Source
of book: I own this.
I
have been wanting to read this book for ages, but it was one of the very few
George Eliot books I didn’t own. Oddly, it is still the only book of hers I own
that is not a hardback. (I own all her novels except Felix Holt.) I
first read Silas Marner back in high school, and then read The Mill
on the Floss in my 20s. Finally, I read Daniel Deronda in my 30s. Now, with Middlemarch
in my 40s, I am finally reading the book considered to be her
masterpiece.
Regular
readers of my blog will know that Anthony Trollope is my favorite Victorian
novelist, but I would say George Eliot is a close second. Both share a keen
sense of psychology and a fascination with the ways that rural English society
interfaces with politics and religion. The novels mention great events (the
Reform Bill of 1832 is at the center of discussions in the story), but the
focus is on everyday stuff: marriage, birth, death, inheritance,
relationships.
Middlemarch
is a long book, with a lot of related subplots, so I am not going to attempt a
summary. Perhaps it is best just to name some of the main characters. The
heroine is Dorothea, an idealistic and naive young woman who wants to do
something meaningful with her life. It isn’t easy as a woman, however, as she
finds out. She marries early in the book, choosing an older, fusty clergyman
who is more or less writing a book tying all mythologies together. (He dies
before succeeding, leaving that task to Joseph Campbell…) In contrast to Dorothea, who
is an almost impossibly good person, is Rosamond, who wishes to escape both her
plebeian (if well off) family, and the narrow confines of Middlemarch. She
latches on to Lydgate, an ambitious but fortuneless doctor. Needless to say, this
marriage does not go well for either party. Rosamond’s feckless brother Fred
has received an education (at significant expense to his parents), but declines
to become a clergyman, and thus has no obvious way to make a living. He is in
love with the delightfully witty Mary, but has to find his way before they can
marry. Rosamond and Fred’s uncle, Bulstrode, has a dark secret in his past
which he wishes to keep secret - all while he adopts a sanctimonious and
self-righteous religion that alienates others.
This
being a Victorian novel, tied up with all of this is the question of money. Who
has it, who inherits it, and whose prospects are crippled because of a lack of
it. This is also tied up with class: those who are considered aristocracy
cannot “work for a living” in the normal sense without “lowering themselves.” A
marriage outside one’s social class is either “climbing” (which is mostly good)
or “lowering” (which most certainly isn’t.) Eliot, like Trollope, exposes the
frustrations and hypocrisy this system require.
Eliot’s
particular twist on the genre consists in her focus, not so much on the
courtships, but on the marriages themselves. Dorothea marries a few chapters
into the book, while Rosamond marries about halfway. These two miserable
marriages form the bulk of the narrative of much of the book. “Happily Ever
After” this most certainly isn’t. The marriages (and others in the book) form a
series of contrasts in compatibility (or lack thereof), grace, and
sensitivity.
Another
theme in the book is the problem of womanhood. What IS Dorothea to do with
herself? In another era, as Eliot points out, she might have become a saint. In
our own time, she would be like my wife, with a career and a mission in life.
But in Victorian Protestant England, her options were mostly marriage,
marriage, and marriage.
There
are so many great lines in this book, it took me a whole page (on a mini-legal
pad) to write them down. I’ll just run through them in some semblance of order
- although not in the order they appear in the book. First is this exchange
between Dorothea and her younger sister Celia.
“Sir James seems
determined to do everything you wish,” said Celia, as they were driving home
from an inspection of the new building-site.
“He is a good
creature, and more sensible than any one would imagine,” said Dorothea,
inconsiderately.
“You mean that he
appears silly.”
“No, no,” said
Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand on her sister’s for a
moment, “but he does not talk equally well on all subjects.”
“I should think none
but disagreeable people do,” said Celia, in her usual purring way. “They must
be very dreadful to live with. Only think! At breakfast, and always.”
