#9 Middlemarch, George Eliot

Every former English major knows that Middlemarch is one of the great novels in the English language. It’s the Victorian novel to end all Victorian novels. I just searched online for “greatest novels of all time”; the first list I found has Middlemarch in eighth place, between Madame Bovary and The Magic Mountain. If Middlemarch were a baseball player, it would be Ted Williams.

I read Middlemarch in grad school, and I remember that I asked the professor, whose name was Felicia Bonaparte, if I could write my master’s thesis on it. She recommended that I take on Eliot’s next and final novel, Daniel Deronda, instead. I produced a 36-page paper, which seemed at the time almost as epic as the 900-page book it was about. I worked at it most of one summer—1982, perhaps—and I truly enjoyed it. Daniel Deronda spoke to me. I thought I’d produced a masterpiece, and I got an A. If I read it today I’d probably be appalled, but if nothing else I’m sure it was bursting with enthusiasm.

I wonder how clear an idea I had, back in 1982, about what I would have wanted to say about Middlemarch—what it said to me back then.

Middlemarch is about two marriages, both unhappy. All four principals marry an idea of the other person, and all four find afterward that the reality does not match the idea. The psychological insight is wonderful and it all seems very real and nuanced. What little I remembered from my first encounter with Middlemarch had to do with these two marriages.

Middlemarch is also the story of various citizens of a country town. They all struggle and scheme; some come out well and some do not. Invariably, though, everybody seems to get according to their desserts. George Eliot is a just god and moral law is strictly enforced in her universe. I’ve sort of lost my taste for this sort of moral exactitude—it doesn’t tally with the world I live in.

There’s really only one character in Middlemarch who has the ability to surprise us—or her author. Dorothea Brooke is a young woman who marries a dry and dreary scholar, imagining that she will help him illuminate the universe with his wisdom. In the Prelude to Middlemarch, Eliot invokes St. Teresa of Avila:

Teresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and fed, from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction…

Dorothea is a modern-day St. Teresa. You might imagine that such a character would be insufferable, but in fact the scenes with Dorothea are luminous—and sometimes even a bit funny. She’s exalted, but she’s not particularly shrewd. She provides an interesting mirror in which other characters can see themselves. Inherently good characters see their goodness in her and are sustained by that vision. Bad or tedious characters see their deficiences, or see nothing.

But I am just saying the obvious things about this book—these comments are like snapshots of the Eiffel Tower. Proof that I’ve been there—not much more. I don’t seem to have any way to “warm up” Middlemarch. I am not generally attracted to the idea of book clubs, because I’m pretty sure I would find my own opinions more interesting than everybody else’s, and therefore would find myself engaged in an exercise in patience (or, failing that, rudeness). But with Middlemarch, it might be interesting to hear how different people reacted to and assessed the different characters. Each so perfectly framed by circumstances and by other characters. Each facing a moral dilemma or difficult choice. Each bathed in the light irony of the author’s prose, with thoughts and feelings presented in a detached way that provides the necessary clues to each character’s flaws. To talk about Middlemarch is to consider how one might live better.