I've got to say, the roasts in this book are WILD. Pages and pages of dunking on Casaubon from Sir James and the Cadwalladers? Rosamond telling her brother that he looks stupid playing the flute? Honestly, kind of jaw dropping and unexpectedly hilarious.
Looking through my highlights and margin scribbles, Chapter 20 is kind of just banger after banger.
"Ruins and basilicas, palaces an colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence..."—that whole long paragraph almost hit me like Henry Miller at his most pessimistic, the "red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina." Damn!
"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." COME ON!
"With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions about the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight." WHAT!
I'm not generally someone who reads with a pencil, but I'm highlighting and notating a lot right now. Also just going back and rereading sentences to enjoy their construction.
"One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated."
"Do you mean anything in particular—just now?"
"No, I mean something general—always."
I'm also a tremendous Emily Dickinson fan, and I know she loved this book. I got to this part last night and thought of what she might have felt when she read it and I genuinely got a little choked up?
"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge."
Several passages in there also sit neatly under my highlight -- especially the "anything in particular -- just now?" / "something in general -- always," which always makes me laugh. I just adored the Rome section; this is the Forster fan in me but I do love when English people in books are forced to reckon with "Italy" as a concept.
That last paragraph is such a wonderful example of the ways in which Eliot's humor is always undercut (or bolstered, I suppose) with her profound empathy for all these people and all that they feel. It really is humanist in the highest degree!
Chapters 19 and 20 are among my most re-read chapters in any book ever. I feel like if anyone get to those chapters, they'll *get* Eliot and also get Dorothea and the whole book will unlock itself. I remember the first time I read it, I was annoyed to be stuck in Middlemarch after getting so invested in Dorothea and Casaubon. The Lydgate plot gets to me less now because I know where we are going!
I did have that feeling of, like, "Am I reading a really famous part of this book right now?" (I genuinely somehow know *nothing* about Middlemarch, aside from its general reputation.) At one point in chapter 20 I just wrote in the margin "SHE'S SURE ON A ROLL HERE."
The Rome section is truly unbelievable, the line early in ch.20 that knocked me out was "...after the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she was beholding Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.", like who comes up with this stuff!
I ordered the Broadview Press annotated edition just for Middlemarch May! The old edition I had was a gift from my worst ex-boyfriend, so it was time for an upgrade.
I'm tracking the most romantic things that happen in the book and the two that I have so far as Sir James telling Dorothea: “You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good opinion.” Which she hates, but I think is just about the best thing anyone could say to me. And Fred (my husband) telling Rosamond (often described as "the best girl"): “Of course I care what Mary says. She is the best girl I know.”
My reaction to it is pretty similar to both other times I have read it--I can't believe how easy it is to read. I love Dickens, but I struggle through Dickens sometimes, noticing that a hint has been dropped and not being able to remember what or why it is hinting. I don't feel this way about Middlemarch.
I also am trying my Best to be more sympathetic to Rosamond, who I have always found insufferable, but I'm wondering if that is just because she is blonde and it keeps being mentioned.
This is the section of the book that one of my favorite Fred moments in it. He is looking at Uncle Featherstone and: “Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle Featherstone's soul, though in reality half what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own inclinations. The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”
I always think of Middlemarch as a millennial novel and while I don't totally know what I mean by that, this is the quote I would point to if I were trying to stack my argument with evidence beyond vibes.
My grad school prof who taught Eliot loved to talk about how much she hated beautiful blonde women. There's a blonde bitch in every novel. Great to have a recurring trope!
Rosamond is awful but I do find her more sympathetic the more I read it and the older I get. She is just kind of doomed.
I pulled this quote out for my "be nicer to Rosamond" notes: "For Rosamond, though she would never do anything that was disagreeable to her, was industrious; and now more than ever she was active in sketching her landscapes and market-carts and portraits of friends, in practising her music, and in being from morning till night her own standard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her own consciousness."
"have always an audience in her own consciousness" feels like a dual condemnation and tragedy for her! Dorothea (sympathetic heroine) and Lucy Snowe (of Villette, preferred by Eliot over Jane Eyre) are two heroines that I would put in the category of "famously without an audience of their own consciousness."
Though now I really like that I imagine my to-do list and Fred Vincy's to-do list both include: "be nicer to Rosy."
Rosamond is awful but this idea of her performing what a Good Lady is supposed to be is so exhausting and really runs through the book -- won't get into details here but as you know as her plot progresses she's so tied to ideas of how she should live and be and she just can't imagine anything else. It's very sad, though also I would not want to speak to her, ever. Interesting to compare her to Gwendolen in Daniel Deronda, if you've read that, who is very similar but is forced to actually experience character growth.
It's funny because when James says that to Dorothea, it's one of the rare times I take her side -- to some extent, I can see why James's amiable nature drives her totally insane, though it might have been something of a modern reaction for the time period.
I agree about the vibes of it being a millennial novel -- perhaps in part because it's dealing with a generation of young people who were able(ish) to decide their fates for themselves for both better and worse. Is Dorothea's ability to refuse James actually good for her? Are Will and Fred right to be wishy-washy in their careers? Their freedom grants them time, but with that time comes more room for difficulty, indecision, and stress. I don't envy them, necessarily, knowing we all went thru similar!
i’m having such a great experience with the breadth of the novel. knowing that i’m in for 800 pages allows me to really let the stuff that i’m not getting wash over me, and hoping that i’ll pick up anything really important later.
i kept thinking to myself “novels are all about the many different ways you can be annoying” and, though pithy, i think this is true, and is what makes it such a pleasure--no one is annoying in the same way, and people who are annoying to you are treated the same as people who are not as immediately annoying. everyone feels the bite of the narrator at some point or another, and everyone is granted some perspective. i was particularly touched by the passage about casubon, a very annoying guy, who was nevertheless granted a very lovely interior moment when the narrator discussed his desire/expectation that he would FEEL more upon “falling” “in” “love”. i’m finding it easy to see the marriage from dorothea’s pov, but i loved being able to look around inside casubon’s head a bit.
lastly, i’m surprised by the rosamund hate! she rocks! i’m on page 170 (so maybe haven’t gotten there yet) but her only crime so far is being a girly girl! would love to hear more from rosamund stans/haters on this
I'm reading a self-proclaimed "authoritative text"--a Norton Critical Edition from 1977 which I remember purchasing used at my hometown's celebrated Treehorn Books in like 2006 and which has stood on my shelf unread next to other unread tomes, Ulysses, the main David Foster Wallace one that I'm blanking on the title and don't feel like googling, and a bulky Proust set (I did read Swann's Way in 2019 ok). I always wanted to read it because when I was 19 I read a lot of Virginia Woolf and I know she loved it, but this always felt more intimidating than Woolf.
I only finished Book 1 this week. I'm enjoying it but it does take me like 4 minutes to read a page. Sometimes I have to read sentences like three times, and sometimes I just kind of move on only 60% understanding it. I think this is just due to my broken brain because other times I'm like really in the zone and fly through it. This seems to happen when I try to read it as though Vanessa Redgrave was reading it to me.
I keep laughing about "Freshitt Manor" where Sir James lives. I do hope Sir James and Celia get together, he seems hot.
