Middlemarch

Middlemarch by George Eliot


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Layered, insightful, relevant, subtly critical and gently humorous. A real work of art.

Subversive is the word I would choose to summarize this work. No established social institution is safe with Eliot -- she tunnels under all those systems society holds dear: gender, class and the belief in 'good breeding', a feudal economy ruled by a landed aristocracy, marriage, religion; you name it, Eliot subverts it.

While I found the story a bit slow to get into, it soon became clear that Eliot's genius lies more on the level of structure and theme rather than mere plot. Themes are just ripe for analyzing; parallel characterizations beg to be compared.

Thwarted ambition and wasted talent -- that's a big one. Nearly every character has hopes and ambitions that are doomed to fail, perhaps because they lack the capability to fulfill them, but more likely because they lack the opportunity.

Gender roles are one of the biggest hindrances to fulfilling one's potential in Middlemarch. Dorothea is the best example, an intelligent, free-thinking, conscientious young woman who wants to do good works and make the world a better place -- she wishes that "her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent" (86).

But in her world, a small English town in the 1830s, her only way of accomplishing anything is to have a husband accomplish it for her. One of her 'faults' early in the story is

she had not reached that point of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied with having a wise husband; she wished, poor child, to be wise herself. (62)

In contrast, Rosamond is the perfect lady of the time and is able to attract the attentions of a promising young doctor with traditional taste in women:

For Rosamond never showed any unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of correct sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing... and perfect blond loveliness (282)

Rosamond and her husband suffer from frustrated ambition and stymied desires when their money trouble gets in the way of the life they want to lead. Their problems are class- and gender-bound; they are stuck leading lives that they don't want because 'society' expects them to behave in certain ways and they aren't brave enough to reject those constraints.

The weight of societal expectations is another theme that wound through the book, touching every character in some way. Eliot illustrates (magnificently) how interconnected and mutually dependent everyone in this small provincial community is. One person's loss is another's gain -- literally, whether money, land or a 'living'. The social glue is made up of common interests, shared dependence on the land, stable class stratification, regional identity and mutual ancestry.

Those are the ties that bind. They could be seen as confining and stifling, but the dread fear that Eliot's characters face when considering the possiblity of breaking those ties reveals their power. Survival outside society's confinements is not at all assured, as we see with several characters who are banished from their family and home.

Scandal is the tragedy to be avoided at all costs. Murder, lies, adultery or betrayal could be borne as long as scandal didn't follow in their wake. It is this constant fear of judgment by the community that prevents the characters from fulfilling their soul's demands.

Besides these great themes, Eliot is a brilliant writer and demands a close, alert reader. She plays with language and voice, and invites us to read between the lines. The result is quite humorous! Here are a couple of examples:

Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not in sight -- that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin. (205)

A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men. But nature has sometimes made sad oversights in carrying out her intentions... (411)

You can see her biting social commentary at work in that last quote, and in this one:

Society had never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. (293)

Eliot wrote at a time when everything was changing in British society, toward the end of the 19th century. I think Middlemarch might be her way of looking back 50 years and creating a story that begged for the forces of change to come through and disrupt the corrupt and rotten structure of that provincial community. So much of human potential was lost through needless, trivial constraints:

It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are for ever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made (450)

As Middlemarch illustrates, this devastation is entirely unnecessary and could be avoided by changing society's attitudes and freeing people to pursue their soul's best ideals.

I read this for the Women Unbound Challenge. It's a great example of powerful gender criticism from long before feminism existed. It makes me think that outspoken, strong and intelligent women have probably been challenging gender for just about forever, though they now are forgotten or unknown, and we tend to imagine that our ideas about gender and women's roles are new.

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