Middlemarch May, Volume 3
Books 5 and 6 discussion post // now is a good time to admit you've fallen behind on Middlemarch
Welcome back to Middlemarch May here at Fran Magazine! I reflect in only a little embarrassment that the Middlemarch May banner went out to paid subscribers in lieu of the regular Fran Magazine one, but who am I to say that the ice cream post was not done in the spirit of Middlemarch May? It is a beautiful morning, maybe a little less pollen-y than usual, and we have now completed (hopefully) books five and six of Middlemarch. From here on out, there will be spoilers, so keep that in mind if you have fallen behind in the last few days.
Between last week and now, I’ve found I can get almost no Middlemarch reading done between Monday and Thursday of the week, unless it’s a few last minute pages held over from Sunday. The ebb and flow of the workweek, with its myriad obligations and pinging and just one secs, does not lend itself to lyrical immersive reading. This is why and how I always keep a different book on me for the train. I spent all of Friday thinking I’d fallen woefully behind, so far behind that I was going to have to write a whole Middlemarch May post about how I’d fallen behind, but alas I managed to catch up with long, lazy reading on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
That said…
Here’s what you missed on Middlemarch
Vibe check
Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon
!!! Casaubon is dead !!!
Who could have seen this coming… the man who was warned that behaving “grad school” could one day kill him… did eventually die of grad school
I confessed last week to being somewhat sympathetic to the tragedy of Casaubon, in part because “he knows not what he does” (he does know what he does… but sometimes I am truly convinced he knows no other way to be). His final action before keeling over dead is to hold his estate over Dorothea should she decide to get with Will Ladislaw. We know she wants this to happen (deep down) and we know Ladislaw wants this to happen (less deep down), but the announcement of this rattles Dorothea profoundly, setting her on a course of depression and longing and misery.
Dorothea and Will
Will leaves, he stays, he leaves he stays, he leaves again!
Celia and James
The way this novel does not care about them because they are so normal…
They had a whole baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lydgate and Rosamond
Consider the “we’re so back” “it’s over” meme but just “it’s over” with high highs and low lows
Lydgate is in debt; Rosamond is miserable. I have no idea how these crazy idiots are going to work this out!!! In my post-collegiate life, there was a lot of talk about how if you intend to make friends in a post-school environment, you have to be a person that people actually want to spend time with, and poor Lydgate has done nothing to that effect!
By request…
Fred Vincy and Mary Garth
Books 3 and 4 saw Fred at his lowest, so depressed he got very sick, so sick that his sister had to weaponize flirting with his doctor. Now that he is recovered, ego bruised and battered, Fred is humbled enough to have our good friend Mr. Farebrother play matchmaker for him and Mary, which works at the expense of Mr. Farebrother’s heartbreak :( I loved all the Fred and Mary stuff in these books, which felt the most… conventional, if not hugely enjoyable.
Bulstrode
Okay, now we’re getting into the oft-rumored Bulstrode stuff, which links us back to our friend Will Ladislaw. We know Bulstrode as the Middlemarch banker, a frustrating, stern character who no one loves but everyone tolerates. Upon the death of Mr. Featherstone, Joshua Rigg and “Mr. Raffles” come to town to take over the estate. Mr. Raffles, however, has some serious dirt on Mr. Bulstrode, who married Will Ladislaw’s widowed grandmother in order to inherit her funds, leaving him in the dust. Boo! We hate that! To his credit, Bulstrode does feel genuinely bad, and he offers Ladislaw a stipend to make up for it, but Ladislaw refuses the money. It seems like Bulstrode might be kind of fucked. Is it ever right to feel bad for a banker?
The craziest thing to happen in Middlemarch so far…
During Bulstrode and Raffles’s confrontation in Chapter 53, I was struck by a particular action:
This time Mr. Raffles’s slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue was worse than a nightmare because it held the certitude that it was not a nightmare, but a waking misery.
Mr. Raffles made this face: 😜!!!! I didn’t know they had that face back then. I agree that when I see that face, I do feel like I am realizing that I live in a waking misery. <3
Captain Lydgate!
I love this stupid motherfucker and all the chaos sown by his visit to the Lydgate-Vincy household. This particular passage really made me laugh:
[…] but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable - else, indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain Lydgate’s stupidity was delicately scented, carried itself with “style,” talked with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin. Rosamond found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases.