Fran, I also noted the end of chapter 9, about Celia "'saying things'" to Dorothea, because that is a lifetime struggle of mine (of everyone's?). To "say things." I'm an introvert. I think I'm more of a Celia than a Dorothea, but I think my enemies would disagree.
I have a similar experience of reading it as you, where sometimes it takes me several minutes to get through a few pages, and I am often doubling back to make sure I understand what's being articulated. I love Eliot's dialogue, but she -- like any good talent -- withholds it for when it's most necessary. Whenever I read period books I love to try to identify who is the most "normal-coded," and here it's definitely Sir James and Celia (in P&P it's Rosamund Pike and the ginger; don't make me remember their names).
I laughed every time I saw Freshitt Manor and thought of you texting me "she named a place Freshitt."
I used to feel "less than" when I would have to reread things in grown-up books but then I learned of an anecdote: when Beloved came out, Oprah told Toni Morrison like "i'm loving it but i find i have to keep going over it before continuing" and Morrison replied "that, my dear, is called reading"
I'm also reading this edition in the same matter of minutes and with the same rereading of sentences and with the same I just got to move on attitude. Very small print!
Very fun to read everybody's thoughts esp people who are reading it for the first time! I'm not rereading but I have a treasured battered OUP Classics edition crammed full of annotations from multiple readings going back to 2010 which can be alarming.
Fran it's very funny to me that you're so hard on Dorothea -- the last time I read it I was reminded of how young she is, which I didn't process all when reading it at age 20 (basically her age!). I love her, she's just so hopelessly sincere and has of course made a very bad mistake. Also helpful to think about Eliot's own past as a very devout teenager who then broke from the church and became a non-believer, leading to her father disowning her. I think there is a lot of her in Dorothea, although I know Mary Garth is the real self-insert.
Speaking of Mary, I love Fred. But I also love Lydgate! I love everybody except Rosamond and the fusty old people we haven't met yet. Lydgate certainly grows with rereadings. He's not exactly as sympathetic or altruistic as Dorothea eg but he is such a real person to me. I think you will have read the bit about him as a child in the library by this point, though perhaps not quite -- I think about that little scene all the time.
Oh and one other piece of historical context: all the Brits were obsessed with Italy in the 19th century not only because of the art and history etc (Casaubon and his archives...) but mainly, according to a prof of mine who taught a class on this, because of THE WEATHER!!! IT WAS WARM AND SUNNY ALL THE TIME!!! The Romantics of course were obsessed with it and most of them lived there for at least a while, and a lot of the Victorians did too. This whole bit is way more skeptical than the earlier generation -- ditto James -- though Dorothea does still have a revelation there. And Eliot had written a whole historical novel about Savonarola in Florence (Romola, which I still haven't read because it's written in Old Timey dialect) so she knew her stuff.
Oh I definitely love Dorothea, she is reminiscent of all of [REDACTED FRIENDS/FRAN MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBERS] and probably also me circa 2018-2019. Watching someone realize they have made a big mistake in their lives is one of my favorite things in novels, film, etc. and the internal grappling of how to move past and through something like that is always cathartic, whether I agree with the decision-making or not. Lydgate is perhaps the hardest for me to latch onto mostly because he -- while interesting -- interacts (mostly) with all of the people I am least interested in... the old guys, Rosamond, etc. Let's get him in the room with someone dynamic and insane, like that Parisian murderer (sort of also the plot of Decision to Leave??).
I always think about Keats going to Italy to die :( The Italy stuff in Forster is LOL funny, not only in my beloved Room with a View but also Where Angels Fear to Tread which is such a mean-spirited book, but the idea that a young woman would throw her life away to marry a ... hot Italian dentist? being the crux of the novel's conflict is so silly, they are SO mad about the hot Italian dentist.
Also PS my pitch for this book to people who are intimidated by it is that it's actually incredibly funny AND more or less a romance novel, so glad everyone is enjoying these elements from the get-go
Some underrated funny stuff from Ladislaw's German friend "If you were an artist, you would think of Mistress Second-Cousin as antique form animated by Christian sentiment–a sort of Christian Antigone–sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion."
I did a climate change literature class a while ago and we read Eliot and Harding and one little thing I remember is the weird connection between literal geography and literature - if the Tambora eruption hadn't caused horrible weather in the 1816 then Mary Sheely and Percy Shelley and Byron wouldn't have been holed up in a cabin in Switzerland writing scary stories! And I think there are ways that the anxiety of industrialisation is creeping around the edges of Middlemarch too
Lydgate was my favorite character when I read it in college, because he is very much a Type I found attractive at that time (idealistic, intelligent man who cannot get out of his own way). He definitely does feel like a real person.
I highlighted the same quote about Celia "saying things" lmao
Like many others my favorite thing about the book so far is the comedy, which is really carrying me through the circumlocution. Eliot as the narrator is cracking me up with how she has this very backhanded way of making fun of the characters, or saying "I know this seems bad but... give him a break."
My favorite passage (besides the above) was:
"Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays," (the 1994/2003 Penguin classics edition, p 99). Spoken by who else but... Freddy <3
Wow I love reading everyone’s thoughts and feelings here! Takeaways for me, I need to take more notes because I too almost feel like I’m speed reading anddddd I just love Dorothea. I so deeply relate- and I’m very excited to see what happens with the hot second cousin.....
Btw are we all watching the BBC miniseries together after we finish this?!
I took the evil route and bought the "independently published"(world's biggest grain of salt) amazon edition that is just printed walls of text with little to no page breaks and zero room for marginalia. At first, through some combination of having a hard time separating the novel from its daunting reputation and my utilitarian copy, those introductory chapters just read like a textbook that I was mostly *getting through*, and it wasn't until reading Dorthea's reaction to Casaubon's proposal letter that I realized the text was much more emotionally open and rewarding than I had expected.
"But he was something more unmanageable than a dragon: he was a benefactor with collective society at his back..." funny funny
It's so much funnier than I thought it would be! I'm reading the project Gutenberg ebook via the calibre converter so the formatting is weird but gonna rootle around in some secondhand bookshops this weekend hopefully.
I am reading the Centaur edition on Kindle. The interesting thing is that it has no page numbers. It treats every chapter like a page which is actually good because it keeps me more focused on the content and less on how much I have read. There are so many great comments already that I still need to read, but one observation I have (as a relatively older person) is everyone's focus on the young, albeit primary, characters. I am getting as much out of the older characters. Yes, Mr. Casaubon is a pill, but Mr. Brooke is a great father figure. And who doesn't love crazy Mr. Featherstone who makes Fred and Mary so miserable? Mr. Bulstrode is very controlling and deceptively powerful. The politics of the older generation is nice counterpoint to the angst and whims of the younger generation. I can't tell how old Rev. Farebrother is but he seems to be straddling the two worlds of young and old. My favorite scene is the start of Chapter 19 when Will and his German artist friend first see Dorothea at the Vatican Museum; the description was full of beauty and melancholy. Sorry, I am not an annotator, but will do better for future posts.
I love Mr. Brooke! @Ben Empey above and I were texting earlier today about how we can just hear Mr. Brooke's little "you knows." Mr. Featherstone is too mean to my friend Fred and Mary!!! I am eager to read more about Mr. Bulstrode who I understand takes up much of the back half of the novel.
