Middlemarch May, Volume 2
Books 3 and 4 discussion post // congrats to everyone still reading Middlemarch
Welcome back to Middlemarch May over at Fran Magazine! If you’ve been keeping up with the proposed Middlemarch-in-one-month reading schedule, then you will be close to finishing or finished with Book 4 and moving into Book 5. I’ll be honest with the Fran Magazine/Middlemarch May contingent: I almost did not finish Book 4. I almost did not finish Book 3! Exhausted from the end of the school year, a major wave of grading, myriad other projects and expectations, and cross-country travel, I almost let the Middlemarch May(ors?) down. Miraculously, a plane with no wifi and no functioning power outlets limits grading, sure, but enhances empty airtime to hold open a big book while one man sitting next to you plays Tears of the Kingdom (my bf) and the other reads Golf Magazine (Golf Digest? regardless: not my bf). Not to mention there were no screens on the backs of the seats. So that’s what we call Middlemarch o’clock. The bonus time allowed me to read ahead, even. What luck!
Here’s what you missed on Middlemarch
Let’s check in with our squad…
Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon
Well, first things first: upon arriving back from Rome, Mr. Casaubon nearly dies from working too hard (me last week vibes!!!). This would be great, on one hand, because it would allow our poor sweet Dodo to get with Mr. Casaubon’s hunky second cousin Will Ladislaw who has returned to Lowick and become a blogger (?). On the other hand, it would be kind of sad to see Mr. Casaubon die of “grad school.” Their marriage is on the rocks, though the end of Book 4 sees them treating each other with a little more affection that previously.
In one of my favorite chapters of Middlemarch, Dorothea instructs her father to write to the aforementioned blogger Ladislaw telling him not to come back from Rome and fuck up her life given how much Mr. Casaubon hates to be reminded of how charming and chill and normal he is. Mr. Brooke — funniest guy of all time? — writes about half of the letter correctly, ending it with inviting Ladislaw to work on a paper/pamphlet/political campaign with him, thus making more trouble for Dorothea. Ya gotta laugh!
As predicted, also, Sir James and Celia Brooke are an item! Major W for normal characters.
Lydgate and Rosamond
It’s always crazy when everyone you know conspires against the existence of a couple, especially one as hellbent on making it work as these two. Though Lydgate is content (or maybe malcontent) to disappoint and offend everyone he comes into contact with, Rosamond believes, wholeheartedly, that he hung the moon, using her brother’s illness as an opportunity to flirt (who can relate!)
Fred and Mary :(
Fred fucked up his debts so bad that he couldn’t pay back Mary’s extremely patient and beloved father Caleb — the second best father figure in Middlemarch outside of Mr. Brooke who is winning on vibes alone. The Garths had to dip into their family savings, robbing little (?) Albert of school, and Mary had to pay to help Fred. Few things less attractive than getting your crush out of debt. Fred gets so depressed that he gets sick (who can relate) and realizes he has to get his life back on track. Can he do it or is he just one of those guys who says it?
To add insult to injury, Fred was almost willed a life-changing amount of money by old Mr. Featherstone only to be undermined at the last possible moment.
Mary was not brave enough to burn one of Mr. Featherstone’s wills during a moment of need. Would you have been brave enough to burn a man’s will during a moment of need?
Checking in on the Fran Magazine Middlemarch May Fred Vincy Wars
I personally remain pro-Fred Vincy even though he is so fucked financially (same!). Sometimes that is attractive in its own way (projecting). Regardless I like to think he’s learned his lesson and now will see through going to grad school rather than become a career blogger like Will Ladislaw.
Everything’s coming up Casaubon
Just kidding — things could not be worse for this sick old man who loves reading books. I was struck by this particular passage at the start of chapter 29.
One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea — but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage? I protest against all our interest, all our effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for those too will get faded and will know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect.
I thought a lot about my dad’s comment in last week’s Middlemarch May discussion post and how everyone else here was responding to the 20somethings (even though I know a bunch of you are in your 30s… interesting…) rather than the parents and landowners. There’s obvious reason for that, beyond the general demographic of the Fran Magazine readership, duh, but I also found Eliot’s eagerness to undo her narrative bend so far and to call into question the novel’s voice to be not only funny but refreshing. I do feel for Casaubon! How could you know? Even some of the biggest pains in my ass are worthy of great sympathy. “They know not what they do…” or as Eliot writes:
Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her husband’s mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him. […] As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife’s husband!
By the end of these books, however, despite the warming of their relations, it does seem like Casaubon is hellbent on ruining Dorothea’s life after his somewhat immanent death.
