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danelleeb's review against another edition
5.0
My edition of Middlemarch is 810 pages of insight on human relations that is as accurate in this day and age as it was when it was written.
Middlemarch is a fictious rural community. The story is set in the mid-1800's. The characters - and there are more than a few - are memorable, realistic, and thoroughly scrutinized under Eliot's narrative. You see every fault of each character, but also that one redeeming thing that makes you not want to totally give up on them. There's a young lady, rather rash in her decision-making, wanting to do good; an elderly man who is jealous and spiteful, but a scholar; a doctor with a short temper, who's trying to change his profession for the better; a young man with gambling debts, who is desperately in love with his childhood sweetheart...
As I read I had a sense that the writing was something like Dickens with a little of the Brontes thrown in - you have all of these characters and you learn so much about them but you never bore with it because of the twists and turns the plot takes. The writing is exceptional; Eliot writes in such an intelligent and knowing way. The heroine, Dorthea Brooke, has that same effect on me as Jane Eyre - kind of a humbling experience. She does what isn't always easiest, but what's right, and in the end, it ends up being for the better.
This is the second time I've read Middlemarch and I've taken something new away from it - mainly all of the 'marriage stuff'. I have a feeling the next time I read it, I'll find something else about it that really stands out.
Isn't that the sign of a great book?
Middlemarch is a fictious rural community. The story is set in the mid-1800's. The characters - and there are more than a few - are memorable, realistic, and thoroughly scrutinized under Eliot's narrative. You see every fault of each character, but also that one redeeming thing that makes you not want to totally give up on them. There's a young lady, rather rash in her decision-making, wanting to do good; an elderly man who is jealous and spiteful, but a scholar; a doctor with a short temper, who's trying to change his profession for the better; a young man with gambling debts, who is desperately in love with his childhood sweetheart...
As I read I had a sense that the writing was something like Dickens with a little of the Brontes thrown in - you have all of these characters and you learn so much about them but you never bore with it because of the twists and turns the plot takes. The writing is exceptional; Eliot writes in such an intelligent and knowing way. The heroine, Dorthea Brooke, has that same effect on me as Jane Eyre - kind of a humbling experience. She does what isn't always easiest, but what's right, and in the end, it ends up being for the better.
This is the second time I've read Middlemarch and I've taken something new away from it - mainly all of the 'marriage stuff'. I have a feeling the next time I read it, I'll find something else about it that really stands out.
Isn't that the sign of a great book?
misshgtraveling's review against another edition
4.0
Beautiful. Took until a bit over half way through to really get into. Gorgeous quotes and a lovely conclusion.
sense_of_history's review against another edition
Perhaps a bit of a difficult read for 21st century-readers, but what a rewarding one. As a novel illustrating bourgeois mentality in the first place, but also as a portrait of life in a provincial town around 1830, illustrating the great transformation England went through in that period. See the review in my general account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/674324870.
coolbritanja's review against another edition
1.0
Gave up after Book II. :( Just couldn't get into the book.
jenikki's review against another edition
5.0
I know many people have tried to read this book and failed to see why so many others love it. But think of it this way: The first 100 pages are like the first season of Buffy; good the first time but it'll make you unsure of why there's such a buzz about the show, and only after you've finished the series do you realize how important that first part was. I first read Middlemarch a little over 15 years ago as part of my graduate English lit program, in a Victorian Gender Studies course. I wanted to read it again this year because I was intrigued to read Rebecca Mead's "My Life in Middlemarch," and then when one of my book clubs chose it as the March pick, I had my incentive! For those out there who've given it a try and after 50 pages thought it was a slog, yes, it's heavy, but it is SO delightful. Get through the first 100 pages and you should be hooked. There's SO much I love about the book: there are laugh-out-loud funny bits; there are truly sad moments; there are moments where you'll become very frustrated with the characters and other times where you're spurring them on to make a decision that you just feel is inevitable but worry they might not make correctly.
