Middlemarch by George Eliot

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Originally Posted by Aylinn

It isn't his fault that it is impossible to have a normal relationship with Rosamund.

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Lydgate is miserably jarred in a no-win marriage and finally suffocates in London. Is it irreverent to deem his premature death a blessing? :blush:

I'm sure Rosamund will live on into her nineties, with many friends, but none close.

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Originally Posted by ruggerlad

I love Dickens, but I'd never say he was organised.

Viginia Woolf said of it ""the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." By which I suspect she meant among other things, it has a mature attitude to sexual relations, although hardly spelt out. All those irritiating, drippy, saintly, sexless angels in the house which male Victorian novelist liked (Dickens' Amy, Thackery's Amelia Sedley, Trollope's Lily Dale) are mercifully absent.

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That is a major flaw in Dickens. But Martin Amis once said that the interesting thing about Dickens is that he is almost impossible to categorize. He is not a 'realist' and yet he can be brilliantly realistic. It would also be too limited to call him a 'comic' writer. Amis thought the best way to describe Dickens' novels were as fairy tales.

I've never understood why Middlemarch is considered the best novel in the English language.

When I wrote "Dickens' Amy" I meant "Dickens' Ada Clare in Bleak House" Dicken's Amy is Little Dorrit herself who is actually tough, like Esther in BH. I'm reading Bleak House at the moment, and I'm being a bit unfair. Far from being sexless, I can see how many men would find Ada attractive with her vulnerability. And in sticking by the feckless Richard Carstone, Ada has backbone too.

There's nothing particularly sexist about Lydgate. Men may often exercise unfair power over women, but this is a clear case of a woman exercising unfair power over a man.

Ah, memories of Middlemarch. I began reading that book years ago and did not finish it. I don't know if I ever shall.

That said, Eliot (Evans) is one of my favorite writers.