the real people and you get the expansive feeling that no life can be contained in any medium, that things must happen off the screen and off the page. I'm thinking of the end of Pride, particularly, which made me so emotional but also (iirc) Cool Runnings
I am so sorry I couldn't participate in Middlemarch May as much as I originally intended (May is rough on the life of a teacher who is also finishing a grad school semester), but I have loved reading every post and comment like a creepy lurker! It really reminded me how much I loved this book when I read it in college, which in the intervening years has felt like I was gaslighting myself somehow. But no! It's funny and modern and great! Victorian lit is sometimes the best! Thank you for hosting this, and thank you to Claire for sharing that lovely grandpa story. I look forward to being a more active participant in [insert book title] May next year!
P.S. Wuthering Heights is the absolute worst!
That's okay!!! Being a teacher this month was not easy (I write from experience, myself!) but happy to have you nonetheless, as both a Middlemarch May lurker and a WH hater.
A student I taught almost 10 years ago & I still send each other memes back & forth about how much we hate WH/Heathcliff. Although I do appreciate Heathcliff's commitment to trolling everyone who even remotely slights him.
When Rosamund decided to write the letter to rich Uncle Godwin without telling Lydgate I did let out an audible "OH NO". I was quite surprised by how thrilling the situation surrounding Raffles' death ended up being, Bulstrode sticking just the key for the liquor cabinet through the crack of the door at night is so next-level sketchy. I loved getting some more Caleb Garth in these last couple of books, his excitement for Fred and Mary's future really shines during the darkness of the Lydgate/Bulstrode drama, and even made me end up feeling pro-Fred. The "sympathizing with X" meme is so true and Eliot's skill for observation, which especially stands out in that astonishingly moving epilogue, is basically unmatched in my mind.
"She put her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet good-by without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it superficially."
Thanks, Fran for organizing the book club and bringing Middlemarch into my life, and to everyone for their incredibly insightful commentary throughout the month. It really was great getting to experience my first book club this way.
Bulstrode is sketchy, but the second the townspeople kept calling him a Jew I had to come to the defense of my guy (from either real or supposed period-accurate antisemitism).
I saw you add the movie to watchlist! I am gonna check out the miniseries but then let's talk about which - if any - of these is a strong adaptation. I need more MM!!! Thank you for participating!
I think the one on LB is actually the mini-series or at least *a* miniseries, but I'm also very curious to see how it adapts. I do think if I knew Rufus Sewell played Ladislaw while reading I would have liked him less.
Bizarre casting, to say the least!
As someone who did not participate in middlemarch may (shot myself in foot by trying to read Proust before grad school but only getting 150 p in so far.........) I have loved reading these posts :)
omg yay
I MADE IT THROUGH MIDDLEMARCH MAY!! and it only took me until the eighth of June :)
Is it too late, have we moved on? perhaps. but i really feel like i went through something so I thought I would share ANYWAY.
I'm so glad I faced my fear of this huge imposing novel because I genuinely had a great time! I found it very hard in the beginning and really had to push (listen to the audiobook) but somewhere around Book 3 something had shifted and suddenly I couldn't stop talking about Middlemarch. I love love love Dorothea like a dear friend of mine. And maybe I am too simple and boring but I'm partial to Will Ladislaw and their whole storyline was my favorite: "a first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an opening to comedy" lmao
These discussion posts have been so vital in challenging my tendency to not be able to sympathize at all for characters i do not like (Eliot practically begging for me to consider Casaubon and I just don't want to???) BUT by the end I am surprisingly fascinated by Rosamond even though i find her slightly villainous. Her conversation with Dorothea is maybe my favorite scene in the whole book.
you're not too late!!! I love that quote about a second farewell lending an opening to comedy <3
thank you for coming and discussing!!!
Fran, I loved Middlemarch May! I would like to nominate Independent People by Halldor Laxness for the next May read. First, because it is a pro labor epic, appropriate for May Day. Second because it is a forgotten classic that is right in the Fran Mag wheelhouse. Third because it’s one of the best description of adolescence I’ve read. Fourth, because I love it and I need more people to talk about it
omg that sounds incredible!! Thank you for the rec! and what an author name!
More Claire guest pieces, please