I think George Elliot is the greatest writer of the Victorian age; SO smart (which is why the beginning seems heady as she combines Christian stories with Greek mythology and politics at the beginning of the 19th century) and yet so prescient. It's the sort of novel that reminds us that we're not so different from our Victorian brethren; Celia dotes on little baby Arthur like any insufferable new mom, and if she were around today she'd be posting 4,000 photos of him on Facebook like the rest of us moms do; political campaigning is as horrible and backstabbing as it is now; marriages can fall apart over money, and society is always there to cast aspersions and judgment on everyone... or, at least, everyone ASSUMES everyone is gossiping about them and they change their actions accordingly. It's a wonderful, wonderful novel, set 100 years before Downton Abbey, which is set 100 years before now, and yet you can see all the threads connecting one century to the next. And... it has one of my all-time favourite final lines of any book that, like the rest of the book, seems to know it'll be read 150 years later, and gives a nod to all of us future readers. Highly, highly recommended.
I think George Elliot is the greatest writer of the Victorian age; SO smart (which is why the beginning seems heady as she combines Christian stories with Greek mythology and politics at the beginning of the 19th century) and yet so prescient. It's the sort of novel that reminds us that we're not so different from our Victorian brethren; Celia dotes on little baby Arthur like any insufferable new mom, and if she were around today she'd be posting 4,000 photos of him on Facebook like the rest of us moms do; political campaigning is as horrible and backstabbing as it is now; marriages can fall apart over money, and society is always there to cast aspersions and judgment on everyone... or, at least, everyone ASSUMES everyone is gossiping about them and they change their actions accordingly. It's a wonderful, wonderful novel, set 100 years before Downton Abbey, which is set 100 years before now, and yet you can see all the threads connecting one century to the next. And... it has one of my all-time favourite final lines of any book that, like the rest of the book, seems to know it'll be read 150 years later, and gives a nod to all of us future readers. Highly, highly recommended.
rogue_runner's review against another edition
3.0
THIS TOOK ITS TIME but I did enjoy the last 150 or so pages, finally. It took me a very long time to get into both the writing style and the characters- for me, definitely the sort of book I have to keep plugging away at every day to keep engaged with the style, otherwise it's a little too 'old' for me. I enjoyed it in the end though, and there's quite the drama once you get to it!
0xo_ox0's review against another edition
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
joellita's review against another edition
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
ilse's review against another edition
5.0
Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
When Alexandra suggested to participate in this year’s alphabetical challenge of reading women, I admit the prospect of finally reading Middlemarch for the ‘E’ was the decisive element for me to embark on the journey –and I had been keeping the novel aside as a precious reward, to be touched if and only if I would manage to finish a demanding work project in time. When that blissful moment came, I couldn’t have dreamt of a more exquisite treat than reading this masterpiece, of which I enjoyed every minute. Although Virginia Woolf called it ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’ reading this novel made me feel sixteen again, catapulting me back into memories of spending hours of reading delight during school holidays in the small kitchen above the grocery store where my mother worked, only having to interrupt reading to wash the dishes, then plunging again into some fat Russian 19th century novel, greedily gobbling up the sentences, floating on cloud nine. Isn’t it odd how memory singles out and connects to some of our experiences as the most delightful ones of our lives, of which we were barely aware when we were living them? Needless to say books which are that overwhelming are rare, and this novel is such one, one that swallowed me whole, only desiring to be in the book, curling up with the characters – I revelled in Eliot’s prowess in bringing to life her wondrous characters and particularly in the strength of her women (most of the men in the novel seem no match for the women, at certain moments some sound like a tenor in an opera who’s faint voice renders his nonetheless beautiful lines and alleged heroism at times perhaps somewhat implausible but all the more human).
As so much has been written on this magnum opus (I so far have only skimmed through a few of the magnificent hymns readers here have written to this so well-loved book and hope to read them more thoroughly now having finished the novel) and the issues worth analysing seem boundless – I feel it could easily feed my reading group’s discussions for a year - reading the novel a first time I soon sensed it out of my league to consider writing anything about it and so surrendered to reading instinctively, plunging in naked and unarmed, floating smoothly on Eliot’s fabulous sentences, the gentle waves of her wisdom. If I would focus on one theme for further exploring in a second read it would be marriage as seen by Eliot, to find out if and in which way her views concurred with or differed from the conventional ones in her time, and what her views on relationships tell us today.