The Fran Magazine Middlemarch May Will Ladislaw Wars
“Oh, he’s a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, “with his opera songs and his ready tongue. A sort of Byronic hero — an amorous conspirator, it strikes me.”
Getting my chuckles in
More than the first two books, I found this most recent chunk of Middlemarch to be very, very funny. After Casaubon collapses and everyone converges to make him feel better, Mr. Brooke goes on what might be the craziest monologue of the book so far:
“Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you in the evenings. And shuttlecock, now — I don’t know a finer game than shuttlecock for daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now; I always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you light things, Smollett — Roderick Random, Humphrey Clinker; they are a little broad, but she may read anything now she’s married you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly — there’s a droll bit about a postilion’s breeches.
I did not realize there were real books about characters named Roderick Random or Humphrey Clinker though I was loosely familiar with Smollett as a “humorist.” I am laughing harder now than when I thought they were fake. Fran Magazine Humphrey Clinker readthrough? Has anyone got eyes on Roderick Random?
New guy named “Raffles”… different new guy named “Rigg”
DK what’s going on here yet, tbh. I imagine this is all the Bulstrode stuff that comes later. Right now I wanna see some of these people enter disastrous (?) or fruitful romances!!!
Anyway, don’t worry too much if you’re not caught up. Just come talk and share passages and laughs. I am traveling so I will be in and out all day and week to talk Tertius and company. Remember when he’s rude about the magazine at the party???
Very happily reporting that the book has clicked for me this week. I have officially moved from a like to a love!
This is because now that we've been with the characters for 300+ pages (I am––ONLY––40 pages behind) the subtle interactions between them are even funnier and more relatable, and you can spot a disaster during a conversation in a way that makes you say "Oh NOOOO!" Then when the fallout plays out in exactly the way it should it feels very gratifying, like I'm in on something and I get to be the friend who knew better all along (just like IRL...). Great example of this is the hilarious Brooke/Ladislaw letter exchange, and even funnier for me was Dorthea then asking her husband to give Will her inheritance... girl, read the room!!! This is the kind of stuff you can really only experience in a sprawling novel like this, where little slights and grudges have time to simmer, and it's so satisfying.
Two passages I really enjoyed this week:
Re: Casaubon "A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow grey crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship." (Penguin 360). My BF playing video games all night is now "crunching bones in a cavern"
Re: Ladislaw/love "For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man's passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differ from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass?" (Penguin 388). WOW. That is ONE sentence... go off, George!
P.S. next week I think besides just smash or pass we need a three way head to head that includes Lydgate. Getting tricked into commitment is hot and I AM taking notes.
P.P.S. I am so glad "conchology" is actually the study of seashells, which is what I assumed it was as a joke and kept reading without looking it up.
"But why always Dorothea?" one of the all-time great lines. Eliot's generosity as a writer is so immense that she can even extend it to Casaubon who, imo, SUCKS BIG TIME. But she can get us there! Of course he thinks he's just going to marry someone who will become a nice pretty object in his house because he's never had to think about women having thoughts before, and the total shock of someone like Dorothea expressing interest in him was kind of too much for his brain to take. A doomed enterprise.
Fred fucking up the debts is maybe the most excruciating thing in the entire book. Every time I read it I am just consumed by second-hand agony. The stuff with Featherstone is really great plotting, I think -- a perfect little dramatic set-up, a moral question, Mary having to make a decision, though who can really say how much of it is based in moral judgment vs. just... freezing up. In a lot of ways not that much ACTUALLY happens in this book but she engineers these little scenarios perfectly.
Lydgate being rude about the Keepsake is also a beloved little scene. Those annuals were incredibly popular among women and pretty expensive iirc so Rosamond being dismissive of it is totally just her trying to impress him. Poor Rosy. Poor Lydgate! I will refrain from further comment.
I will also refrain from further comment about Will Ladislaw because I cannot speak about him without entering spoiler territory.
I was also thinking about your dad's comment, Fran -- a big part of this book, I think, is that it shifts for you as you get older, though of course the main drama is among the young people. Bulstrode does become much more important later on, and I love Farebrother a lot. Mr. Brooke is also one of the best written characters from a dialogue perspective I've basically ever encountered. You can just hear him speak! But most of the "adults" are in many ways kind of hapless which I think is kind of part of the point of the book. Caleb is probably the most competent and he's certainly secondary to Fred and Mary's drama -- I mean, he's suffering because of that, which is also a point I think she's making. Farebrother, too, but he's hemmed in by his obligation to his female relatives and his ecclesiastical role. Does anyone really have any idea what to do with themselves? Tbd.