Group Read: Middlemarch

Start date: November 1! Use any edition you like, of course, but many of us have the Norton Critical Edition, recommended by Becky.

Found you, and thanks very much, Lucy, for setting up this thread. Now to find my old copy of Middlemarch.

There may be better editions of MM out there of which I'm not aware; I'm using the Norton because it contains good notes on some of the historical figures and attitudes that would have been familiar to Eliot's readers. Also, there's a good "Background" section with selections from Eliot's letters, journals, and essays, plus there's a section of contemporary reviews and critical essays. Also, this is the book I used in Prof. Carroll's class--with notes--heh. Oh Jeeze, what a scary dude that guy was, although boy, did he know his stuff.



This is Joe Carroll doing his impression of extreme hilarity. I guess he doesn't look all that scary here, but honestly, I never, ever saw the guy smile--not once in four classes. Oh, and look at that--if you look closely you can see his Norton editions lined up behind him on the shelf.

My major quarrel with these Norton editions, which I've mentioned before, is that they FALL APART. After one reading (an in-class reading, so it was fairly heavily used), my book is held together with packing tape.

It's also useful, although of course not absolutely necessary, to be reading from the same edition so that we can reference page numbers.

P.S. Someone had asked if we read the book first and then comment. In our past group reads, Lucy and I have read and commented as we go. As for how fast we'll read, I guess we'll just play that by ear--figure that out as a group or something. MM is divided into eight books, which are like long chapters. These eight books cover 578 pages in my edition. The font is small, plus I don't think anyone would characterize MM as an "easy" read, so I'm all for going slower rather than faster--but that's just me with my one vote.

Any comments? Please feel free.

I did notice the Norton book feels sort of 'floppy' -- I am quite hard on books, so I imagine it will be a wreck by the time I am through with it!

I agree, no hurry. We post as we read in a loose way, yes, no one should feel obliged to keep up, but it would be better to try and post more or less in a pod and not get too far ahead. B and I have also found that the book and the group dynamic dictate the pace, so probably we'll start with some modest goal and then change it up or down as we go ...... I think that has happened every time -- does that sound all right?

I'm here and I have my Norton edition. Slow is good. Whatever works for the most people. Personally, I love your daily posts about your reading, Becky. I'm looking forward to it. :)

The Norton edition. No doubt a good choice. BUT holy cow... that print is tiny. I'm gonna need a magnifying glass! Old eyes. And I used to be able to see the most microscopic print - even on med bottles!

OK. Now that I got that out of my system... I'll find a way to read this. I don't really care if it falls apart. If the book is good, tape is good.

I agree slow is good to start. I might get a jump on a few of the ancillary offerings like background, reviews, letters, essays, etc. Do you think this would be a good thing or not, Becky?

The copy I have is an Oxford World's Classics edition and it has a 38 page introduction by Felicia Bonaparte, notes by David Carroll and the book itself is 785 pages long. The type size is great but obviously it won't match up with page numbers with the Norton edition you guys have. I'll have to see if my library might have the Norton edition.

Claudia--I would say if the background stuff interests you--and I think some of it's very good--then it sure seems reasonable to me to go ahead and read that stuff.

Pat--I think if you've found an edition you like (with the added plus of "great" type size, because Claudia is right, the Norton edition is for young eyes--I'm in the same boat as you are, Claudia. I used to be able to read the tiniest print, even in the hymnal, but that was many moons ago) then I would say stick to that one. Don't you think so too, Lucy?

And yes, Lucy, I agree--we always seem to start out with some sort of goal and adjust it as we go, which has worked fine.

I was a bit dismayed by the type -- but, cheat cheat, I have this magnifying thing I haven't used yet, but maybe this will be the time I do break down and try it. It has a light in it too. I inherited it either from my mother or mother-in-law, can't remember which. If it's any good, I'll let you all know. Actually. I have to find it first which could be challenging.

