Middlemarch in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Jun 28, 2013 Katy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bingo-2016

Well. I didn't finish the book.
It is well written and interesting mostly, but it takes forever to say anything ...
Just doesn't hold my attention long enough to enjoy it.
Maybe some other time. (June 2013)

Well it is now "some other time." I'll start reading this in January 2106 -- looking forward to it.

Finished on my second try for reading. I'll admit to skimming some parts of the story and that it took a long while before I was invested in the characters -- the first 50% of the book seems to tak ...more

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Jan 12, 2023 Teri-K rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, zz-2023-bought, 1800s, zz-2023-my-book-club

I truly wish I understood why so many people love this book, as it didn't work for me on any level; I think Eliot and I don't mesh well. Many will disagree, but I reread Gaskell's North and South at the same time, and I think Gaskell does everything Eliot is doing, but N&S is actually better. It’s more readable, more focused, and evokes the past world better than Eliot did. So, I'm glad I finally read this but I can't count it a huge success. In fact much of the middle was an absolute slog.

For I truly wish I understood why so many people love this book, as it didn't work for me on any level; I think Eliot and I don't mesh well. Many will disagree, but I reread Gaskell's North and South at the same time, and I think Gaskell does everything Eliot is doing, but N&S is actually better. It’s more readable, more focused, and evokes the past world better than Eliot did. So, I'm glad I finally read this but I can't count it a huge success. In fact much of the middle was an absolute slog.

For me GE picked the less interesting people for her MCs. Each of them were obsessed with something, and I found that made them too predictable and less interesting. I always knew exactly how they would behave, unlike some other folks I wanted to know better. That doesn't even seem realistic to me, as most people have some contradictions or gray areas that can make them surprise us. The MCs did experience revelations and changes, but they came mostly in Book 8, which was 733 pages into my edition! Way too long to wait, I feel. I would have preferred focusing more on people like the Garths, Farebrother, the Bulstrodes, who do show up more later, and Sir James. They all were infinitely more interesting to me.

I don't mind long books, some of my favorites are as long or longer than this one, but all that space needs to be used wisely. Eliot gets into too many unnecessary details that drag out her story. I expect it worked better when she wrote it than it does now, as those digression would have made more sense in her day. However, instead of spending pages explaining things like social customs an author can let us see them in action and infer them for ourselves. Eliot doesn't do that. Also, there was very little description of setting, which I expect in a long novel with a rural setting, and I missed it a lot.

Her writing style was fine, certainly easy enough to read, though not especially lovely. She does sometimes makes very insightful comments about people's motivations or feelings that made me think she was a sharp observer of human nature. But emotions were told more than demonstrated by actions, and the insights were few and far between. There was some excellent writing; if more of the book had been like Chapter 83 for instance, I would have fallen in love - there just wasn't enough to sustain the length. I am glad I finished it; the final passage was well worth reading, and spells out my own philosophy of life beautifully. Overall, though, it wasn't a book I could love. I found myself wishing I'd read it when I was younger - I wonder how much my opinion might have differed when I was more idealistic and less jaded than I am now.

More detailed notes below, no spoilers:

Things I learned before I started:
-Make sure you understand the Prelude. Take time to look things up and think about them, as it sets themes for the rest of the book. And don't ignore the epigraphs before each chapter.
-Don't assume Dorothea Brooks is the heroine and the book will always follow her. It has eight sections and follows many characters.
-Keep track of the characters - with a list or diagram, perhaps.
-Read it slowly and absorb it as you go.

Things I learned while reading:
-The Prelude is dense, the rest of the book isn't. It reads just like a novel, so don't be intimidated.
-Eliot filled the book with cultural references, and if you tried to look them all up you'd never finish. So get an edition like Penguin Classics which has references briefly end-noted. (Also, in this edition the numbering doesn't start over with each chapter, so I don't have to constantly look back and see which chapter I'm in to use them. Brilliant.)

Thoughts on the parts:
Mild spoilers- (view spoiler)[Part I:
-In Persuasion Anne turns down an excellent match due to the influence of family and an older woman who mentors her. In Middlemarch I suspect Dorothea will get into a bad match in part due to not having family or a female to help her. Thus we might deduce both of these writers find marriage decisions problematic for women, especially when they're young.
-Dorothea is like Catherine Moreland, overly influenced by Romantic ideals, in this case of idealized Christianity. D wants something to pour her passion into, but it seems unlikely she'll find a worthy object in Middlemarch.
-By the end of Book 1 I was getting a little bored with Dorothea, and happy to have some new characters introduced.

Part II & III:
- The book is moving a lot faster because we're now divided among several different MCs, all with their own story lines. I'm reading more than one chapter a day, because of the increased interest in these people and their stories.

Part IV:
- I can't help but notice the parallels between Louisa Musgrove in Persuasion and Rosemary Vincy, who just said, "I never give up anything that I choose to do." How long will it take Lydgate to learn Captain Wentworth's lesson about that?
- Oh, dear. My reading has really slowed down and I'm having to force myself to keep going. The problem, I just realized, is that all of these people are very self-centered and small minded. No one, except Sir James who hardly shows up, seems to care about anyone but themselves. No one ever stops to ask if their decisions are good or helpful for another person. They're all totally self-absorbed, and I don't find folks like that interesting. It makes them very predictable and also doesn't give me somebody to "root for" in the story. Hopefully someone will gain a little wisdom and become a more interesting character to follow.

Part V & VI:
- Things are happening with the MCs, but I mostly find I don't care. I still wish I knew Sir James or Mary and her family better and everyone else less. It now feels melodramatic, and the Lydgates spend a lot of time arguing or crying. sigh I had such high hopes for this book as I love character driven slowly-paced stories, but this doesn't work for me at all. I thought this book had 75 chapters, so I was discouraged to realize it's actually 86. I have further to go than I thought.

Part VII & VIII:
At Last! Pleasurable reading, where I didn't have to force myself to go on. Too little too late to rescue the book for me, however. The ending might be considered controversial, especially for the time it was written, I'd think.
(hide spoiler)] ...more

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Oct 22, 2020 Nada rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: group-reads

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May 13, 2018 Tolleen Parkin rated it really liked it

Shelves: greatest-all-time-book-list-read

I had never heard of this book until I found it on a list of All Time Great Novels. I enjoyed it. The original Peyton Place or Dallas or The Young and the Restless.

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