In
this early exchange is the germ of so much that follows. Obviously, Celia is
more the sort for Sir James, who bores Dorothea to death. But also, Dorothea’s
idol, the crusty Casaubon, turns out to be miserable to live with - his ability
to talk coherently on a variety of subjects does not translate into affection
or respect toward Dorothea. I personally would hope that this is not a
universal truth, however, because I kind of like to talk about all kinds of
things, but don’t consider myself dreadful to live with.
I’ll
also mention the delightful neologism Eliot uses in describing the Renaissance
paintings in Casaubon’s house: “severe classical nudities and smirking
Renaissance-Correggiosities.” That makes me laugh every time.
Later
in the book, Lydgate meets Dorothea, but finds her to be not his sort.
To his taste, guided
by a single conversation, here was the point on which Miss Brooke would be
found wanting, notwithstanding her undeniable beauty. She did not look at
things from the proper feminine angle. The society of such women was about as
relaxing as going from your work to teach the second form, instead of reclining
in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a
heaven.
Obviously,
this is as laughably naive as Dorothea’s belief that Casaubon would accept her
as an equal partner in his work. Ironically, Lydgate and Dorothea would have
made the best match, in my view. If only his male ego had been up to the task
of partnering with a formidable and intelligent woman, the two of them might
have fulfilled both their dreams. Instead, Dorothea ends up with Mr. Casaubon,
who himself has rather retrograde views of women. This passage is just
amazingly perceptive - and discloses the way far too many men still
think of women and marriage.
Providence, in its
kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young
lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure
to think her husband’s mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care
of Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could
hardly occur to him. Society 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. As if a man could choose not
only his wife but his wife’s husband! Or as if he were bound to provide charms
for his posterity in his own person!
He
is as naive as Lydgate in his own way - Dorothea is a far more formidible
intellect than he bargained for; and, while she is sweet and devoted, she needs
love and respect, which he fails or even declines to give her.
Rosamond
is quite the different creature from Dorothea. Educated in a finishing school
to within an inch of her life, she is one who seems rather than is.
Every nerve in muscle
in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She
was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she
acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be her own.
Later,
Rosamond kisses up to Lydgate’s rich relatives, much to the irritation of
Lydgate. His army cousin is particularly stupid and flirtatious. Eliot wryly
remarks that “but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and
a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else, indeed, what would become of
social bonds?”
The
disillusionment, when it comes, is horrifying to the two men. Eliot describes
Casaubon’s realization that Dorothea doesn’t just adore him uncritically. She
too is human, and responds accordingly to disrespect and neglect.
There was no denying
that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young lady as he could have obtained
for a wife; but a young lady turned out to be something more troublesome than
he had conceived. She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants,
and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband’s
mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was
like a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts--was accompanied with a
power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously as
a part of things in general.
…
And who, if Mr.
Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents--his suspicions that he was not
any longer adored without criticism--could have denied that they were founded
on good reasons? On the contrary, there was a strong reason to be added, which
he had not himself taken explicitly into account--namely, that he was not
unmixedly adorable. He suspected this, however, as he suspected other things,
without confessing it, and like the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have
been to have a companion who would never find it out.
That’s
just a tour-de-force of psychological analysis. These are real, human,
believable characters. Sadly, Casaubon is never able to simply treat Dorothea
as an equal, and speak intimately with her. Every time she lets her feelings
show, he withdraws and punishes her. He becomes “hard,” as the author puts
it.
Mr. Casaubon kept his
hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to cling with difficulty against
his rigid arm.
There was something
horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this unresponsive hardness
inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in these
acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men
and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has
made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness--calling their own denial
knowledge.
Eliot
is one hundred percent right when she says that it is in the trivialities that
relationships are destroyed. It is the proverbial straw - the weight of
thousands of straws - that makes happiness and consonance impossible. I can say
from experience in my professional life that more marriages die because of the
cumulative effect of “hardness” than any other factor. This isn’t a gender
thing - it happens both ways. At best, it is a refusal to consider the needs of
the other spouse; in some ways, it is a form of emotional abuse. It happens in
other relationships too, of course, and I would guess that most severed or
damaged parent-child relationships will have this as a crucial element as well.