I've got a Penguin Classic; that whole edition of books has a bit of a problem with the binding at the bottom edges; I've learned just to put clear packing tape on the bottom before I even start reading it/them.

I've used Nortons in the past, but sometimes I seem to find almost too much information--of course, that may be merely an indication that I'm sophomoric, rather than educated, well-informed, and fairly well-read, as I so fondly think of myself.

Since this will be a re-read for me, I'll be comfortable with whatever system you all decide to use. Page refs won't be a problem as I'm used to skimming to find the appropriate section/page/para being discussed.

Claudia, I don't know if you have an ereader, but one idea might be to get a cheap or free edition for that, so that the main text can be adjusted to suit your mature, experienced eyes. It's been a real blessing for me. Just a thought.

Looking forward to this read with a new (to me) group!

I will be checking out a Norton edition from the San Diego Library, and might look into checking out a larger type one at the same time, if I have any trouble with the print size.

Gail,
My husband suggested the Kindle, too. I'll see what they have.
Adjusting font size is a blessing!

Maybe I'll use my reading glasses! *grumble, grumble*

Well I don't have a Kindle where I could get it for free so I think I'll do what Roni's doing and get a couple of different copies (including the Norton, which they have) out of the library.

I have the Modern Library edition which will be good enough for me. I like the way it feels, and I've read it before, so it will be like visiting an old friend. Mine is 799 pages long with a short introduction by A.S. Byatt.

I'll be depending on the Norton readers with the good eyes to ferret out and pass on the necessary info from notes. I'm also adept at skimming to find the quotes and other references. Sounds like a fun time. With the length and density of this book, we may be spending the holidays together online!

Slow works for me! I am happy to read at anyone's pace so count me in.

I'm going to try and join in - I have this one in Penguin Classics. Interestingly, I have several Eliots in Everyman and similar hardbacks, the small, compact ones but printed on very thin but strong paper. I wonder where my copy of Daniel Deronda has got to though (maybe I got it from the library but I'm sure I either had my own or found a copy later, I read it with a 19th century lit discussion group before a new list owner decided we should try to read everything in a month.

Today's shopping trips to the Library's Annual Big Bonanza sell, the local used book store and even B&N didn't produce a copy of Middlemarch. I was forced to resort to an online used book purchase (so I at least made sure I got the Norton critical edition). Now, 17 books and $75 later I can sit back and wait for Middlemarch to arrive. (I can't lean back too far or I'll knock over a stack of books.)

Very funny, Laura! I will need to order my library copies midweek. Since I can only renew once, I will only be able to have them for 6 weeks, so don't want to get them early. And now that the libraries are closed on Sundays and Mondays due to budget cuts...:-(

I'm tentatively, maybe, probably, possibly going to try to join you. I'm not willing to buy a second copy although what I have is a 30+ year-old Signet pb from the first time I read it that long ago. (Well, I also have a complete works of GE in 3 oversized volumes from sometime around the turn of the 20th century - very foxed and brittle pages, so I won't try to read that.) It's time I became reacquainted with Miss Brooke (who is not at all the same person as Our Miss Brooks). (Forgive me. If I were to try to write a stream-of-consciousness narrative, this is what it would be like.) *slinking away*

I'm joining, too. I am going to use the edition that was on my shelf (hooray! If I finish, it counts as a Book Off The Shelf!), which is a Signet Classic from 2003, with an introduction by Michel Faber. I'm in agreement with the slow reading--my copy is (gulp) 890 pages long.

I'm going to use a combination of a copy off my shelf (not Norton) and a download on my iPad. I'm probably mostly going to be lurking, but just wanted you to know I'm here. :-)

Only just found the thread but I will be joining you!

I won't be able to get hold of the Norton Critical edition so I will be using my Penguin Classics edition which is 851 pages. As we're reading from different editions could we refer to chapter numbers as well as page numbers please?

I can feel the excitement building! Be happy with whatever edition you have -- we will all post links and I know I will blather on so that you'll get whatever I get, can't speak for the other Nortonites but I suspect that will be so for most of us.

