Middlemarch by George Elliot

Reading Middlemarch took me nearly two months. My last diary post was Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West on June 24. Travel limited my time available for reading: a trip to Venice, Berlin, and Munich, and another to Santa Fe, but also gave me several long flights perfect for reading. But then the Olympics! Still, it’s a long book, though not that long – a little fewer than 700 pages in the edition I read (Wordsworth Editions 1994, with an introduction by Doreen Roberts). Although I found the story engaging, it’s not exactly a page-turner. Rural life and nineteenth-century domestic dramas are a little too tame for much suspense or danger. Elliot’s writing is psychologically insightful, sympathetic to her characters, and, though I would characterize the tone generally as melancholy (the plot features two unsuccessful marriages), in certain sentences and situations often very funny. I thought to read it because there’s a mention in the novel Day where one character recommends to another that re-reading Elliot’s Mill on the Floss is worthwhile. I had never read any Elliot, but I happened to have a copy of Middlemarch on my bookshelf that I picked up at a used bookstore sometime, with a sticker for $3.99 still on the front cover: eventually a worthy purchase.

Elliot wrote the book between 1869 and 1872, publishing it in eight “books”. The books are divided into 86 chapters, with a “Prelude” to begin and a closing “Finale.” The setting is 40 years earlier, beginning in the Fall of 1829 and ending in the Spring of 1832. English politics of the time, which create a background that occasionally encroaches into the fore, concerned itself with a series of reforms that worked gradually to expand democratic representation from titled, Protestant, land-owning, men, to more and more others. The reforms were controversial, slow to come, and bills were as likely to be voted down, or watered-down, as to be adopted. Yet it was a time of change, and change, too, is coming in the characters’ lives: in one scene a new train service is surveyed, Tertius Lydgate, one of the main characters is a doctor eager to experiment with new theories of medicine; Dorothea Brooke, the other main character, embodies a religious re-alignment from finding meaning in a literal interpretation of the Christian story to a personal religion based on human virtues of compassion, selflessness, and charity. I had not been aware in Eliot’s role in the de-mystification of Christianity as the English translator of David Friedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus as well as Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity and Spinoza’s Ethics.

Middlemarch involves multiple characters and interweaving plot lines. But Dorothea and Lydgate’s stories predominante.

We begin with Dorothea. Dorothea is a young woman, a teenager. She and her sister Celia are being raised by their uncle, Mr. Brooke. Dorothea is intelligent, pious, and ambitious to learn more and do something of worldly value with her life. She is courted by a man named Sir James Chettam, but Dorothea puts him off and works to turn James toward Celia. Eventually, Dorothea meets the much older Rev. Edward Casaubon, a religious scholar. Casaubon is working on a grand scholarly project proposing the “Key to All Mythologies”. Dorothea is excited by his erudition and by the idea that as his wife she might learn from him as well as help him complete a significant project. They marry against the doubts and objections of her family.

During a honeymoon trip to Rome, Dorothea becomes aware that her husband is not the great man she believed and his project is likely to remain incomplete and unvalued. At the same time, in Rome, Dorothea is visited by a young cousin of Casaubon’s named Will Ladislaw, who Dorothea had met briefly in England. Ladislaw is the grandson of an aunt of Casaubon’s who was rejected by the family when she married a Polish man of low class. Dorothea begins to feel that a portion of Casaubon’s wealth, then, is derived from the money that his family didn’t give to the rejected woman, and tries to persuade her husband to give Ladislaw what she feels rightly belongs to him. Causaubon refuses and begins to feel jealous of Dorothea’s interest in Ladislaw.

Dorothea and Casaubon’s marriage grows sadder. Casaubon grows ill. Dorothea stays supportive, but is frustrated with her inability to help him, learn from him, or use her wealth for good. Finally, Casaubon dies. He leaves his wealth to Dorothea but includes a codicil in his will that if she marries Ladislaw she must forfeit the inheritance. The codicil creates a suspicion in town that Dorothea and Ladislaw were having an affair. And for Ladislaw’s part, it casts the aspersion that he was the kind of person who would scheme to marry Dorothea only for her money. Impossible, thus, to honorably marry the woman he loves, Ladislaw makes the decision to leave Middlemarch with the vague hope that he might make a fortune of his own and then years later, if Dorothea would wait for him, return to Middlemarch and marry her with his own money. He delays his leaving for several months, because even leaving quickly would make him look guilty. He works for Mr. Boothe, editing a newspaper and helping Mr. Boothe with his campaign for a seat in Parliament. Finally, Ladislaw bids goodbye to Dorothea, confirming obliquely as he goes that he loves her, which serves to awaken in Dorothea recognition of her own romantic feelings for him.