Eventually, Casaubon becomes so paranoid that he tries to bully Dorothea.
“Before I sleep, I
have a request to make, Dorothea.”
“What is it?” said
Dorothea, with dread in her mind.
“It is that you will
let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my death, you will carry out my
wishes: whether you will avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply
yourself to do what I should desire.”
Dorothea was not taken
by surprise: many incidents had been leading her to the conjecture of some
intention on her husband’s part which might make a new yoke for her. She did
not answer immediately.
“You refuse?” said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.
“No, I do not yet
refuse,” said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of freedom asserting himself
within her; “but it is too solemn--I think it is not right--to make a promise
when I am ignorant what it will bind me to. Whatever affection prompted I would
do without promising.”
“But you would use your
own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you refuse.”
“No, dear, no!” said
Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears. “But may I wait and reflect
a little while? I desire with my whole soul to do what will comfort you; but I
cannot give any pledge suddenly--still less a pledge to do I know not what.”
Sadly,
she is on the verge of agreeing anyway, when he dies. And fucking good
riddance. He had some of my sympathy up until that moment, when he got full-on
abusive. And it is abusive to demand that someone promise to do what you order
them to do, without knowing what it is. And it is also abusive to try to bind
someone beyond your own death.
The
situation with Lydgate and Rosamond is similar, although it is Rosamond who
brutally punishes her husband for trying to get her to work with him as a team.
One is left wondering how different things would have been with a bit of honest
communication. Actually, come to think of it, the Garths do that - they may not
always agree, but they communicate with love and respect.
One
of my favorite minor characters is Mr. Farebrother, a vicar. His interest isn’t
really that much in his job - although he does work at it. He prefers his
scientific experiments and his garden. Since he has several female relatives to
support, he plays whist for money. As one of the more moderate religious sorts,
he ends up being the most admirable of the clergymen, ironically. I mention him
in this instance, to quote his mother, who gets into an exchange with Lydgate
because she does not support any sort of change, including reform.
“I object to what is
wrong, Camden. I say, keep hold of a few plain truths, and make everything
square with them. When I was young, Mr. Lydgate, there never was any question
about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned
our creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions.
But now, if you speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be
contradicted.”
Mrs.
Farebrother is pretty harmless, to be sure. But danged if I haven’t had this
used as a weapon against me a few times. This idea that the past was a utopia
is ludicrous on its face, as is the idea that everyone agreed. But “we knew the
truth, every new idea is heresy” is pretty much the Fundamentalist credo, and
justifies preserving the hierarchies and injustices and superstitions of the
past.
Not
as harmless as Mrs. Farebrother is Bulstrode, whose militant Puritanism
combines with his “sharp” business practices as banker to earn the suspicion of
his neighbors. When Lydgate shows up, it is rumored that he is an illegitimate
son of Bulstrode. When Rev. Farebrother points out to his mother that Lydgate
has family elsewhere and never met Bulstrode, she retorts:
“That is satisfactory
so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden,” said the old lady, with an air of
precision. “But as to Bulstrode--the report may be true of some other son.”
In
the actual event, the truth turns out to be even worse than an illegitimate
son. (I won’t spoil it.)
Men
in general do not come off all that well in this book, although there is one
notable exception: Caleb Garth, who is patterned after Eliot’s own father. The
two men who die leaving money are particularly loathsome in their use of money
to control people after their death. Old Peter Featherstone has essentially
strung Fred along with promises of an inheritance before changing his mind at
the end. Eliot has no difficulty speaking evil of the dead.
He loved money, but he
also loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and perhaps he loved
it best of all as a means of making others feel his power more or less
uncomfortably. If any one here will contend that there must have been traits of
goodness in old Featherstone, I will not presume to deny this; but I must
observe that goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much
elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme
privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish
old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments
based on his personal acquaintance.