Ooo, Middlemarch is one of my favourite books! I bought a fine press edition a while back & haven't had the chance to read it yet. This is the perfect opportunity! I'm in with my Folio Society edition.'

I was thinking this morning about the pace of our reading, looking over the book to check out the natural breaks, etc. The book was published as a serial, so it's divided into 8 books, and each book is divided into chapters. I'm proposing that we read one book a week. What say you all? Does that sound too slow? What do you think, Lucy? Any input is appreciated.

#24: That pace sounds good to me, Becky, especially as Thanksgiving in the States occurs in November and I am sure several of us will either be traveling or entertaining family.

Sounds good to me, Becky. I have some other books I need to read in November as well (for a class and a book club) so it's definitely not too slow for me.

Sounds reasonable, manageable, sane and all of those good things!

I just found an old reading list from 1981 -- turns out I read Middlemarch in August of that year. My comment? "Marvelous heroine!"

Oh jeeze, every time I click on the link to this thread, there's Joe Carroll's face (#2), and it scares me to death. It's very appropriate for Halloween, but I might have to remove it once Nov. 1 rolls around. I just don't think my nerves can stand coming here and seeing that face every day.

Anywho, I just wanted to remind everyone that November 1 is coming up fast (next Monday) and that's the day we have set to start posting about Middlemarch. Those of us who chimed in about the pace of the reading seem to have settled on reading one book a week (the novel is divided into 8 books). Book One has 12 chapters, so I'll probably be reading something like two chapters a day. Of course anyone reading along with us is encouraged to read this thing in whatever way works best for them. When Lucy and I do a group read together, we normally post as we read. I find that early mornings work best for me for writing posts here at LT, so I'll probably be posting my thoughts for a particular day's reading early. I don't promise to post every day, but in a perfect world, that's what I would do. As with reading, others are encouraged to post whenever they feel moved to do so. Those are the basic ground "rules" (actually guidelines) for anyone who hasn't done a group read with us before.

As for "spoilers," I'll always add what Book and Chapter I'm posting about at the top, so that if someone hasn't read that far, they know not to read the post--or they know the post may contain spoilers if they do.

And please anyone, feel free to add to this whatever you like.

>27 sibylline:. Wow, 1981 Sib? That was a whole lifetime ago. I think I read Middlemarch in 1996, which is still a good many years ago. Time for another crack at it.

I know! I couldn't believe it. I'm amazed, actually, by how much I remember, or think I remember..... but I know I haven't read it again.

Great post about your methodology. Most weekdays I will certainly post in the morning from my 'office' at the coffee shop, so that is where you will find me. I want to also say that my experience, reading posts, is that the most personal reactions are sometimes the most interesting to read, so please don't hang back, saying to yourself, oh, this is too silly. So please speak up, plunge in! That is what makes the discussion lively.

I feel like an eager horse in the starting gate!

>18 LizzieD:: Our Miss Brooks?!? Loved that as a child. Your post reminded me quite poignantly of conversations I used to have with my mother, as each of us mentally leapt (perhaps jerked or careened) from subject to subject, immediately understanding one another, as the rest of the family looked on, often saying, "Wait, what?" long before it became a fashionable phrase.

I like the idea of a book a week: not too taxing and leaving time for other reading. I'm looking forward to this...and will try not to be too tangential.

Oh, good points Lucy. Yes, you really can't go too far afield on your posts. That's what makes it fun.

Hi Gail. Welcome to the Middlemarch group read. Don't worry about being too tangential. We (me, for sure) tend to be pretty stream-of-consciousness in our posts, so your skills of jerking and careening from subject to subject will stand you in good stead with this group! Ha.

I read MM early in the read with another group. So I will follow along. But sounds fun.

Welcome! And nothing is too tangential unless, perhaps, it has nothing at all to do with George Eliot or Middlemarch.