Okay so here we are — books 1 and 2. I will say, in all honesty, due to a little migraine problem I still have to get to book 2, but I have been really pleased to see how fast this book is speeding by when I'm not in brain hell. Eliot's writing is so quick and saucy! And I like to think we're all in on a little joke with her when she says something so cutting and mean but coded as if it's a totally normal and gentile thing to say. I don't usually annotate my books at all (out of laziness and nothing else) but for the sake of Middlemarch May, I kept a pen nearby. I wrote so many "lol" or "own"s in the sidebar. This is my favorite:
"The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican." To me, a modern reader, this is a brutal takedown of a boring-ass man.
I also am obsessed with Ladislaw because he reminds me of so many (as Fran put it) Bushwick-esque gadabouts. This line: "Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise destination than the entire area of Europe." Reminds me of the Kroll Show sketch about the Spotted Ox Hostel. Have fun out there, bro!
Like Ben, I am struggling to understand FULLY what's going on at all times but I've been known to just look up the plot of everything while I'm reading/watching so that I can focus on the nicer, more frivolous stuff so — though this will be a spoiler — I think I'm gonna read like, a hard and fast plot summary. It's just very important to me to digest all of these tasty little digs.
I can tell Ladislaw is primed to emerge as the novel's underrated hot guy. Fred is undoubtedly the easy pick because he is so funny and vivacious, but Ladislaw's ability to woo the intellect of the book's least fun (by her own definition) character is something of a feat and a strong flirt regardless.
Her disdain for Casaubon is funny in part because though Eliot seems to -- based on her history -- not really respect religious institution, he's mostly cause for ridicule because he is just boring and not fun and not an intellectual in a cool way (did they have cool intellectuals back then? someone will know this...). His stodgy sexism is not really a matter of faith: if it was all for God, we'd know it. Here, it seems mostly to maintain the respect of his peers -- Mr. Brookes, Mr. Bulstrode, all the guys whose names I gloss over where I read the book.
Towards the bottom of my list of things to include in this post was some kind of Sparknotes/readers guide but I wound up just doing casual wikipedia perusing throughout my reading. I don't really think there's much wrong with doing that with these old tomes, and I'm hardpressed to think of a pre-20th century text where I would tell someone not to do it. Maybe Howards End, which is 20th century so whatever, but has an actual crazy ending... so worth unspoiling. Here I'm so eagerly reading for the language of it all that I'm content to know what might come because it won't really affect my curiosity about how it unfolds.
Hello! I'm reading the Alma Classics Evergreens edition on my Kindle (sorry) iPhone app (very sorry), mostly. Though never my favorite way to read a book for obv reasons, I know myself well enough to figure that being able to snack on 5-10 pages on a subway or in line for a bagel is my best bet of keeping pace. And it's working!
I'm liking it so far. This older style of writing can be tiring in that it demands my full attention for long paragraphs at a time lest I come away with nothing, but it's been rewarding when I've been able to stay locked in. I find some of the more internal sections (especially Lydgate's overlong intro, murder intrigue aside) to be the most taxing, but it really comes alive when it blends shorter philosophical musings with interpersonal work, like all the Rome stuff. Love all the pairings - Dorothea/Casaubon, Dorothea/Celia, Fred/Mary, Dorothea/Will (the best), Lydgate/Rosy, etc - and am probably most interested in Dorothea and Rosamond, occupying similar spaces as objects of affection with much more to offer than they're being asked/allowed to. V curious to see if/how they'll interact going forward!
Also found it interesting to learn the context for Casaubon's "Key to all Mythologies," since that's the name Jonathan Franzen has given his anthological trilogy that started with "Crossroads." I liked that book quite a bit and have to assume that the title is chosen tongue-in-cheek, but the more I learn about Casaubon, the more fascinating a choice it is
Loved this passage from the Roman ponderings on marriage: "To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favourite politican in the ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities."
I am reading a paperback, but I read on my Kindle app on my phone all the time for other books: I love being able to get in a few minutes on the subway and I don't like having to negotiate for a seat on a crowded train just so I can pull out a book. It's much easier to just scroll on my phone in a literary way the same way I would a "dicking around in my phone way."
I agree about the pairings feeling more thrilling than Lydgate at this point: I suspect the Lydgate morass really slowed me down in 2020 and it was tough to rally after that. I find his sections a bit funnier now, and that he is so out of his depth in Middlemarch. I love Eliot's writing less on him and more on the nature of having a new guy in town where, no matter how clever, it's easy to manipulate this guy's voting/politics/beliefs by regular old peer pressure and light bullying.
totally agree re: book on subway, and that's exactly how I justify it too - that it's better than me scrolling Twitter!
I agree with the Lydgate point too, and I do generally like him as a character/pawn in Middlemarch. I also think I read his intro when I was tired, and so was probably less generous to that section than others. Plus (being a little bit ahead), it does give us a lot of psychological background for him that enriches later sections
When that Franzen title was announced I was in such hysterics -- of all the things to invoke. He was very funny about it on press for Crossroads, in a way I really would never have expected from him. I'm still curious to see how much it plays out in the following books. Thematically there's certainly overlap between Crossroads and Middlemarch, though not in a super direct or obvious way
yeah, I just did some googling based off of your comment and it seems like it was 50% thematic relevance and 50% joking about undertaking a project that's likely to outlive him lol
to this day I have never read a Franzen novel but I find his public presence more funny than not, therefore I stand as passively pro. one day I'll get around to The Corrections!!!
I have also failed out of every book club mostly because i sometimes have a hard time articulating and especially being critical. Just turns into me saying "it's good i liked it". That said im through book 2 and it's good i like it lololol. Its much less dry and funnier than i expected. I like how conversational and full of great quotes it is.. One i marked down was:
"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, 'Oh, nothing!' Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others."
I am finding it very easy to read tbh. Feels good to be reading again as it has been awhile.
For a long time I was hard on my students for defaulting to "I like this/I don't like this," because it almost negates the ability to make a critical comment or to step back and determine if a book is working. In watching movies, especially, I've become better at being like "it works but I don't like it," or "it doesn't work at all but I like it" and trying to identify what's going on with that. But in the classroom, it wound up being a fruitless endeavor: why not talk about what you like and don't like? I do think a significant part of art consumption should be enjoyment! This is why I would have more fun in Rome than Dorothea.
That passage you shared reminds me of the movie Holiday with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn which I just watched the other week, which has one of the great tearful "what's wrong?"/"oh, nothing!!!!!" interactions. What's more obvious than saying nothing is wrong!
idk if this is because i'm sick this week or if because i have never really tried to engage with 19C english writing before but i am completely unable to thoroughly parse and understand the ~literary~ passages in this novel (because i am sick i have only gotten through book 1 thus far). i mentioned middlemarch may to my mother who said that she loved it for the sentences but i am currently in the phase where i am fighting for my fucking life just trying to get the plot out of these sentences and i have nothing in me to appreciate their artistry or profound statements about the nature of humanity or whatever. i feel like maybe this is part of why middlemarch has always been mentioned to me as a book that rewards rereading. THAT SAID, i am having a great time so far; i am obsessed with dorothea and celia (sisters are so much, man!) and lots of what they say to or think about each other is very funny. the part where neither of them can understand what the other sees (or doesn't) in a man is very hashtag relatable to me; my own sister and i have this issue all the time.
a question for the group: does anybody have a source that would explain some of the clerical/anglican background? all the men keep alluding to pamphlets and dorothea is looked at askance by mrs cadwallader for her "methodistical whims" and i know simply nothing about 19C protestantism and its controversies.
