Middlemarch Discussion

[Ecurb]

I grant that Dorothea grows during the novel. And I think that final paragraph is meant to indicate that she grows even more after the novel - renouncing some of her ideals and becoming more like Celia or Mary.

Mary, of course, becomes an author. Is she the George Eliot (Mary Evans) surragate? In the love scene I quoted above, she says, "I don't think either of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much we might admire them. It would make too great a difference to us -- like seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for everything." I like the "changing the name for everything" -- as if, especially for a writer, words are magical incantations, and changing the name for things changes the world.

By the way, I think some the final scenes between Celia and Dorothea (and the one between Rosumund and Dorothea) are far more moving than any scene involving Ladislaw. Also, I don't want anyone to think I'm dissing the book -- I love it.

[Gladys]

...she [Dorothea] grows even more after the novel - renouncing some of her ideals and becoming more like Celia or Mary.

All Dorothea renounces are juvenile and simplistic ideas about love for neighbour. Her raging river of love is, by necessity, wonderfully diverted into many rivulets (channels) with much enhanced effect. Neither Celia or Mary are visionary like her (and like Mary Ann Evans would likely wish to be).

Mary, of course, becomes an author.

There is more to life than being a visionary. Mary perhaps represents the goodness that is inherent in the best of honest pragmatism (a goodness Mary Ann Evans would likely wish for herself).

By the way, I think some the final scenes between Celia and Dorothea (and the one between Rosumund and Dorothea) are far more moving than any scene involving Ladislaw.

Reading those final scenes, I was reminded of the early, happier days of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

I too adore Middlemarch. It was a pleasant change after battling through Henry James' woeful novel, also about young women, The Awkward Age. I've read a dozen James novels in the last couple of years but that stands alone.

[kelby_lake]

George Eliot's style reminds me of Henry James in its verbosity.

I think that Ladislaw is a bit two-dimensional and it's hard to see the attraction (apart from him being pretty). His love for Dorothea is more like an infatuation.

[kelby_lake]

Reading those final scenes, I was reminded of the early, happier days of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

I can see similarities between Middlemarch and Anna Karenina- unintended of course as Middlemarch predates Anna Karenina and I doubt Tolstoy read Middlemarch.

[Gladys]

George Eliot's style reminds me of Henry James in its verbosity.

I think that Ladislaw is a bit two-dimensional and it's hard to see the attraction (apart from him being pretty). His love for Dorothea is more like an infatuation.

I too find something mildly distasteful about Ladislaw: his brashness perhaps. Still, he's way better than Edward Casaubon. Our marital choices are always very limited!

I have an even more uncomfortable feeling about brother and sister, Tom and Maggie Tulliver, just before that fateful collision on the river in flood at the end of The Mill on the Floss. Life is never straightforward and by these dissonances, George Elliot shows her subtle genius - as subtle in her way as Henry James.

[MANICHAEAN]

The point about limited marital choices is well made, or is it more a question of not learning from the relationships we have gone through? Dorothea, to me at least, comes across as either too intense or playing the martyr, neither of them desirable traits in any woman. Hence her initial attraction to Casaubon and later transient emotional purgatory with Ladislaw. Genteel ladies in those days were not exactly in a position to undertake the female equivalent of “sowing their oats!”

[kelby_lake]

What I really didn't get was all that fuss about the codicil. Seeing as Dorothea was already rich, she didn't need the money or the property. Yes, Casaubon might have been being spiteful, but you'd be annoyed if your cousin was sniffing around your wife.

At least Casaubon recognised that Dorothea was intelligent and she got an education, even if it was ultimately to be his secretary. I can't help feeling that her marrying Ladislaw is a regression. Ideally, she should have got together with Lydgate.

[Gladys]

What I really didn't get was all that fuss about the codicil. Seeing as Dorothea was already rich, she didn't need the money or the property. Yes, Casaubon might have been being spiteful, but you'd be annoyed if your cousin was sniffing around your wife.

At least Casaubon recognised that Dorothea was intelligent and she got an education, even if it was ultimately to be his secretary. I can't help feeling that her marrying Ladislaw is a regression. Ideally, she should have got together with Lydgate.

Dorothea was well off rather than rich. Casaubon's codicil made manifest the extent of his narcissistic detachment from reality, a reality that Dorothea embraces energetically. The "fuss" was all in the claustrophobic mind of Casaubon; his was a pathetic life in many ways.

As for Lydgate, he was already taken. Life is like that sometimes. And Dorothea makes the best of her situation in marrying Ladislaw - it's hardly love at first sight.

[ruggerlad]

I'm very surprised nobody seems to have mentioned Rosamund Vincey - I find her the most interesting character. GE doens't really do villains - there's always a bit of pity or sympathy even for the baddies (Casaubon or Bulstrode.)

Rosamund seems just an immature pretty charmer, but turns out to suck the life out of Lydgate bit by bit. Quite chilling when you think of it.

(And she seems to indicate a difference between Jane Austen and GE. Mr Bennett's life has been blighted by his marriage to a selfish woman, but there's still comedy whereas Lydgate's life is a tragedy.)

[kelby_lake]

Dorothea was well off rather than rich. Casaubon's codicil made manifest the extent of his narcissistic detachment from reality, a reality that Dorothea embraces energetically. The "fuss" was all in claustrophobic mind of Casaubon; his was a pathetic life in many ways.

I don't think he detatched himself from reality because he was narcisstic. He devoted himself to his studies but became narcissistic to distract himself from the failure of his work. Admitting failure in his studies would be tantamount to saying his life was a complete failure.

[Gladys]

I don't think he detached himself from reality because he was narcissistic. He devoted himself to his studies but became narcissistic to distract himself from the failure of his work.

Isn't Casaubon's narcissism - or selfishness - rather more complicated, as indicated by his relationship with Ladislaw's mother and later Ladislaw himself, way before Dorothea arrives?

[kelby_lake]

Isn't Casaubon's narcissism - or selfishness - rather more complicated, as indicated by his relationship with Ladislaw's mother and later Ladislaw himself, way before Dorothea arrives?

Could you explain?

[Gladys]

Early in MiddleMarch Dorothea visits Casaubon's house for the first time and is attracted by an old miniature of his aunt (his mother's elder sister). The aunt, according to Casaubon made an unfortunate marriage, disappeared entirely from view and, as we later learn, had a grandson named Ladislaw. Much later, her own marriage less rosy, Dorothea comes again to the miniature:

Here was a woman who had known some difficulty about marriage. Nay, the colors deepened, the lips and chin seemed to get larger, the hair and eyes seemed to be sending out light, the face was masculine and beamed on her with that full gaze which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for the slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted. The vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she felt herself smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked up as if she were again talking to a figure in front of her. But the smile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said aloud—

"Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad—how dreadful!"

We eventually learn that the aunt, acting with integrity, has left the family in the aftermath of a financial scam involving her father, the benefits eventually flowing to Casaubon himself - a man with gnawing feelings of guilt and shame. Casaubon's cool attitude and behaviour towards Ladislaw is a legacy of this tawdry past.

And later:

And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will's grandmother; the presence of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew, helping to concentrate her feelings. What a wrong, to cut off the girl from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen a man who was poor!

[kelby_lake]

Ah yes, I forgot that Casaubon would have inherited the dirty money.