I
can think of a few people who fit this description. (Cough, cough, Trump,
cough, cough…) Whatever good there theoretically may have been once has been
killed by a lifetime of vice.
Mr.
Vincy is rather more comic, but he too shares the flaw of most of the men in
the book in that they expect to be in charge and looked up to even when they
clearly have not earned it.
Apart from his dinners
and his coursing, Mr. Vincy, blustering as he was, had as little of his own way
as if he had been a prime minister: the force of circumstances was easily too
much for him, as it is for most pleasure-loving florid men; and the
circumstances called Rosamond was particularly forcible by means of that mild
persistence which, as we know, enables a white soft living substance to make
its way in spite of opposing rock.
The
political element of the book centers, as I noted, on the Reform Bill. Dorothea
chooses not to focus on the politics (at least early in the book), in part
because she sees so much to be done locally. Her uncle, Mr. Brooke, has
tenants, yet he fails to maintain and upgrade his houses and fields for their
benefit. Dorothea points out to him that his idea of running for parliament on
a pro-Reform platform is hypocritical if he won’t do the good he can where he
is.
“I used to come from
the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and
all the simpering pictures in the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked
attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don’t mind how hard the
truth is for the neighbours outside our walls. I think we have no right to come
forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils
which lie under our own hands.”
Dorothea
is partly right. To the degree she is right, she is stating the one single true
criticism conservatives make of liberals: all too often they can ignore the
injustice in their own neighborhoods. But Dorothea is also half wrong.
Individuals can and should do good in their personal lives, but true social
reform requires those “wider changes” and can only be enforced against evil,
greedy people (such as Featherstone) with the force of government. I may (and
do) give to private charity, but even if I gave all I have, I would make little
dent in providing meaningful healthcare to the millions who go without due to
our cruel policies. (Which are rooted in racism and social darwinism…) Both
approaches are necessary, but individual effort is both worthwhile and
grossly insufficient.
Mr.
Brooke does, however, find that his own opinion of himself is not shared
by his tenants. In this, Dorothea is quite correct: he needs to tend his own
garden, so to speak.
He walked out of the
yard as quickly as he could, in some amazement at the novelty of his situation.
He had never been insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to
regard himself as a general favourite (we are all apt to do so, when we think
of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want of us.)
Eliot
is correct that all of us are subject to this to some degree. In the age of
Trump, I think I have seen it most clearly in the response of Baby Boomer
Evangelicals to the unpleasant experience of being called out on their racism. And on the way
certain family members have responded when it turns out that they made
themselves so unpleasant that they find themselves alone. It is nice, I
suppose, to spend much of one’s life with the illusion that one is an amiable
person, and never have to actually make the effort to be so.
The
chapter headings all have quotes. Often, these are from Eliot herself, in the
form of poetry. Other times, they are quotations from other authors. I was
particularly struck by this one from Sir Thomas Browne.
It is the humour of
many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against the
wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do,
without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of
their own times, by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which
cannot but argue the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and
Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate and
point at our times.
There
is a doozy in there when it comes to my Fundamentalist Cult experience. The whole premise of it was
that things (and people) were better back in the old days, so if we just
returned to the culture and hierarchies of the (white) past, everything would
be better. But the evils they decried existed in plenty in the past too, and
the so-called “prophets” they love foretold nothing - they were just screaming about how bad racial and gender equality
were. Furthermore, the past was not better anyway. It just gave more power
to people like them.
Sir
Thomas Browne, by the way, wrote that in the middle of the 17th Century. As in,
nearly 400 years ago. Things haven’t changed - the retrograde reactionaries of
any age sound exactly the same.
Speaking
of things that are older than one expects, how about this one?
The trash talked on
such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate...
Wait,
what?? That is indeed a reference to “talking trash.” Which apparently they
were doing back in 1871. I had never seen a reference to trash talk that far
back, so who knew?