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/middlemarch-reform-and-change there is some good political background here but not so much on religion. tbh I think what you mainly need to know is that Methodism was the primary non-Anglican sect in England at the time (and not a consistent one), which was characterized by beliefs and practices that were more extreme and self-punishing -- compared to the Anglican church which was pretty chill. The people in Middlemarch kind of just want to go to church and live their lives whereas Dorothea is going on and on about changing everything and eg denying herself the pleasure of riding because that would be sinful. It's mainly relevant to think about her as a character who is taking things to extremes because she's a teenager and doesn't really understand what she's doing.
Eliot went through a period of pretty intense Methodism and Calvinism (Methodism but More) in her late teens and early twenties, and then became an atheist, which led her father to disown her. Methodism comes up a lot in her books but this one is less theological than some of the others, I think the big questions are more about moral issues that don't rely as much on theological details.
(And of course individual vicars etc were assigned to parishes by landowners, which for most people was just a cushy paid gig -- Casaubon doesn't really do any ministering. There's another vicar character who is more involved in the town later on.)
thank you! you seem to have done graduate work in this area so i hope you might know where to point me on my next question-- to what extent is methodism/dorothea's teenage extremism implicated in any of the reforming work on social issues taking place in england/middlemarch at this time? does the social do-gooder necessarily have to have a religious impulse, or are there secular/atheist reformers who are also obviously influencing these more provincial efforts? i'd expect you'd find some in london or the other big cities but i have no sense of who or what dorothea might be aware of beyond what's downstream of the religious debates.
Whoops I forgot to reply to this last week BUT -- this is super interesting, I don't have an exact answer. I think a lot of the distinction is probably between when Eliot actually wrote the book (1871-2) and when the book takes place (1830s). Darwin and the Origin of Species happen in-between those dates and the effect is pretty huge, although there were other geologists and naturalists making similar arguments before him. There were certainly atheists pre-Darwin -- the French and German Enlightenments happened in the previous century, and Eliot was heavily influenced by German philosophers, esp. Spinoza (about whom I know very little). But Britain was (and is) more conservative. David Hume was writing around the same time about atheism and was a massively controversial figure -- the only way he really got away with it was by being so hugely personally charming. Percy Shelley got thrown out of Oxford and polite society by endorsing atheism in the early 1800s (and running of with Mary Shelley without getting married). So certainly there were individual people (including Eliot, remarkably) who were skeptics but I suspect not much of a cultural movement and certainly not a charitable project associated with that, it would have been too scandalous. (I'm speculating here of course, and now I'm curious to look into this, but I think it would be pretty surprising to find this.) In the late 19th century things get way more mixed, partly due to Darwin and partly due to imperialism bringing new people into the country (not that they were particularly welcome). Still the organizations I know of from this time (settlement houses in slums mainly, and temperance movements) were very much religious in character but I wouldn't be surprised to learn about something set up in a different way. By this time you have Marxist organizers, for instance, who of course are not working under a religious framework. That would all definitely have mostly been in big cities, though -- the small towns would still have been fairly conservative I think, with the exception of maybe one or two oddballs who would have been politely ignored or shunned.
It's almost certainly a book that rewards rereading, and I wonder if I got thru these first two books quicker than anticipated because I had failed to do so long ago. I have to admit the Lydgate sections are something of a struggle, but whenever girlies are gabbing I'm otherwise having a great time. Your experience sounds similar to my high school experience of reading All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren -- now one of my favorite novels, but at the time, an unrelenting slog when it wasn't in dialogue or in scene, Penn Warren's fits of fancy and long-winded notions of humanity (he was a poet laureate!) getting in the way of what I felt was "the book." My fondest memory of that first reading experience was finally finally finally having one of the big chunky multiple-page long paragraphs click for me with what it was gesturing at, and I hope this soon happens for you. Or maybe it won't! That's sort of what happened to me with Proust, frankly... Regardless happy to have you along for the ride!
I basically just Wiki'd the reforms from the Middlemarch wiki page... not sure is that helpful but it gave me the gist.
I also hope something clicks! But I am planning to not stress about it happening on this reading; there are many books I tried to read in high school that I found incomprehensible at the time and then I picked them up the summer after college when I was underemployed and was like ohhhhhh *that's* why this is considered a great work of literature. Sometimes the brain needs time to mature!
I have been pleasantly surprised by how funny it is. The dialogue is great. Casaubon is a worthy target of ridicule, but I found myself feeling bad for Mary Garth. As I'm typing this I don't even remember why specifically, the narrator just seemed not to like her
I'm interested in how the characters relate to time. The tension in Book 1 between Dorothea believing that she has wasted her life-- compounded in Book 2 by her lament that she has not learned German for the sake of her husband-- despite being 'underage' really interested me, as did the much older Casaubon's continued delay in writing his magnum opus and Fred's insistence that leisure is more important than going forward with his studies. I thought that the expectation that each character improve themselves contrasted with the reality that they can't or won't was pretty contemporary
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, my favorite passage was the one about how Dorothea was struggling to adapt to a life where she was no longer able to fantasize about the future. I'm at an age where I've done nearly everything-- traveled abroad, gotten married, finished grad school-- I had fantasized about when I was younger and I gotta admit, it's been sort of hard to adjust to that frame of mind. She is my infinitely more religious kindred spirit
Oh, and I'm passing on Fred. The gambling debt is a red flag imo
I totally felt this with Mary – it kind of seems like she just committed the crime of being an average-looking girl (esp next to Rosamund). It does feel like she's being portrayed as annoying and having a bad attitude but Featherstone bullies her!
yeah I agree, but I think it's kind of balanced by Eliot showing how much Fred (whom Eliot seems to like, in spite of herself) loves her. But it's so backhanded everytime she's described as, like, "so beyond plain, but I suppose that did it for some guys"
Eliot wrote Mary Garth as an autobiographical character so you are probably picking up on some uh self-esteem issues of her own! She was famously Not Beautiful (Henry James has some mortifying line in a letter or diary about this, but basically everyone thought this). She did happily have a frankly shockingly successful marriage compared to most other women of that era so, you know, who has the last laugh here.
I love Mary, I think she will probably improve for you. But yes she is quite relentlessly described as plain -- in what now feels like a kind of tropey romance way honestly. A lot of this book seems to foreshadow those tropes but with like a million times more philosophical depth
I thought the beginning especially felt familiar-- protagonist who thinks that a guy is falling for someone else is actually falling for her! It reminded me of the Jane Eyre/Mr. Rochester romance. I was glad that it wrapped up quickly and with Dodo choosing a different man
Very interesting note about Mary! I had no idea. Thanks for sharing
Everyone please say “thank you Phil” for the Middlemarch May custom banner
Thanks Phil!
Thank you, Phil!
Thank you Phil!
I've got to say, the roasts in this book are WILD. Pages and pages of dunking on Casaubon from Sir James and the Cadwalladers? Rosamond telling her brother that he looks stupid playing the flute? Honestly, kind of jaw dropping and unexpectedly hilarious.
