Two months ago I wrote a piece “Getting Stuck” confessing I
had failed to complete reading Middlemarch
by George Eliot and had given up after a modest 150 pages. I am happy to be
able to report that, after reviving myself with re-reading two of my favourite
political biographies, I returned to Middlemarch
and completed its 838 pages yesterday with much satisfaction, tinged with a
dash of exasperation.
 |
| George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) |
Those readers who responded to my original article were
unfailingly polite and sympathetic; they talked of their own problems with
Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Melville, Gibbon and Victor Hugo. One Scots candid
friend told me that Virginia Woolf (herself an opaque writer in my view) had declared
that Middlemarch was “one of the few
English novels written for grown-up people”. As for my labelling heroine
Dorothea Brooke “a prig”, he countered by claiming that Dorothea was “just
about the sexiest heroine in Victorian literature” – an epithet to which I
would not subscribe! He said he was about to dilate upon my immaturity but
generously retreated out of respect for my reaching my 50,000 pageview hits
target, as many of my pieces had amused him. He said we did not agree much on
politics, religion, the American Way or the British public school system but
despite this formidable catalogue we remain warm friends. There is no doubt
that he stung me into action as did those silent readers, many of whom I know to
have literary interests, whose reproaches were all the more cutting for being
silent! So to Middlemarch I returned.
Middlemarch,
published in 1872, is by common consent a great novel – some say the greatest
of all English novels. Its sweep is broad, describing the fictional Midlands
town of Middlemarch during the run-up to the Great Reform Bill from 1829-32. The
various sectors of society are described, landowners, manufacturers,
professionals, tradesmen and rustics. The action revolves around the love of
Dorothea Brooke, first married to the desiccated scholar Casaubon, for the
enigmatic Will Ladislaw but extends to the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate,
who marries pretty but shallow Rosamond Vincy. The love of Fred Vincy for plain
but admirable Mary Garth and the ruin of Methodist banker Bulstrode at the
hands of sinister John Raffles provide diverting sub-plots and a rich gallery
of subsidiary characters.
Eliot writes best I believe in her depiction of the marriage
of Dr Lydgate with Rosy Vincy, her self-centredness and his weak submission
ending his hopes in frustrated disappointment. The central romance between
Dorothea and Will is well described but quite what the attractions of Will are
I find hard to discern, though he does have artistic and journalistic flair.
Dorothea, with her high aspirations and scrupulous emotions, would in my
opinion have been much better off with Lydgate, supposing he had the courage to
dump Rosy, if that had been possible. I still reckon Dorothea to be an
exasperating prig, who would drive any normal man potty, and my lack of
sympathy for her is my main obstacle to unconditional enjoyment of the novel.
George Eliot herself was much braver than her heroine
Dorothea. She lived in sin for 20 years with married philosopher George Lewes
and made no secret of her free-thinking opinions. In time she was accepted by
Victorian society and this “horse-faced blue-stocking” in Henry James’
ungallant phrase, took her place among the finest of English novelists. I am
glad I got unstuck and finished reading her masterpiece.
SMD
20.05.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
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