Will I love Middlemarch?

I read somewhere that the modern novel as we know it began with "Middlemarch." That feels right, despite its omniscient narrator and the differences between the social conventions of the day and our current times. As a novelist, I appreciated the way Eliot juggled so many characters and plot lines and wrapped them up in such a satisfying way. It's a big book, for sure, but so worth it. I can't imagine why I waited so long to read it.

Along with Anna Karenina (mistitled, since its other couples' relationships are as important as Anna's), this is probably. the greatest of all novels. Eliot weaves the interlocking lives of a small village in 1830s England, showing the social situation, class-bound but also shifting against the wider politics and even medical science of the early Industrial era. Her major characters also grow across the span of the years covered to learn valuable life lessons and have their values tested against shifting financial and social changes for each individual. Questions of self-awareness and ultimate choices abound, with surprising reversals and changes, so… show more.

I love this novel's timelessness. Seemingly every page has a memorable line such as this: "Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything..."

Reading what Eliot wrote more than 150 years ago endlessly amused me as I matched the follies of her world to the pettiness, mindlessness, and garishness of today's world.

Last year one of my best books was published in 1959 but this year I’ve gone all the way back to 1871. Despite having majored in English lit, I managed to get through university without reading Middlemarch. I don’t imagine I would have enjoyed it much at that point, so it’s just as well. This year, I finally decided to read it (well, listen to it) and, at last, I was ready for it. I found it beautiful, funny, compassionate, clear-eyed, and entirely satisfying. It’s about life, ambition, loss, discovery, folly, and wisdom. Some things are worth waiting for.

This book, published in the 1870s, is sometimes considered the best English novel ever written.

It is a monumental work, and while I found it very impressive, I have to admit that reading the long and detailed text felt heavy going at times.

Set in a provincial town with a large cast of characters, it depicts a middle-class way of life very different from that of today, and addresses various social and political questions of the time. One major theme is the psychology of marriage as analysed through the relationships between two ill-matched couples.

To my mind, Dorothea is the original and quintessential embodiment of a smart, insightful woman struggling to belong to herself, which, for me, is a strong value.

And in 19th Century England, when claiming oneself was no small feat. I have held Dorothea in my heart ever since I read the book as a 20-year-old. Along with Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady. Both of them were heroines and pioneers.

In this book, George Eliot’s novel of provincial life in 1830s England, nearly everyone marries the wrong person. Even the future happiness of its heroine, Dorothea, when she finally unites with her true love, Will, is questionable. And yet it stands for me, not only as one of the finest novels ever written but one of literature’s greatest romances.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote that it is a novel “for grown-up people.” I believe it is essential reading because it reflects real life where couples are mismatched, love goes unrequited, and ambitions are thwarted. It illuminates the small ways our better… show more.

I am recommending George Eliot’s novel (published in parts 1871-72) because I believe it is as good as any of the great Russian novels and probably the best novel written in English. Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans) was herself a revolutionary person. In 19th century England, she worked as an independent woman, lived with a married man (she eventually married him), and later married a man a lot younger than herself. Her novel is set in the early part of the 19th century when the aftereffects of the French Revolution were strongly felt in England, and there was even… show more.

I took up Middlemarch after reading from various sources that it is many people's favorite book of all time—high praise, indeed! As a friend commented on social media: "I love Middlemarch. She gets inside people's heads so well it's embarrassing sometimes!" That is one thing I love about it.

Eliot's characters are each so distinct; they even speak differently. They come from such different backgrounds and perspectives: aristocracy, upper middle class, working class, professional doctors and lawyers, clergy. Some are deeply religious and ethical, others superficial and vain.

One important character is a young doctor with new medical ideas who… show more.

After more than 50 years as an English prof, I confess I remain leery of long novels and am inclined to explain my disinclination to embark on epic fiction by saying I’m a ponderously slow reader, which poky pace I blame on my love of poetry, which demands utmost concentration. 

Accordingly, only four summers ago, after three false starts scattered over many years, did I at last conquer Brothers Karamazov, a boast-worthy achievement for me. Last year my major conquest—a vastly easier, pleasanter read than Dostoyevsky, was George Eliot’s deservedly famous Middlemarch, which ran to 600+ pages in… show more.