Articles on Middlemarch

[kev67]

Saving this one for later as I don't want to read the plot spoilers.

And another.

And this one.

[kev67]

Here is Henry James' review of it.

[Gladys]

Here is Henry James' review of it.

As a lover of Henry James, I enjoyed his 1873 review - that of a young man. Roderick Hudson of 1875 was his first novel. Henry James encapsulates characters in Middlemarch with his trademark acuity.

His novels are superbly integrated whereas Middlemarch in depicting village life is, perhaps deliberately, somewhat piecemeal. The Golden Bowl of 1904, is a fine example of Henry James' skill in synthesis.

[kev67]

Another article by Rebecca Mead on George Elliot. The bit that surprised me the most was that Prince Bertie, later King Edward VII, had read Middlemarch five times by 1886. I thought he was supposed to have been a bit of a dunce, who might have been diagnosed with ADHD these days.

[Gladys]

Another article by Rebecca Mead on George Elliot.

I listened this week to a podcast: The Road to Middlemarch: Rebecca Mead's Life with George Eliot

The podcast emphasised the far from satisfactory life eventually led by many of major characters in Middlemarch. It occurred to me afterwards that Dorothea, in marrying the brash Will Ladislaw, compromised in more than just the loss of Edward Casaubon's estate. Someone like Lydgate is surely a more suitable but choice, in life, is usually limited.

In a similar way in The Mill on the Floss, the final reconciliation of Maggie Tulliver with brother Tom in a raging flood may be less idyllic than it first seems. Many critics have criticised, I think unfairly, the seemingly too convenient romantic rapprochement that ends the novel.

[kev67]

I listened this week to a podcast: The Road to Middlemarch: Rebecca Mead's Life with George Eliot

The podcast emphasised the far from satisfactory life eventually led by many of major characters in Middlemarch. It occurred to me afterwards that Dorothea, in marrying the brash Will Ladislaw, compromised in more than just the loss of Edward Casaubon's estate. Someone like Lydgate is surely a more suitable but choice, in life, is usually limited.

In a similar way in The Mill on the Floss, the final reconciliation of Maggie Tulliver with brother Tom in a raging flood may be less idyllic than it first seems. Many critics have criticised, I think unfairly, the seemingly too convenient romantic rapprochement that ends the novel.

Rebecca Mead turns up here too.

Lydgate is Dorothea's parallel, but being male he was allowed the opportunity to study and become useful to mankind. Dorothea would have loved that opportunity. Lydgate was not available for marriage. Rosamund is not going to die conveniently, and Lydgate has no grounds to divorce her. In one respect Lydgate has a very bad character flaw that Dorothea does not share: he is evasive when he has bad news to impart. He avoids giving painful or shameful information time and again. And because of that, he compromises himself even worse than he has to. Contrast that with Dorothea's return to Rosamund's home the day after a painful meeting, in which they managed to sort out some misunderstandings. Ladislaw gets a kicking by the reviewers, but he is nearly always forthright and refuses to compromise himself. Eventually Ladislaw becomes a Member of Parliament, where no doubt he is a reformer. No doubt Dorothea was immensely useful to his career in many behind-the-scenes ways. Lydgate's wife Rosamund is an example of what not having a supportive spouse can do for your philanthropic ideals.

[Gladys]

Rosamund is not going to die conveniently...

That's something of an understatement: she outlives poor Lydgate by decades!

In one respect Lydgate has a very bad character flaw that Dorothea does not share: he is evasive when he has bad news to impart.

A character flaw perhaps, but doesn't Lydgate act towards Rosamund from exaggerated kindness? I think it most unlikely that he could imitate Dorothea's direct approach to Rosamund. Her once-only affect on Rosamund is both dramatic and profound but, as it turns out, rather short-lived. Lydgate, by contrast, is constrained to act from within marriage which, for him, is a life sentence. It is 'til death do us part, and that is how he ultimately escapes from her rapacious grasp in London. He was more fortunate with his first love, the murderess.

No doubt Dorothea was immensely useful to his career in many behind-the-scenes ways.

If Dorothea's marital choice of Ladislaw is, as I think, a compromise she, nevertheless, chooses more wisely in her second husband.