The other primary character is Tertius Lydgate, a doctor who comes as a stranger to Middlemarch. He sets up a practice and with his innovations and skills begins to attract patients formerly of other local doctors, bringing up their enmity. In particular, he seems to save the life of Fred Vincy from a fever, whose sister, Rosamond Vincy, begins to imagine herself becoming Lydgate’s wife. Lydgate also comes under the protection of a local landowner named Nicholas Bulstrode who is funding the creation of a new hospital and is attracted by Lydgate’s new ideas. Bulstrode puts Lydgate in charge of the new hospital.

Fred Vincy, for his part, is in love with Mary Garth. Caleb Garth, Mary’s father, works as a manager of several of the estates in Middlemarch. Mary herself, works at an estate called Stone Court, owned by a man named Peter Featherstone. Fred Vincy is a nephew of Featherstone (by marriage, I think, I was never quite clear), and although there are other family members closer to Featherstone, Fred and his family expect that Fred will inherit the estate when Featherstone dies. Fred is expected to become a clergyman, a profession he has no calling for and he drops out of school. He gambles and goes into debt. To pay off the debt he borrows money from Caleb Garth, and then loses that money, too, and forfeits on the loan. Featherstone dies rather early in the novel but instead of leaving the estate to Fred Vincy, or any of the other known family members, he leaves it all to a bastard son no one knew of. The bastard son barely appears in the novel because he quickly sells Stone Court to Bulstrode who moves in.

Lydgate makes friends with another character in the novel, Farebrother. Farebrother is a vicar, and a good one, but he’s more interested in biology than religion and he and Lydgate bond over their scientific interests and Farebrother’s specimen collections. Farebrother is a bachelor who lives with an unmarried sister and an aunt. He fancies the same Mary Garth that Fred Vincy is in love with, but seeing the two are really set on each other, he graciously steps aside and even helps to facilitate their union, one of several generous acts Farebrother commits during the novel. Caleb Garth also helps Fred by giving him a job as an assistant in the land management business, which Fred proves to have aptitude for.

Lydgate marries Rosamond Vincy. Rosamond is empty-headed and selfish and thinks because Lydgate comes from a noble family that he can provide everything she desires. The couple soon get behind financially and Lydgate goes into great debt. They are unable to borrow money from Lydgate’s family, or from Rosamand’s father. Lydgate finally goes to Bulstrode for help but is rejected. Bulstrode coldly recommends bankruptcy.

Late in the novel, yet one more important character appears. This is John Raffles, who reveals something important about Bulstrode’s past that unites several of the characters and brings the novel to its resolution.

Bulstrode, we learn, made his fortune as a young man by working at a pawnbroker establishment, a business that lent itself easily to laundering stolen goods. Bulstrode made himself invaluable to the owner and became friendly with the family. The daughter of the family, when she was old enough, rejected the family and its ill-gotten wealth and ran away. The business owner died and Bulstrode took over the business and then married the widow. The widow, now Bulstrode’s first wife, also grew ill and became intent to leave all of her fortune to Bulstrode, except in the possibility that the estranged daughter might be located. If so, and if the daughter had a son, the widow wanted to leave her money to the grandson. John Raffles reveals that he knows that Bulstrode went looking for the daughter, found her, and that she did have a baby boy, but Bulstrode lied to his wife that he couldn’t find the daughter, and thus he received the inheritance by cheating the daughter and the grandson. And, Raffles reveals, he knows the name of the grandson: Will Ladislaw.

Thus, Will Ladislaw has been cheated of two fortunes, his mother’s fortune stolen by Bulstrode; and his father’s mother’s fortune that went to Casaubon. Bulstrode attempts to save his conscious by offering money to Ladislaw after he learns that Ladislaw’s mother is dead, but Ladislaw rejects the money for the same reason that his mother rejected it, that it was earned dishonestly.

