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A review by danelleeb
Middlemarch by George Eliot
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?