Looking through my highlights and margin scribbles, Chapter 20 is kind of just banger after banger.
"Ruins and basilicas, palaces an colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence..."—that whole long paragraph almost hit me like Henry Miller at his most pessimistic, the "red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina." Damn!
"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." COME ON!
"With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions about the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight." WHAT!
I'm not generally someone who reads with a pencil, but I'm highlighting and notating a lot right now. Also just going back and rereading sentences to enjoy their construction.
"One's self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find depreciated."
"Do you mean anything in particular—just now?"
"No, I mean something general—always."
I'm also a tremendous Emily Dickinson fan, and I know she loved this book. I got to this part last night and thought of what she might have felt when she read it and I genuinely got a little choked up?
"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge."
Several passages in there also sit neatly under my highlight -- especially the "anything in particular -- just now?" / "something in general -- always," which always makes me laugh. I just adored the Rome section; this is the Forster fan in me but I do love when English people in books are forced to reckon with "Italy" as a concept.
That last paragraph is such a wonderful example of the ways in which Eliot's humor is always undercut (or bolstered, I suppose) with her profound empathy for all these people and all that they feel. It really is humanist in the highest degree!
Chapters 19 and 20 are among my most re-read chapters in any book ever. I feel like if anyone get to those chapters, they'll *get* Eliot and also get Dorothea and the whole book will unlock itself. I remember the first time I read it, I was annoyed to be stuck in Middlemarch after getting so invested in Dorothea and Casaubon. The Lydgate plot gets to me less now because I know where we are going!
I did have that feeling of, like, "Am I reading a really famous part of this book right now?" (I genuinely somehow know *nothing* about Middlemarch, aside from its general reputation.) At one point in chapter 20 I just wrote in the margin "SHE'S SURE ON A ROLL HERE."
The Rome section is truly unbelievable, the line early in ch.20 that knocked me out was "...after the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she was beholding Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.", like who comes up with this stuff!
I had that one outlined too! Just incredible stuff.
I ordered the Broadview Press annotated edition just for Middlemarch May! The old edition I had was a gift from my worst ex-boyfriend, so it was time for an upgrade.
I'm tracking the most romantic things that happen in the book and the two that I have so far as Sir James telling Dorothea: “You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good opinion.” Which she hates, but I think is just about the best thing anyone could say to me. And Fred (my husband) telling Rosamond (often described as "the best girl"): “Of course I care what Mary says. She is the best girl I know.”
My reaction to it is pretty similar to both other times I have read it--I can't believe how easy it is to read. I love Dickens, but I struggle through Dickens sometimes, noticing that a hint has been dropped and not being able to remember what or why it is hinting. I don't feel this way about Middlemarch.
I also am trying my Best to be more sympathetic to Rosamond, who I have always found insufferable, but I'm wondering if that is just because she is blonde and it keeps being mentioned.
This is the section of the book that one of my favorite Fred moments in it. He is looking at Uncle Featherstone and: “Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle Featherstone's soul, though in reality half what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own inclinations. The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”
I always think of Middlemarch as a millennial novel and while I don't totally know what I mean by that, this is the quote I would point to if I were trying to stack my argument with evidence beyond vibes.
My grad school prof who taught Eliot loved to talk about how much she hated beautiful blonde women. There's a blonde bitch in every novel. Great to have a recurring trope!
Rosamond is awful but I do find her more sympathetic the more I read it and the older I get. She is just kind of doomed.
I pulled this quote out for my "be nicer to Rosamond" notes: "For Rosamond, though she would never do anything that was disagreeable to her, was industrious; and now more than ever she was active in sketching her landscapes and market-carts and portraits of friends, in practising her music, and in being from morning till night her own standard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her own consciousness."
"have always an audience in her own consciousness" feels like a dual condemnation and tragedy for her! Dorothea (sympathetic heroine) and Lucy Snowe (of Villette, preferred by Eliot over Jane Eyre) are two heroines that I would put in the category of "famously without an audience of their own consciousness."
Though now I really like that I imagine my to-do list and Fred Vincy's to-do list both include: "be nicer to Rosy."
hahahahahaha yes re. Fred.
Rosamond is awful but this idea of her performing what a Good Lady is supposed to be is so exhausting and really runs through the book -- won't get into details here but as you know as her plot progresses she's so tied to ideas of how she should live and be and she just can't imagine anything else. It's very sad, though also I would not want to speak to her, ever. Interesting to compare her to Gwendolen in Daniel Deronda, if you've read that, who is very similar but is forced to actually experience character growth.
It's funny because when James says that to Dorothea, it's one of the rare times I take her side -- to some extent, I can see why James's amiable nature drives her totally insane, though it might have been something of a modern reaction for the time period.
I agree about the vibes of it being a millennial novel -- perhaps in part because it's dealing with a generation of young people who were able(ish) to decide their fates for themselves for both better and worse. Is Dorothea's ability to refuse James actually good for her? Are Will and Fred right to be wishy-washy in their careers? Their freedom grants them time, but with that time comes more room for difficulty, indecision, and stress. I don't envy them, necessarily, knowing we all went thru similar!
i’m having such a great experience with the breadth of the novel. knowing that i’m in for 800 pages allows me to really let the stuff that i’m not getting wash over me, and hoping that i’ll pick up anything really important later.
i kept thinking to myself “novels are all about the many different ways you can be annoying” and, though pithy, i think this is true, and is what makes it such a pleasure--no one is annoying in the same way, and people who are annoying to you are treated the same as people who are not as immediately annoying. everyone feels the bite of the narrator at some point or another, and everyone is granted some perspective. i was particularly touched by the passage about casubon, a very annoying guy, who was nevertheless granted a very lovely interior moment when the narrator discussed his desire/expectation that he would FEEL more upon “falling” “in” “love”. i’m finding it easy to see the marriage from dorothea’s pov, but i loved being able to look around inside casubon’s head a bit.
lastly, i’m surprised by the rosamund hate! she rocks! i’m on page 170 (so maybe haven’t gotten there yet) but her only crime so far is being a girly girl! would love to hear more from rosamund stans/haters on this
fran magazine anti-blonde sentiments :(
I'm reading a self-proclaimed "authoritative text"--a Norton Critical Edition from 1977 which I remember purchasing used at my hometown's celebrated Treehorn Books in like 2006 and which has stood on my shelf unread next to other unread tomes, Ulysses, the main David Foster Wallace one that I'm blanking on the title and don't feel like googling, and a bulky Proust set (I did read Swann's Way in 2019 ok). I always wanted to read it because when I was 19 I read a lot of Virginia Woolf and I know she loved it, but this always felt more intimidating than Woolf.
I only finished Book 1 this week. I'm enjoying it but it does take me like 4 minutes to read a page. Sometimes I have to read sentences like three times, and sometimes I just kind of move on only 60% understanding it. I think this is just due to my broken brain because other times I'm like really in the zone and fly through it. This seems to happen when I try to read it as though Vanessa Redgrave was reading it to me.
I keep laughing about "Freshitt Manor" where Sir James lives. I do hope Sir James and Celia get together, he seems hot.
Fran, I also noted the end of chapter 9, about Celia "'saying things'" to Dorothea, because that is a lifetime struggle of mine (of everyone's?). To "say things." I'm an introvert. I think I'm more of a Celia than a Dorothea, but I think my enemies would disagree.