Thanks for making me feel welcome here. I read MM not too long ago, perhaps two years, and enjoyed it but felt I needed others to bounce ideas with. There was some humor there that I didn't expect. This seems like a perfect opportunity to re-read and the short time interval since the last read will help to keep it manageable, I think.

whew, I finally found the thread. I admit that I'm reading the kindle freebie but if I like it I'll spring for a hard copy.

Count me in too!! I started it about 2 months ago, after a few weeks I sent it back to the library. Doing it as a group read will keep me going!!

yolana, I've got the Kindle freebie for when I'm on the go as well as the hard copy.

I'm going to kick things off with this lovely personal anecdote that Liz1564 posted to LizzieD and gave me permission to put in over here.

It's not so much a George Eliot story as a George Eliot's grave story. In 1978, I spent the ten weeks tooling around England by myself. On a beautiful late afternoon I decided to go to Highgate Cemetery to visit George and Karl Marx etc. It was about 5:30 and the the cemetery would close around 6. Anyhow, I was sitting on the ledge which surrounds George's grave happily puffing on a cigarette (unlike Marx, her grave, as you probably know, is off the beaten track.) I heard what sounded like a garden tractor go by. When I was finished with my cigarette, I meandered down to the main gates, not really paying attention to the fact that I seemed to be the only person around. When I got there the gates were locked!! Not a soul in sight; Office locked; no one coming down the road beyond the gates. I figured I had two choices: spend the night in the cemetery and hope that maybe a security person might come along or break a window, get into the office and call the police!

Then I heard voices down one of the side paths so I ran (literally, I was beginning to panic). But they were on the other side of the wall! And speaking what I later found out was Polish! I started to yell and a few minutes later this curly blond head popped up above the wall. The guy who heard me was a Polish construction worker just packing up for the evening. With what must have been really funny gestures, I tried to let him know I was locked in. The head disappeared (more panic) and then a ladder was hoisted over the wall and a really cute guy scrambled down. He helped me up and over and down into the garden of the empty house he were rehabbing. Had I been five minutes later,he and his two mates would have been gone!

(All this explained to me over drinks at a pub in very broken English. I happily stood the pints.)

So I didn't have to sleep with George or end up in jail for breaking a window to get into the Gothic office to call the cops.

Turns out the cemetery closed a half hour early that day so the staff could attend some annual party. The notice was clearly posted and I just missed it. And the guy in the little garden tractor had gone around the cemetery paths checking for visitors, but since I was talking to George he had missed me. (I found out when I returned a few days later IN THE MORNING for another visit. And I would have been good and stuck..there was no night security guard back then.)

Highgate is spooky at the best of times, but at twilight....
posted by Liz1564 at 12:12 am (EST) on Oct 28, 2010

A perfect tale for Hallowe'en night, eh?

I love "cemetery hunting," but I would not like to be stuck in this place at night! Thanks for the post, Lucy.

Preface

In the short preface, Eliot introduces us to the nature of her protagonist without mentioning her name. Among other things, we are instructed not to view Dorothea as some slight Jane Austen type; although she's writing specifically of Theresa of Avila, Eliot refers to her own book's character when she writes: "Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her?"

#42: I know nothing of Theresa of Avila, so some research on my part is demanded . . .

Interesting to refer to Austen characters as 'slight'. Don't know what I think of that..... perhaps George is trying to say that she is raising the stakes with Dorothea, taking it up a notch. I see Austen though as being daring for her own time and circumstance.... But I'm simply blathering.

Stasia -- if you find anything noteworthy/useful, please share for us lazies!

#44: Lucy, I checked the wikipedia article on Theresa of Avila. I thought it was interesting that she was a mystic, so I can readily see why Eliot would say she had a passionate ideal nature.

