Book Review: Middlemarch by George Eliot

I did it.  It was a fight to the finish, but I did it.  I read Middlemarch!  To write that it was a fight to the finish is not exactly right.  But there is a lot to get through in the first half of George Eliot's novel.  Once I got beyond Edward Casaubon's death, my reading became less onerous.  I'll explain.

Middlemarch is considered by many, who are qualified to hold such opinions, to be the greatest novel of the 19th century. Many readers consider it to be their favorite novel ever and re-read it on a regular basis.  This same fondness is frequently described with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice which is an 18th novel, so there is no conflict for readers who love both. 

When asked which book of great fiction they have not read, many readers will admit to never having read Middlemarch.   I am proud to say that I have now left this group of readers and have joined the enthusiastic Middlemarch readers.  While I will not say that it is my favorite novel ever, I will say that it is a great novel and one that I am happy, finally, to add to my list.

Recently I read a book review of a new publication non-fiction book where the reviewer, in an overall positive review, prepared readers for "text exhaustion."  This was apparently the reviewers way of letting readers know that, from time to time, they would encounter one paragraph occupying an entire page.  I liked this descriptor and considered that Middlemarch offers plenty of opportunity for text exhaustion.  For her important characters, Eliot does not allow a single situation, good or bad, to go without a thorough examination.  When I came to such passages, and saw their trajectory, I found myself calculating if I knew enough of Dorothea's or Lydgate's or Ladislaw's tortured thoughts to move on.  It was that or abandon, and I didn't want to abandon.  I'm a slow reader so, in this way, I saved myself.

My edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot (nom de plume of Mary Ann Evans) was published by Barnes & Noble Classics in 2003.  Eliot published her novel in 1872 and it was issued in four volumes.  While reading I noticed a few misspellings—for example, minuet for minute—and it occurred to me that B&N probably published their edition as it originally appeared, which I appreciated.  

Cover of B&N edition

The B&N edition offers two very helpful guides for the reader.  A timeline of The World of George Eliot and Middlemarch and an introduction by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  If you get your hands on this edition, I encourage readers not to skip either. 

Mary Ann Evans was born on November 22, 1819 in Warwickshire on a farm where her father was an estate manager. This detail should be remembered when Eliot introduces Caleb Garth and his family into the Middlemarch story.  Her birthdate is also just six months before Florence Nightingale was born, if this detail is helpful to anyone.  Her birth name, Mary Ann Evans, has such a 1950s ring to it.  I think we know why she chose her nom de plume George Eliot.  But had this not been necessary to publish her novel, and she was able to publish it under her birth name, would the novel be as famous as it is? This question, once it came to me, would not go away.

Eliot's Middlemarch is an agrarian society market town in the Midlands of England circa 1820-1830.  The lords, clergymen and the lawyers are the landowners and their tenant farmers live in cottages, sometimes not very nice housing, and work the land for the landowners.  Throughout the novel, there is a great deal of focus on money and the manipulation of money.  Some of the characters have too much money, for some an adequate amount and, for others, too little or none at all.  This agrarian period overlaps with the Industrial Age in England and there is some dispute by historians when it actually ended.  In 1820-1830 the agrarian economy was still thriving.  The television series Downton Abbey had it ending around World War I.  Aside from a relatively brief segment set in Paris, a flashback if you will, where the reader becomes acquainted with Tertius Lydgate while he is there for medical training, and another segment set in Rome, where Dorothea and Casaubon go for their honeymoon and where the reader becomes acquainted with Will Ladislaw, the novel is set in its entirety in Middlemarch.  Even though London is mentioned by a few characters, no one ever goes there.  The whole novel takes place over the course of perhaps only two to three years.