Going
back the religious issue, Eliot puts some interesting words in Dorothea’s
mouth. Eliot herself was not religious - and considering the fury her
relationship with her lover brought, it isn’t that surprising she wasn’t into
it. She did, however, respect religion, granting that when done right, it
helped to moderate and regulate society in positive ways. After Casaubon’s
death, Dorothea has the legal right (based on property) to appoint his
successor in the parish. On advice from Lydgate, she appoints Farebrother - who
also happens to reflect her own gentle and aspirational Christianity.
Certainly, Farebrother suits her more than Bulstrode’s favorite, Mr. Tyke, and
his Calvinist sermonizing.
“It is hard to imagine
what sort of notions our farmers and labourers get from their teaching. I have
been looking into a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no
use at Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the
Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which
Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider
blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes
in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in
it.”
This
reflects my own frustration with Evangelicalism, which is obsessed with theories
of atonement, the End Times™, and excluding as many people as possible. My
journey out of that moral cesspit has been to a large degree trying to find a
way that makes Christianity a force for wide blessing for everyone, not
violence toward those outside the tribe.
I
do think that Calvinism is the worst of the worst - and Eliot (dang, isn’t she
prescient?) nails it again.
He [Bulstrode] was
doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but
that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit
does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or
the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the
depth of our sinning is but a measure of the depth of forgiveness, and a
clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention.
This
explains how the people I know who care most deeply about “total depravity” and
“completely unearned grace” are also the exact same people who are the most
cruel to others in their political beliefs. Eliot explains, I think, how one
can believe in total depravity while being horribly self-righteous and
convinced that those other people totally deserve their suffering.
While
Bulstrode (mostly) gets his just deserts, the one thing the novel doesn’t
really satisfactorily resolve is the problem of Dorothea. She still desires to
manage her own life, and her own property. But in the end, she ends up in
another marriage, and must content herself with a husband and children - the
conventional ending. To be sure, Will Ladislaw isn’t abusive - he seems like a
nice enough guy. And in the epilogue, it appears he makes a decent go of it in
politics (with a lot of support from the faithful Dorothea.) But Eliot refuses
to pretend this is idea. She is intellectually superior to Will - that is clear
enough. And she has enough ambition for two of them. It feels like a letdown by
21st Century standards.
I
can’t help but feel that times are better now for women like Dorothea. My own
wife is definitely more ambitious than I am, which is why her career is on a
higher trajectory. I am content to do my work for clients and aim for justice
in small things. I’ll never be rich, but I am fulfilled for the most part with
what I do. She is management, and intends in a few years to complete her Nurse
Practitioner license. Fortunately, she doesn’t find me to be a disappointment.
But there is a place for women like that in today’s society, certainly more
than in the Victorian Era, and she is able to follow her calling in a way
Dorothea never can.
One
final bit of humor, after all that seriousness. Mary Garth is in love with Fred
Vincy, and their courtship is pretty amusing. She has quite the tongue, but she
is clearly good for him. When she asks her father to bless the union, after she
has basically proposed (like my wife did first, btw…), she has this to
say about why she loves Fred:
“Oh dear, because I
have always loved him. I should never like scolding anyone else so well; and
that is a point to be thought of in a husband.”
And
that, I suppose, is as good of a line as any. Mary assumes a level of intimacy
and communication with Fred - which they certainly have - is a good basis for a
marriage. And it is, really. In contrast to the other marriages, this one has
promise, because it is founded on a mutuality, a high degree of love, respect,
and good humor.
I
will say, I greatly enjoyed reading Middlemarch. Eliot is sometimes
forgotten in our time and day, the greatest female novelist of the era, and one
of the all time greats. Middlemarch is not exactly like any of the other
novels of hers I have read - but each has been unique. This one is as good of a
place to start as any, although Silas Marner has the advantage of being
shorter, for those intimidated by long books.