Anyone interested in reading further about Theresa can check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila

>44 sibylline:. re: Jane Austen's characters being "slight." --I guess I'm trying to think from George Eliot's pov. I think of her as wanting to make a clear distinction between her Middlemarch and Austen's novels. Yes, I think Eliot thought of Austen's characters as slight, certainly compared to her own. Eliot, after all, was clearly "the smartest woman in the room"--always. There's an article that's attributed to Eliot which gives us an idea of what she thought about Austen: "Miss Austen's accurate scenes from dull life . . . . show us too much of the littlenesses and trivialities of life, and limit themselves so scrupulously to the sayings and doings of dull, ignorant, and disagreeable people, that their very truthfulness makes us yawn." Ouch! And I think maybe we have to remember also that Austen's reputation in the late 1880s was not what it is today. Fair?

Or I guess I should say late 1860s.

Edited to amend the date.

Oh yes yes, exactly right -- Eliot was making the next step as it were, so Austen's were the shoulders she stood upon, in a sense, but also saw beyond -- I meant my remark to sound ironic - sort of from Eliot's pov -- Austen as too timid to start describing things as they really are -- which each generation tries to push a little further, even now.

As I was sitting here reading Chapt. 1, I remembered a book that was not only amusing but also informative. Probably lots of people know this one, but if its publication passed you by and you want to know more about what the HECK is going on in these novels, then this is an excellent, readable resource: What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool. It's all about the facts of daily life in 19th-century England.

#48: I have that one here somewhere. I wonder if I can find it before November is over.

Yesterday, Sherwood Smith (writes fantasy and science fiction) was writing about one of my favorite authors and her new book (I met her and got it signed Wednesday) and digressed off into this fascinating bit on Middlemarch:
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Today's BVC riff is about Heroes, Miles Vorkosigan, and a little about CryoBurn, the latest in the Vorkosiverse. (I talk about CryoBurn more fully over at goodreads.)

It's mostly about the heroes I like. I was thinking about a secondary post--heroes not identified as heroic, or problematical heroes. I don't mean anti-heroes. They get their horns tooted enough. I'm thinking more about heroes that are not recognized as heroic, like Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, or those born with the heroic wish to better the world, but who are thwarted by circumstance--which in itself can be problematical. Which (at least so I've found) are mostly women.

George Eliot wrote an entire novel about such heroes; the opening paragraph of Middlemarch contains these words: "Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social consequences of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order."

Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel--wow. The novel goes on to develop that theme, to end with the best last lines I have ever read in my life. They are still my favorite last lines of a book, forty years after I first read them.
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Smith's comments have certainly whetted my motivation to read this book! I will have to wait until tomorrow, though, because I have to prep and teach my class today. :-(

Roni, I hope you'll join us. Thanks for the post. MM is just quite simply one of my favorite books of all time. What do you teach?

And not to worry--we're reading this slowly, about one book a week (8 books).

Oh, I'm in! Already picked up my library branch's copy (B&N) to start, with the Norton version on order and probably in by Wednesday. I just don't have reading time today, only. I just thought how fortuitous to see this comment by Smith as we were just starting, and how highly he values Middlemarch.

I teach school psychology graduate students about how we learn and process information and how to assess it. Monday class, 4-7, but I've gotten into a bad habit of waiting until the day of to prep for it.

Ouch--prep for a 3-hour class. I used to teach writing, and I once had a once-a-week, 3-hour class. That was painful to prep for if I was pressed for time.

Thank you, Roni! That was just great!

Oh my I had forgotten how painfully funny it can be -- Mr. Brooke's wandering, darting thoughts on his reading.... And then a dip into just plain painful -- such as when D's uncle refuses her help in organizing his papers, wouldn't want a woman messing up his things. Ow. The mastery is so total, the two divvying up the jewelry, such a subtle but thorough way to alert us to the complexities of D's character. The social claustrophobia is well illustrated and with much darker undertones....

I agree, Sib, I love the humor in this thing, and Eliot is just a plain genius at using it. She masterfully has the narrator sidle over and put her arm around the reader, and "wink-wink" have a little fun at Dorothea's expense, without making us feel like she's cutting her down.