This is a novel of characters and Eliot includes many in her story, but the reader's attention snaps into focus for about ten of her characters.  Eliot starts with Dorothea and Celia, two orphaned sisters who live with and are cared for by their Uncle Brooke.  If Eliot writes about the circumstances of the sisters being orphaned, I don't remember it.  But it seems they were orphaned with plenty of money to support them.  Dorothea is the elder serious sister and wants to learn and do serious beneficial things.  She is also beautiful and attracts the attention of Sir James Chettam, of whom Dorothea has no interest.  Celia, on the other hand, is pretty but not so much so as her sister.  However, she is a lighter, brighter and happy go-lucky personality that contrasts sharply with her sister.  If there is a central character to this novel, for me it is Dorothea.  She is the doer and the thinker in the beginning, and the doer and fixer at the end of the novel.

Remarkably Dorothea desires to marry a very serious and unhumorous man, Edward Casaubon, who is 27 years her senior.  Uncle Brooke and Celia both try to talk Dorothea out of this marriage, but she is steadfast.  This leaves the door open for the spurned Sir James Chettam to marry Celia, who happily takes this opportunity.  Both Dorothea and Celia are teenagers when this is happening.  There is no escaping the time and place.  This summarizes, more or less, the opening of the novel.

The other important characters are the Vincy family—especially Fred and Rosamond.  The estate manager Caleb Garth and his family, with his eldest daughter Mary being the most prominent.  The unmarried Rev. Camden Farebrother and his family—mother, sister, aunt.  Tertius Lydgate, a young physician, who comes to Middlemarch to set up his practice.  Will Ladislaw, who will become very important in a variety of ways—chiefly with regard to Dorothea.  Finally, there is Nicholas Bulstrode, the wealthy Middlemarch banker.  There are many, many other characters who wander in and out of Eliot's story, but these are the ones the reader cannot lose track of. 

Suffice to say that Eliot's story is elaborate, intricate and grand.  There are other character observations to make.  I found Dorothea to be completely honorable and believable, even when she plunged into mistakes—marriage to the grumpy and suspicious Casaubon—and also prone to making inaccurate observations.  Celia completely supports her sister without twists and turns, even though she struggles with her sister's rationale for doing things.  Caleb Garth's daughter, Mary Garth, is sturdy, smart and reliable and true to her parents and younger siblings.  This brings me to Rosamond.  Ah, Rosamond.  The reader is not prepared for the true Rosamond until it is too late.  She and the young physician, Tertius Lydgate, woo each other and are finally married, when they both face unpleasant surprises about marriage and each other. For this reader, Lydgate got the short end of the deal, as he initially intended to get his medical practice off the ground before marrying. Too late for that now.  I found Rosamond to be a thoroughly modern personality and character and wondered if there was not some Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder named for her; something like the "Rosamond syndrome." I Googled it—there is not.  Conniving, manipulative, selfish, narcissistic are features that easily come to mind.  Others may have different thoughts about this very memorable character.

In addition to text exhaustion, which is easily conquered once thoroughly engaged in the novel, the language, vocabulary and sentence structure is a barrier to easy reading.  It is also fascinating.  I found myself reading sentences more than once to understand their structure and meaning.  Some of the vocabulary is also different.  Eliot also had a sense of humor and this pops up from time to time, often with a sarcastic bent.

Finally, it is remarkable, that Eliot's writing of life in rural England from over 200 years ago, bears such resemblance to our current times.  I found myself underlining words and passages of things which seemed so familiar.  In one of my underlined passages, I then wrote in the margin, Trump.  I was struck by a passage that referred to "unintended consequences."  This is such a commonly used modern phrase in a number of contexts, I thought that surely Eliot was its originator.  The term is credited to an American sociologist Robert Merton in the 1930s.  I think Merton must have read Middlemarch.   

Readers who have not read Middlemarch, have always thought that you might like to, I give two thumbs up to taking the plunge.   It might challenge you, but will not disappoint.

For my next book I am dialing it way back.  Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams (Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2014) who retraces the steps of the early 20th century American explorer Hiram Bingham III over the Inca Trail in Peru.  Interesting and funny.  Learning a lot about Peru.  At only 292 pages, not including the Acknowledgements and Glossary, is a welcome relief.