Marner to Middlemarch (Stray Thoughts)

The difference a decade makes: SILAS MARNER (1861) is an enjoyable and moving read but MIDDLEMARCH (1871) is revolutionary… seeds of the latter in the former, a sightreading, her first run, of themes and ideas – the village being its own character with its own mores and stories populated with realistic, well-drawn human beings facing interconnected tragedies of unfulfilled purpose amid the chokehold of institutionalized piety and social hierarchy – that she would develop and bring to a pinnacle of complexity and humanity in MIDDLEMARCH… in Silas, early shades of Causabon; in Eppie and Nancy and Dolly, of Dorothea; in Godfrey, of Lydgate; in The Squire, of Mr Vincy… between these works, the evidence of time’s deliverance of craft and artistic authority through persistent toil and exploration.