I have a similar experience of reading it as you, where sometimes it takes me several minutes to get through a few pages, and I am often doubling back to make sure I understand what's being articulated. I love Eliot's dialogue, but she -- like any good talent -- withholds it for when it's most necessary. Whenever I read period books I love to try to identify who is the most "normal-coded," and here it's definitely Sir James and Celia (in P&P it's Rosamund Pike and the ginger; don't make me remember their names).
I laughed every time I saw Freshitt Manor and thought of you texting me "she named a place Freshitt."
I used to feel "less than" when I would have to reread things in grown-up books but then I learned of an anecdote: when Beloved came out, Oprah told Toni Morrison like "i'm loving it but i find i have to keep going over it before continuing" and Morrison replied "that, my dear, is called reading"
omg 😇
I'm also reading this edition in the same matter of minutes and with the same rereading of sentences and with the same I just got to move on attitude. Very small print!
Very fun to read everybody's thoughts esp people who are reading it for the first time! I'm not rereading but I have a treasured battered OUP Classics edition crammed full of annotations from multiple readings going back to 2010 which can be alarming.
Fran it's very funny to me that you're so hard on Dorothea -- the last time I read it I was reminded of how young she is, which I didn't process all when reading it at age 20 (basically her age!). I love her, she's just so hopelessly sincere and has of course made a very bad mistake. Also helpful to think about Eliot's own past as a very devout teenager who then broke from the church and became a non-believer, leading to her father disowning her. I think there is a lot of her in Dorothea, although I know Mary Garth is the real self-insert.
Speaking of Mary, I love Fred. But I also love Lydgate! I love everybody except Rosamond and the fusty old people we haven't met yet. Lydgate certainly grows with rereadings. He's not exactly as sympathetic or altruistic as Dorothea eg but he is such a real person to me. I think you will have read the bit about him as a child in the library by this point, though perhaps not quite -- I think about that little scene all the time.
Oh and one other piece of historical context: all the Brits were obsessed with Italy in the 19th century not only because of the art and history etc (Casaubon and his archives...) but mainly, according to a prof of mine who taught a class on this, because of THE WEATHER!!! IT WAS WARM AND SUNNY ALL THE TIME!!! The Romantics of course were obsessed with it and most of them lived there for at least a while, and a lot of the Victorians did too. This whole bit is way more skeptical than the earlier generation -- ditto James -- though Dorothea does still have a revelation there. And Eliot had written a whole historical novel about Savonarola in Florence (Romola, which I still haven't read because it's written in Old Timey dialect) so she knew her stuff.
Oh I definitely love Dorothea, she is reminiscent of all of [REDACTED FRIENDS/FRAN MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBERS] and probably also me circa 2018-2019. Watching someone realize they have made a big mistake in their lives is one of my favorite things in novels, film, etc. and the internal grappling of how to move past and through something like that is always cathartic, whether I agree with the decision-making or not. Lydgate is perhaps the hardest for me to latch onto mostly because he -- while interesting -- interacts (mostly) with all of the people I am least interested in... the old guys, Rosamond, etc. Let's get him in the room with someone dynamic and insane, like that Parisian murderer (sort of also the plot of Decision to Leave??).
I always think about Keats going to Italy to die :( The Italy stuff in Forster is LOL funny, not only in my beloved Room with a View but also Where Angels Fear to Tread which is such a mean-spirited book, but the idea that a young woman would throw her life away to marry a ... hot Italian dentist? being the crux of the novel's conflict is so silly, they are SO mad about the hot Italian dentist.
Also PS my pitch for this book to people who are intimidated by it is that it's actually incredibly funny AND more or less a romance novel, so glad everyone is enjoying these elements from the get-go
Some underrated funny stuff from Ladislaw's German friend "If you were an artist, you would think of Mistress Second-Cousin as antique form animated by Christian sentiment–a sort of Christian Antigone–sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion."
I did a climate change literature class a while ago and we read Eliot and Harding and one little thing I remember is the weird connection between literal geography and literature - if the Tambora eruption hadn't caused horrible weather in the 1816 then Mary Sheely and Percy Shelley and Byron wouldn't have been holed up in a cabin in Switzerland writing scary stories! And I think there are ways that the anxiety of industrialisation is creeping around the edges of Middlemarch too
Oh wow what a great idea for a class!!
Lydgate was my favorite character when I read it in college, because he is very much a Type I found attractive at that time (idealistic, intelligent man who cannot get out of his own way). He definitely does feel like a real person.
I highlighted the same quote about Celia "saying things" lmao
Like many others my favorite thing about the book so far is the comedy, which is really carrying me through the circumlocution. Eliot as the narrator is cracking me up with how she has this very backhanded way of making fun of the characters, or saying "I know this seems bad but... give him a break."
My favorite passage (besides the above) was:
"Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays," (the 1994/2003 Penguin classics edition, p 99). Spoken by who else but... Freddy <3
At times it does feel like long-winded gossip, which is often the best kind of reading.
Wow I love reading everyone’s thoughts and feelings here! Takeaways for me, I need to take more notes because I too almost feel like I’m speed reading anddddd I just love Dorothea. I so deeply relate- and I’m very excited to see what happens with the hot second cousin.....
Btw are we all watching the BBC miniseries together after we finish this?!
YES!!
I took the evil route and bought the "independently published"(world's biggest grain of salt) amazon edition that is just printed walls of text with little to no page breaks and zero room for marginalia. At first, through some combination of having a hard time separating the novel from its daunting reputation and my utilitarian copy, those introductory chapters just read like a textbook that I was mostly *getting through*, and it wasn't until reading Dorthea's reaction to Casaubon's proposal letter that I realized the text was much more emotionally open and rewarding than I had expected.
"But he was something more unmanageable than a dragon: he was a benefactor with collective society at his back..." funny funny
this is how I first read Howards End...! not ideal but also you learn to get used to it and presents its own challenges and rewards!
It's so much funnier than I thought it would be! I'm reading the project Gutenberg ebook via the calibre converter so the formatting is weird but gonna rootle around in some secondhand bookshops this weekend hopefully.
I am reading the Centaur edition on Kindle. The interesting thing is that it has no page numbers. It treats every chapter like a page which is actually good because it keeps me more focused on the content and less on how much I have read. There are so many great comments already that I still need to read, but one observation I have (as a relatively older person) is everyone's focus on the young, albeit primary, characters. I am getting as much out of the older characters. Yes, Mr. Casaubon is a pill, but Mr. Brooke is a great father figure. And who doesn't love crazy Mr. Featherstone who makes Fred and Mary so miserable? Mr. Bulstrode is very controlling and deceptively powerful. The politics of the older generation is nice counterpoint to the angst and whims of the younger generation. I can't tell how old Rev. Farebrother is but he seems to be straddling the two worlds of young and old. My favorite scene is the start of Chapter 19 when Will and his German artist friend first see Dorothea at the Vatican Museum; the description was full of beauty and melancholy. Sorry, I am not an annotator, but will do better for future posts.
I love Mr. Brooke! @Ben Empey above and I were texting earlier today about how we can just hear Mr. Brooke's little "you knows." Mr. Featherstone is too mean to my friend Fred and Mary!!! I am eager to read more about Mr. Bulstrode who I understand takes up much of the back half of the novel.