Give a shout out to your friend with the most acceptable stupidity below! 👇🏻
This section, and all the chapters detailing the slow unraveling of the Lydgate-Vincy partnership, have been so funny, nowhere near tragic, and altogether wonderful, like listening to some really good gossip about someone you only kind of know. I don’t wish poorly on either of these characters, but their foolishness has been so avoidable, so apparent, so self-concerned that I cannot help but rub my hands together like Mr. Burns and cheer on whatever bad thing happens next. I am sure this is going to end in a really sad way that makes me consider both of them in a new light, but UNTIL THEN… I am laughing… especially, when later that evening, Lydgate mulls on what may happen when he tells Rosamond he’s in debt:
His mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said inwardly, “Would she kill me because I wearied her?” And then, “It is the way with all women.”
LOL. [guy who has only met one Parisian murderess] “Getting Parisian murderess vibes from my wife…”
“But this power of generalizing which gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals was immediately thwarted by Lydgate’s memory of wondering impressions from the behavior of another woman — from Dorothea’s looks and tones of emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him — from her passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulsive in her except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.
Okay, forgive me, he knows two different kinds of women: the ones who kill their spouse and the ones who cry about their spouse even though it seems misguided. What kind of wife are you?
That’s all the time I have for Middlemarch May today, but I will be in and out of the comment section all week to hobnob with the excellent folks reading along. Talk soon!
Hey everyone I'm Claire and I'm 100 pages behind in Middlemarch 👋🏻
Today I want to shout out Chettam –– Fran correctly points out that he and Celia (queen "just say things") are too normal for this book, which is kind of a shame. I was just thinking how Sir James has been one of my biggest and most pleasant surprises as a character. The way Dorothea immediately disdains him in the beginning, he is sort of positioned as the arrogant alpha bro who she (not like other girls) would never go for. Then he seems to have no problem going for the rebound with Celia, who should be nobody's second choice. All this made me think he was set up to be a kind of bland jerk next to our sparkling ladies.
But actually that couldn't be further from the truth; Chettam shows so much maturity in how he treats Dorothea, when he could easily have resented her. He says it's because he's doing his job as big bro-in-law but he clearly understands her and respects her in her own right, in a way that makes me feel like he fell for more than a pretty face in the beginning. I would go so far as to say he is one of the only examples* of positive masculinity, or what would've passed for it in that time, in the whole book, especially compared to the broke/broke/blogger trio.
Not related to Chettam but may favorite quote this week was yet another classic Eliot own on writers. Re: Ladislaw if he went back to Rome, "he would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding it too artificial," (Penguin 463). Drag us, George!
*Other holders of this award: Caleb Garth, Farebrother, reply with others
I went sicko mode this week and finished Middlemarch and now I am desperate to discuss the whole shebang. Just as Eliot describes Dorothea bearing a bad mood "as she would a headache," I will similarly bear my reading-ahead and limit my observations to the assigned reading even though AHHH2u394ueiojfklsajfdkjlafdlsa I CAN'T WAIT TO DISCUSS THE END.
Anyways.....
1) I need a whole sequel about the "troop of droll children" Ladislaw likes to hang out with... honestly slightly sus...
2) On a similar note, if I had any doubts about what type of dude Ladislaw is, they were answered by the description of how he liked to chill at friends' houses. He was, Eliot writes, "given to stretch himself at full length on the rug while he talked."
He's the RUG FRIEND. The friend who takes "make yourself at home" to heart....to an extreme. The friend who shows up to a dinner party absolutely empty-handed and drinks literally all your beer and then insists that you open that nice wine you've been saving and eats really messily and then wipes his crumbs on the floor and stays way longer than everyone else—maybe he even crashes on the couch—but he's telling some absolute corkers about his weird travels so you're not even mad. He also makes eggs for you when you wake up the next morning. Rug Friend.
3) I am not going to lie I kept getting lost re: exactly what the scandal was in the Raffles-Bulstrode subplot. 😜
4) Found the passage where Dorothea finds Celia's baby super boring to be very funny. "To an aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but admire, his behavior is apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible." If only Dodo knew about the r/childfree subreddit...
5) The Lydgate-Rosamond debt plotline gives me hives. As someone who has been historically bad with my money in attempts to keep up with my friends...I feel for Lydgate...but it's so wrenching and just deeply sad for Rosamond, too.