This is from Chapter 2--Dorothea's response to her sister Cecilia saying that Mr. Casaubon is "very ugly":

"Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets."

Oh poor, poor, lovely, wrong-headed Dodo!
>46 labwriter:, 47 I'll go ahead and state the obvious. GE bought into that whole Victorian "Life is real; life is earnest" business in a way that would have amused Ms. Austen and that rather appalls us. That is to say, when I was 18 I longed to be heroic and selfless, but I'd be vastly content with decent at this point. That's at least the easy answer for her disdaining JA's characters as lightweight.
Thanks for Smith's comments, Roni!

#55 for all that Eliot disapproves of in Austen Mr. Brooke strikes me as the perfect mate for Mrs. Bennet.

#56 Thanks for posting that portrait. I had no idea how far gone Dorothea really was.

"how far gone"--hilarious

A#58 I had that thought exactly!!!!! Can you imagine the verbal bedlam??

Urp -- that portrait indeed takes one aback. Thanks!

oh to be a fly on that wall.

For anyone like me, who had not a clue who Bossuet was (chapter 3): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques-B%C3%A9nigne_Bossuet

Thanks Stasia!

No problem, Becky. As I am not contributing much to the conversation, I thought it was about time I did something :)

#48 I've seen Pool's book recommended before so thanks for the reminder. I've ordered it from the library.

#50 Roni, thanks for sharing that. I've read this before but so many years ago that I don't remember much. I am feeling more and more excited about rereading it! Hope your class went ok.

#55 Me too :-)

#56 Crikey! This later comment by Celia about Mr. Casaubon made me laugh out loud whilst I was reading:

"And he always blinks before he speaks. I don't know whether Locke blinked, but I'm sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him, if he did." Ch 5.

#57 I think that's one of the reasons I like Dorothea so much for all her naivety, she reminds me of all myself at 18 when I so longed to do something meaningful with my life and 'make a difference'. And at 18 I thought the hardest part of making a difference was to figure out how and where to do that rather than all the thankless hard work involved in actually doing it! And as you say, I'd be content with decent now :-)

#58 Exactly! Mr Brooke does seem to be a perfect fit for the Bennet family!

I found a young Locke - perhaps this is more what Dorothea is imagining?!



And this discussion and group read is great guys - thank you.

Just a word about my participation yesterday & today on this thread. In other threads I've mentioned DH and his pulled muscle--it's his back. It started Sunday and was even more terrible yesterday, although of course he wouldn't go see a doctor. This morning it was so bad he couldn't dress himself, and then later I found him collapsed on the floor, literally unable to get up. This is a guy who has an almost inhuman pain tolerance, so suffice it to say that I'm concerned--as well as fairly annoyed that he didn't do something about it yesterday. Men! Anywho, we're seeing a doctor this afternoon, so hopefully this whole deal will get better and I can get back to the really important things--READING! haha.

Oh, and did I mention that my youngest dog has hemorrhagic diarrhea? Between the two of them, I'm going a little bit nuts today. Although with my little dog I'm used to this--it's a "thing" he does. HD can be quite serious, but we have a tried and true routine--Pepto bismol, white rice, cottage cheese, and gradually add chicken as he improves. Nothing else until he's normal again. I learned this one after a $200 visit to the vet one year--and a week-long bout of this stuff that caused the poor little guy to almost give up the ghost. Sheesh!

#66 Oh no! So sorry to hear that :-(

Becky, I hope your husband and your dog are on the mend soon. I'm not sure which situation sounds worse! Although I know what you mean about husbands that wait till the last possible minute to consult a doctor.

Just wanted to let you know that I have started Middlemarch (have only managed the Prelude and Chapter 1 so far) and am finding this thread very helpful in getting more out of the book. I'm about to order the book from the library that you recommended up above about what life was like during Eliot's time so thanks for that recommendation.

Good luck with the homefront!