Young love-making—that gossamer web! Subtle interlacings are swung— are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity. As for Rosamond, she was in the water-lily’s expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web.
One of the themes which propulses the finely spun narratives and intrigues (Middlemarch has been compared to an intricate emotional spider web, the omniscient authorial voice repeatedly using the web metaphor, considering the recounting of the tale a task of ‘unraveling certain human lots and seeing how they were woven and interwoven’) is the tension between reconciling the vows and demands of marriage and one’s personal vocation in life – a tension mostly conveyed by unfurling and paralleling the vicissitudes of two characters who precipitate themselves headlong into wedlock, a state on which they both harbour illusions which seem to echo each other and which will turn out at odds with their highly idealistic vocations and ambitions in life. We find the 19 year old Dorothea Brooke passionately wanting to devote herself to an scholarly clergyman, many years her senior, Edward Causabon, seeking wisdom and enlightenment herself - while the young doctor Tertius Lydgate dreams of a life of science, to be venerated and supported in this dream by the dedicated wife he sees in the mayor’s daughter, Rosamond Vincy (’his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband’s mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone’).
Both will bump into bitter reality (as in a sense for both marriage serves as a means to an end, the only possible outcome might have been disillusion on the nature of marriage). Dorothea finds her assistance unwelcome to her husband, while Tertius learns a ravishing appearance can hide a disgraceful (and to this reader appalling) selfishness. Their misfit marriages will eventually be counterpoised by a third, wonderfully balanced relationship, one of strong bonding based on ratio as well as emotions, a couple building a future on what could be seen as fundamental resemblances and complementary differences – complementarity far more subtle painted by Eliot than in a simple traditional division of the gender roles. Here is a relationship of mutual support and understanding for which both Dorothea and Tertius - good-natured, but dreamers - longed for in vain – however the initial pangs of disenchantment for both will have quite different consequences. Eliot’s presentation of what seems ideal marriage as a union of free-spirited individuals, united by true companionship as loving comrades, struck me as rather progressive or modern for her times (but I could be wrong in that assessment) as well as touchingly relatable.
Reading Middlemarch to me not felt as escapism. As Julian Barnes wrote in his essay [b:A Life with Books|15735364|A Life with Books|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342186419s/15735364.jpg|21418162] ‘Life and reading are not separate activities, When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic’. His words ring quintessentially true with regard to Middlemarch – with its gorgeous, gossamer prose, the plethora of fascinating characters, the manifold references to art, the perceptive dictums wearing an aphoristic suit showing a tremendous insight into the human psyche, its subtly humorous asides, its wisdom and sympathy for humankind, this brilliant novel might simply be a reader’s dream, a way of experiencing the harmony of spheres. Following the thread to light and life Eliot is weaving, reminded me that life in all its depth at times can be pure bliss.
When Alexandra suggested to participate in this year’s alphabetical challenge of reading women, I admit the prospect of finally reading Middlemarch for the ‘E’ was the decisive element for me to embark on the journey –and I had been keeping the novel aside as a precious reward, to be touched if and only if I would manage to finish a demanding work project in time. When that blissful moment came, I couldn’t have dreamt of a more exquisite treat than reading this masterpiece, of which I enjoyed every minute. Although Virginia Woolf called it ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’ reading this novel made me feel sixteen again, catapulting me back into memories of spending hours of reading delight during school holidays in the small kitchen above the grocery store where my mother worked, only having to interrupt reading to wash the dishes, then plunging again into some fat Russian 19th century novel, greedily gobbling up the sentences, floating on cloud nine. Isn’t it odd how memory singles out and connects to some of our experiences as the most delightful ones of our lives, of which we were barely aware when we were living them? Needless to say books which are that overwhelming are rare, and this novel is such one, one that swallowed me whole, only desiring to be in the book, curling up with the characters – I revelled in Eliot’s prowess in bringing to life her wondrous characters and particularly in the strength of her women (most of the men in the novel seem no match for the women, at certain moments some sound like a tenor in an opera who’s faint voice renders his nonetheless beautiful lines and alleged heroism at times perhaps somewhat implausible but all the more human).