Okay so here we are — books 1 and 2. I will say, in all honesty, due to a little migraine problem I still have to get to book 2, but I have been really pleased to see how fast this book is speeding by when I'm not in brain hell. Eliot's writing is so quick and saucy! And I like to think we're all in on a little joke with her when she says something so cutting and mean but coded as if it's a totally normal and gentile thing to say. I don't usually annotate my books at all (out of laziness and nothing else) but for the sake of Middlemarch May, I kept a pen nearby. I wrote so many "lol" or "own"s in the sidebar. This is my favorite:
"The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican." To me, a modern reader, this is a brutal takedown of a boring-ass man.
I also am obsessed with Ladislaw because he reminds me of so many (as Fran put it) Bushwick-esque gadabouts. This line: "Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise destination than the entire area of Europe." Reminds me of the Kroll Show sketch about the Spotted Ox Hostel. Have fun out there, bro!
Like Ben, I am struggling to understand FULLY what's going on at all times but I've been known to just look up the plot of everything while I'm reading/watching so that I can focus on the nicer, more frivolous stuff so — though this will be a spoiler — I think I'm gonna read like, a hard and fast plot summary. It's just very important to me to digest all of these tasty little digs.
I can tell Ladislaw is primed to emerge as the novel's underrated hot guy. Fred is undoubtedly the easy pick because he is so funny and vivacious, but Ladislaw's ability to woo the intellect of the book's least fun (by her own definition) character is something of a feat and a strong flirt regardless.
Her disdain for Casaubon is funny in part because though Eliot seems to -- based on her history -- not really respect religious institution, he's mostly cause for ridicule because he is just boring and not fun and not an intellectual in a cool way (did they have cool intellectuals back then? someone will know this...). His stodgy sexism is not really a matter of faith: if it was all for God, we'd know it. Here, it seems mostly to maintain the respect of his peers -- Mr. Brookes, Mr. Bulstrode, all the guys whose names I gloss over where I read the book.
Towards the bottom of my list of things to include in this post was some kind of Sparknotes/readers guide but I wound up just doing casual wikipedia perusing throughout my reading. I don't really think there's much wrong with doing that with these old tomes, and I'm hardpressed to think of a pre-20th century text where I would tell someone not to do it. Maybe Howards End, which is 20th century so whatever, but has an actual crazy ending... so worth unspoiling. Here I'm so eagerly reading for the language of it all that I'm content to know what might come because it won't really affect my curiosity about how it unfolds.
Hello! I'm reading the Alma Classics Evergreens edition on my Kindle (sorry) iPhone app (very sorry), mostly. Though never my favorite way to read a book for obv reasons, I know myself well enough to figure that being able to snack on 5-10 pages on a subway or in line for a bagel is my best bet of keeping pace. And it's working!
I'm liking it so far. This older style of writing can be tiring in that it demands my full attention for long paragraphs at a time lest I come away with nothing, but it's been rewarding when I've been able to stay locked in. I find some of the more internal sections (especially Lydgate's overlong intro, murder intrigue aside) to be the most taxing, but it really comes alive when it blends shorter philosophical musings with interpersonal work, like all the Rome stuff. Love all the pairings - Dorothea/Casaubon, Dorothea/Celia, Fred/Mary, Dorothea/Will (the best), Lydgate/Rosy, etc - and am probably most interested in Dorothea and Rosamond, occupying similar spaces as objects of affection with much more to offer than they're being asked/allowed to. V curious to see if/how they'll interact going forward!
Also found it interesting to learn the context for Casaubon's "Key to all Mythologies," since that's the name Jonathan Franzen has given his anthological trilogy that started with "Crossroads." I liked that book quite a bit and have to assume that the title is chosen tongue-in-cheek, but the more I learn about Casaubon, the more fascinating a choice it is
Loved this passage from the Roman ponderings on marriage: "To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favourite politican in the ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities."
man, that last clause. OUCH!!
I am reading a paperback, but I read on my Kindle app on my phone all the time for other books: I love being able to get in a few minutes on the subway and I don't like having to negotiate for a seat on a crowded train just so I can pull out a book. It's much easier to just scroll on my phone in a literary way the same way I would a "dicking around in my phone way."
I agree about the pairings feeling more thrilling than Lydgate at this point: I suspect the Lydgate morass really slowed me down in 2020 and it was tough to rally after that. I find his sections a bit funnier now, and that he is so out of his depth in Middlemarch. I love Eliot's writing less on him and more on the nature of having a new guy in town where, no matter how clever, it's easy to manipulate this guy's voting/politics/beliefs by regular old peer pressure and light bullying.
totally agree re: book on subway, and that's exactly how I justify it too - that it's better than me scrolling Twitter!
I agree with the Lydgate point too, and I do generally like him as a character/pawn in Middlemarch. I also think I read his intro when I was tired, and so was probably less generous to that section than others. Plus (being a little bit ahead), it does give us a lot of psychological background for him that enriches later sections
When that Franzen title was announced I was in such hysterics -- of all the things to invoke. He was very funny about it on press for Crossroads, in a way I really would never have expected from him. I'm still curious to see how much it plays out in the following books. Thematically there's certainly overlap between Crossroads and Middlemarch, though not in a super direct or obvious way
yeah, I just did some googling based off of your comment and it seems like it was 50% thematic relevance and 50% joking about undertaking a project that's likely to outlive him lol
to this day I have never read a Franzen novel but I find his public presence more funny than not, therefore I stand as passively pro. one day I'll get around to The Corrections!!!
it's legit great! I am a longtime defender, he's just an awkward weirdo who's obsessed with birds... who among us can't relate, etc
I have also failed out of every book club mostly because i sometimes have a hard time articulating and especially being critical. Just turns into me saying "it's good i liked it". That said im through book 2 and it's good i like it lololol. Its much less dry and funnier than i expected. I like how conversational and full of great quotes it is.. One i marked down was:
"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, 'Oh, nothing!' Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others."
I am finding it very easy to read tbh. Feels good to be reading again as it has been awhile.
Dont do audiobooks i have a hard copy.
For a long time I was hard on my students for defaulting to "I like this/I don't like this," because it almost negates the ability to make a critical comment or to step back and determine if a book is working. In watching movies, especially, I've become better at being like "it works but I don't like it," or "it doesn't work at all but I like it" and trying to identify what's going on with that. But in the classroom, it wound up being a fruitless endeavor: why not talk about what you like and don't like? I do think a significant part of art consumption should be enjoyment! This is why I would have more fun in Rome than Dorothea.
That passage you shared reminds me of the movie Holiday with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn which I just watched the other week, which has one of the great tearful "what's wrong?"/"oh, nothing!!!!!" interactions. What's more obvious than saying nothing is wrong!
idk if this is because i'm sick this week or if because i have never really tried to engage with 19C english writing before but i am completely unable to thoroughly parse and understand the ~literary~ passages in this novel (because i am sick i have only gotten through book 1 thus far). i mentioned middlemarch may to my mother who said that she loved it for the sentences but i am currently in the phase where i am fighting for my fucking life just trying to get the plot out of these sentences and i have nothing in me to appreciate their artistry or profound statements about the nature of humanity or whatever. i feel like maybe this is part of why middlemarch has always been mentioned to me as a book that rewards rereading. THAT SAID, i am having a great time so far; i am obsessed with dorothea and celia (sisters are so much, man!) and lots of what they say to or think about each other is very funny. the part where neither of them can understand what the other sees (or doesn't) in a man is very hashtag relatable to me; my own sister and i have this issue all the time.
a question for the group: does anybody have a source that would explain some of the clerical/anglican background? all the men keep alluding to pamphlets and dorothea is looked at askance by mrs cadwallader for her "methodistical whims" and i know simply nothing about 19C protestantism and its controversies.