Raffles attempts to blackmail Bulstrode, causing Bulstrode severe distress. Raffles hounds Bulstrode, takes money from him, but refuses to leave him. And then Raffles turns up a final time suffering from chronic alcohol poisoning. Bulstrode puts Raffles to bed in his home at Stone Court and calls Lydgate to care for him. Lydgate prescribes rest, no alcohol, and small doses of opium if Raffles cannot sleep. Bulstrode tells Lydgate that he has changed his mind and will give him the money he needs to pay his debts, partly because Rosamond is his wife’s niece (Harriet Bulstrode, Nicholas Bulstrode’s second wife, is Mr. Vincy’s sister) and she wants her husband to help her suffering family.

Bulstrode fails to follow Lydgate’s medical instructions exactly and partly abandons Raffles to the care of a servant, and Raffles dies. Bulstrode hopes the death of the incriminating witness will bury his past shame, but Raffles had already told his secret and the story spreads quickly. When the town hears that Lydgate’s sudden ability to pay off his debts comes from money he just received from Bulstrode, Lydgate, too, is tainted.

Before Bulstrode leaves town in disgrace he puts Caleb Garth in charge of managing Stone Court. Caleb gives the job to his assistant Fred Vincy, meaning Fred will live there and if he works hard and saves money eventually he will earn enough to buy shares in the estate until he may own it himself.

The close is satisfying and natural.

Dorothea believes in Lydgate’s innocence and determines to help him. She hears Lydgate’s explanation and then convinces Farebrother, too, that Lydgate did nothing wrong. Next she goes to Rosamond, and persuades her, too, to have trust in her husband. While at the Lydgate’s home, Dorothea comes across Will Ladislaw, visiting in town. At first Dorothea suspects Will of having an affair with Rosamond, but the misconception is soon corrected and the two are finally able to confess their love aloud. Neither of them desiring wealth, Dorothea renounces Casaubon’s fortune and the two determine to live in love and poverty. Her brother-in-law, Sir James Chettam, denounces the marriage and insists that the rest of the family cut her off.

In the Finale, we learn that Fred Vincy and Mary Garth have wed and are the owners of Stone Court. They are happy with their four sons. Lydgate and Rosamond have left Middlemarch. Lydgate was able to establish himself elsewhere and make a good reputation and good money treating rich clients with gout. He dies young and Rosamond lives off a generous life insurance and then marries a wealthy physician who is happy to care for Lydgate’s children. Dorothea and Ladislaw enjoy a loving marriage. Will goes into politics and is elected to Parliament. When they have a daughter, the estranged Brooke family is brought back together so that Dorothea’s daughter might know Celia’s son.

Like all Victorian novels the possible plots are limited. The women are concerned with arranging a good marriage, or suffering through a bad one. The men seek a secure profession and worry about money. Nearly all the interpersonal conflicts could be quickly solved if people would simply speak openly about what they need and how they feel without worrying what other people think of them, and if women had the independence to take care of themselves without men. But the manners of the day bind everyone, at least of the upper classes, in cords of honor and duty and bind the action of the novel as well.

A friend said George Eliot was the English language Tolstoy. (War and Peace was published the year Eliot began writing Middlemarch.) But Tolstoy is grander, and not only because he writes of bigger subjects. I agree with Henry James who wrote that “Middlemarch is a treasure-house of details, but it is an indifferent whole.” Indeed some individual chapters were remarkable short stories in themselves. But it doesn’t add up to greatness, the way James does, but rather a string of episodes. Rather, Middlemarch feels like those multiple season television dramas that when stretched beyond the original conception begin to meander and dilute their power. Although Tolstoy’s novels also spread, I feel securely drawn through them, where at times I felt I lost my way in Middlemarch and Eliot had let go my hand. At the same time, though, the main pleasure of reading any novel is the feeling of experiencing the mind of the author. Middlemarch, though like a television series, is written by a single person, all eight books of it, not a team or a production company, and the communion with the mind of George Eliot, and my admiration for her achievement, was a regular pleasure. It really is good stuff.

Virgina Woolf said that Middlemarch was “one of the few English novels written for grownup people”. Perhaps Woolf means that the characters have the messy human emotions and motivations of real people and the stories conclude with mixed fortunes rather than strict happiness or punishment. But a novel for grown-ups sounds a little like we should read it because it’s good for us, rather than because we’re likely to like it. Think of Treasure Island, for instance, probably not written for grownups, but this grownup certainly enjoyed it. I did like Middlemarch. But although I like a novel that takes itself seriously, and a writer who respects the maturity of the reader, I also enjoy a novel with a sense of wonder, adventure, danger, which Tolstoy, for one, has much of, but Eliot not enough.