As so much has been written on this magnum opus (I so far have only skimmed through a few of the magnificent hymns readers here have written to this so well-loved book and hope to read them more thoroughly now having finished the novel) and the issues worth analysing seem boundless – I feel it could easily feed my reading group’s discussions for a year - reading the novel a first time I soon sensed it out of my league to consider writing anything about it and so surrendered to reading instinctively, plunging in naked and unarmed, floating smoothly on Eliot’s fabulous sentences, the gentle waves of her wisdom. If I would focus on one theme for further exploring in a second read it would be marriage as seen by Eliot, to find out if and in which way her views concurred with or differed from the conventional ones in her time, and what her views on relationships tell us today.
Young love-making—that gossamer web! Subtle interlacings are swung— are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity. As for Rosamond, she was in the water-lily’s expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web.
One of the themes which propulses the finely spun narratives and intrigues (Middlemarch has been compared to an intricate emotional spider web, the omniscient authorial voice repeatedly using the web metaphor, considering the recounting of the tale a task of ‘unraveling certain human lots and seeing how they were woven and interwoven’) is the tension between reconciling the vows and demands of marriage and one’s personal vocation in life – a tension mostly conveyed by unfurling and paralleling the vicissitudes of two characters who precipitate themselves headlong into wedlock, a state on which they both harbour illusions which seem to echo each other and which will turn out at odds with their highly idealistic vocations and ambitions in life. We find the 19 year old Dorothea Brooke passionately wanting to devote herself to an scholarly clergyman, many years her senior, Edward Causabon, seeking wisdom and enlightenment herself - while the young doctor Tertius Lydgate dreams of a life of science, to be venerated and supported in this dream by the dedicated wife he sees in the mayor’s daughter, Rosamond Vincy (’his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband’s mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone’).
Both will bump into bitter reality (as in a sense for both marriage serves as a means to an end, the only possible outcome might have been disillusion on the nature of marriage). Dorothea finds her assistance unwelcome to her husband, while Tertius learns a ravishing appearance can hide a disgraceful (and to this reader appalling) selfishness. Their misfit marriages will eventually be counterpoised by a third, wonderfully balanced relationship, one of strong bonding based on ratio as well as emotions, a couple building a future on what could be seen as fundamental resemblances and complementary differences – complementarity far more subtle painted by Eliot than in a simple traditional division of the gender roles. Here is a relationship of mutual support and understanding for which both Dorothea and Tertius - good-natured, but dreamers - longed for in vain – however the initial pangs of disenchantment for both will have quite different consequences. Eliot’s presentation of what seems ideal marriage as a union of free-spirited individuals, united by true companionship as loving comrades, struck me as rather progressive or modern for her times (but I could be wrong in that assessment) as well as touchingly relatable.
Reading Middlemarch to me not felt as escapism. As Julian Barnes wrote in his essay [b:A Life with Books|15735364|A Life with Books|Julian Barnes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342186419s/15735364.jpg|21418162] ‘Life and reading are not separate activities, When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic’. His words ring quintessentially true with regard to Middlemarch – with its gorgeous, gossamer prose, the plethora of fascinating characters, the manifold references to art, the perceptive dictums wearing an aphoristic suit showing a tremendous insight into the human psyche, its subtly humorous asides, its wisdom and sympathy for humankind, this brilliant novel might simply be a reader’s dream, a way of experiencing the harmony of spheres. Following the thread to light and life Eliot is weaving, reminded me that life in all its depth at times can be pure bliss.
tywhiplashing's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.25
As someone who has dnf-ed Adam Bede but then kind of enjoyed Daniel Deronda, I didn't know what to expect going into Middlemarch. It's now my favourite of the three Eliot works I've read and I was really impressed by Eliot's prose - the way she brings the characters to life and expresses their emotions is moving! :)