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/middlemarch-reform-and-change there is some good political background here but not so much on religion. tbh I think what you mainly need to know is that Methodism was the primary non-Anglican sect in England at the time (and not a consistent one), which was characterized by beliefs and practices that were more extreme and self-punishing -- compared to the Anglican church which was pretty chill. The people in Middlemarch kind of just want to go to church and live their lives whereas Dorothea is going on and on about changing everything and eg denying herself the pleasure of riding because that would be sinful. It's mainly relevant to think about her as a character who is taking things to extremes because she's a teenager and doesn't really understand what she's doing.
Eliot went through a period of pretty intense Methodism and Calvinism (Methodism but More) in her late teens and early twenties, and then became an atheist, which led her father to disown her. Methodism comes up a lot in her books but this one is less theological than some of the others, I think the big questions are more about moral issues that don't rely as much on theological details.
(And of course individual vicars etc were assigned to parishes by landowners, which for most people was just a cushy paid gig -- Casaubon doesn't really do any ministering. There's another vicar character who is more involved in the town later on.)
thank you! you seem to have done graduate work in this area so i hope you might know where to point me on my next question-- to what extent is methodism/dorothea's teenage extremism implicated in any of the reforming work on social issues taking place in england/middlemarch at this time? does the social do-gooder necessarily have to have a religious impulse, or are there secular/atheist reformers who are also obviously influencing these more provincial efforts? i'd expect you'd find some in london or the other big cities but i have no sense of who or what dorothea might be aware of beyond what's downstream of the religious debates.
Whoops I forgot to reply to this last week BUT -- this is super interesting, I don't have an exact answer. I think a lot of the distinction is probably between when Eliot actually wrote the book (1871-2) and when the book takes place (1830s). Darwin and the Origin of Species happen in-between those dates and the effect is pretty huge, although there were other geologists and naturalists making similar arguments before him. There were certainly atheists pre-Darwin -- the French and German Enlightenments happened in the previous century, and Eliot was heavily influenced by German philosophers, esp. Spinoza (about whom I know very little). But Britain was (and is) more conservative. David Hume was writing around the same time about atheism and was a massively controversial figure -- the only way he really got away with it was by being so hugely personally charming. Percy Shelley got thrown out of Oxford and polite society by endorsing atheism in the early 1800s (and running of with Mary Shelley without getting married). So certainly there were individual people (including Eliot, remarkably) who were skeptics but I suspect not much of a cultural movement and certainly not a charitable project associated with that, it would have been too scandalous. (I'm speculating here of course, and now I'm curious to look into this, but I think it would be pretty surprising to find this.) In the late 19th century things get way more mixed, partly due to Darwin and partly due to imperialism bringing new people into the country (not that they were particularly welcome). Still the organizations I know of from this time (settlement houses in slums mainly, and temperance movements) were very much religious in character but I wouldn't be surprised to learn about something set up in a different way. By this time you have Marxist organizers, for instance, who of course are not working under a religious framework. That would all definitely have mostly been in big cities, though -- the small towns would still have been fairly conservative I think, with the exception of maybe one or two oddballs who would have been politely ignored or shunned.
fascinating, thank you!
It's almost certainly a book that rewards rereading, and I wonder if I got thru these first two books quicker than anticipated because I had failed to do so long ago. I have to admit the Lydgate sections are something of a struggle, but whenever girlies are gabbing I'm otherwise having a great time. Your experience sounds similar to my high school experience of reading All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren -- now one of my favorite novels, but at the time, an unrelenting slog when it wasn't in dialogue or in scene, Penn Warren's fits of fancy and long-winded notions of humanity (he was a poet laureate!) getting in the way of what I felt was "the book." My fondest memory of that first reading experience was finally finally finally having one of the big chunky multiple-page long paragraphs click for me with what it was gesturing at, and I hope this soon happens for you. Or maybe it won't! That's sort of what happened to me with Proust, frankly... Regardless happy to have you along for the ride!
I basically just Wiki'd the reforms from the Middlemarch wiki page... not sure is that helpful but it gave me the gist.
I also hope something clicks! But I am planning to not stress about it happening on this reading; there are many books I tried to read in high school that I found incomprehensible at the time and then I picked them up the summer after college when I was underemployed and was like ohhhhhh *that's* why this is considered a great work of literature. Sometimes the brain needs time to mature!
I have been pleasantly surprised by how funny it is. The dialogue is great. Casaubon is a worthy target of ridicule, but I found myself feeling bad for Mary Garth. As I'm typing this I don't even remember why specifically, the narrator just seemed not to like her
I'm interested in how the characters relate to time. The tension in Book 1 between Dorothea believing that she has wasted her life-- compounded in Book 2 by her lament that she has not learned German for the sake of her husband-- despite being 'underage' really interested me, as did the much older Casaubon's continued delay in writing his magnum opus and Fred's insistence that leisure is more important than going forward with his studies. I thought that the expectation that each character improve themselves contrasted with the reality that they can't or won't was pretty contemporary
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, my favorite passage was the one about how Dorothea was struggling to adapt to a life where she was no longer able to fantasize about the future. I'm at an age where I've done nearly everything-- traveled abroad, gotten married, finished grad school-- I had fantasized about when I was younger and I gotta admit, it's been sort of hard to adjust to that frame of mind. She is my infinitely more religious kindred spirit
Oh, and I'm passing on Fred. The gambling debt is a red flag imo
I totally felt this with Mary – it kind of seems like she just committed the crime of being an average-looking girl (esp next to Rosamund). It does feel like she's being portrayed as annoying and having a bad attitude but Featherstone bullies her!
yeah I agree, but I think it's kind of balanced by Eliot showing how much Fred (whom Eliot seems to like, in spite of herself) loves her. But it's so backhanded everytime she's described as, like, "so beyond plain, but I suppose that did it for some guys"
Eliot wrote Mary Garth as an autobiographical character so you are probably picking up on some uh self-esteem issues of her own! She was famously Not Beautiful (Henry James has some mortifying line in a letter or diary about this, but basically everyone thought this). She did happily have a frankly shockingly successful marriage compared to most other women of that era so, you know, who has the last laugh here.
That's so interesting!
I love Mary, I think she will probably improve for you. But yes she is quite relentlessly described as plain -- in what now feels like a kind of tropey romance way honestly. A lot of this book seems to foreshadow those tropes but with like a million times more philosophical depth
I thought the beginning especially felt familiar-- protagonist who thinks that a guy is falling for someone else is actually falling for her! It reminded me of the Jane Eyre/Mr. Rochester romance. I was glad that it wrapped up quickly and with Dodo choosing a different man
Very interesting note about Mary! I had no idea. Thanks for sharing