Becky -- we are all rooting for both your DH and your DD -- I have had wide experience with both of the issues you are dealing with. I did find it did no harm with that particular dog to add chicken broth to the rice -- to make it that way, so it was more nourishing but that could be a terrible idea if your dog is really delicate. My current dog falls apart if I make even the tiniest change in his dog food. Some dog foods he can't tolerate at all..... I have no advice at all about what to feed the DH..... key lime pie?

Oh, Becky, to have both guys ailing at once is more than trying. I'm with Lucy on the chicken broth if the pup can handle it. No ideas for DH either. With mine the thing to do is to leave him absolutely alone when possible and be very, very subtle about helping when needed.

This thread is definitely helping me get more out of my reading, thanks!
Becky, hope things get better at home for you soon...

I'm enjoying the first few chapters of Middlemarch. It looks like Dorothea is making a hard bed to lay in. At least she is going into marriage aware of the "higher duties."

I've just finished Chapter 6 and am debating over my favorite line thus far. In close contention is ***Possible Spoilers ahead*** Sir James' reaction to the news - "He is no better than a mummy" and Mrs. Cadwallader's declaration - "But now I wish her joy of her hair shirt." I'd forgotten what fun this book was!

>50 ronincats:: Thanks for the quote, Roni. I'm using all my willpower not to turn to the end of the book to read those memorable last lines.

Thanks to Stasia, Becky, Heather and others who have supplied links and pictures for us lazier readers. My edition doesn't have a single footnote so I feel as if I'm reading with a handicap.

#72: My edition does not have any footnotes either, Donna, so we are in the same boat.

I generally hate footnotes, so I'm glad I don't have them. Otherwise, I would be forced to read them, and I'd rather just read. I am in love with Mr. Brooke, and wonder how he stayed a bachelor so long. And I just keep shaking my head at Dorothea--you can just see it coming. I'm also glad you all decided to do a group read of this. I don't know when I ever would have picked it up on my own.

>72 Donna828:. Hi Donna. Re: the footnotes in the Norton edition. To be honest, they're not all that helpful (and I know, I pushed for this edition--mea culpa). For example, early on, pg. 9 in my edition, the text reads, "I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith." The note simply indicates who Smith was and a word or two about what they might have been reading (something on laissez faire economics)--but the note doesn't really have much help for the modern reader, putting what they were reading into context and what it would have meant to them or why it mattered. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think you're really missing too much.

That's not to say they're never helpful. Another example: the note translates "cochon de lait" as suckling pig, but that's something you could easily enough find on the internet.

So glad you've joined the group read!

Jim has now posted the link to this thread on the group's profile page, so if you lose it for whatever reason, you can check there.

>65 souloftherose:. Great pic of the young Locke, Heather. Thanks!

I appreciate the pictures too....I suppose that Casaubon at 45 was somewhere between the two. I also remember thinking when I first read *MM* that he was too old to be imagined, and now 45 sounds pretty young....not for Dorothea, of course.
I'm about to buy More Literary Houses from amp. I love the original book with house plans and stylish drawings and book talk. I'm pretty sure that *MLH* features Mr. C's house.....I'll let you know.
Meanwhile, I suspect that I'm behind most of you in the book, just finishing chapter 5, but so far this pace suits me very well since I have so many other things demanding my scarce reading time at the moment. I suspect I'll be ready to speed up later if that's the group's desire.

Catching up with Middlemarch. As always, there may or may not be spoilers here, so I'll try to remember to mark the chapter I'm commenting about.

Book One / Chapts 2 and 3

Sir James Chettam and the Rev. Mr. Edward Casaubon dine at the Grange with Mr. Brooke and his two daughters, Dorothea and Cecilia. Sir James has his sights set on the elder daughter, Dorothea; she wants none of him, pushing Cecilia in his direction. Sir James: "He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had looked up at Mr. Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm of towards fifty . . . ." (13).

Dorothea is captivated by Mr. Casaubon and his "great work"--this is her achilles heel, since Dorothea is looking for "some lofty conception of the world" (2); she longs to assist in some great work "though only as a lamp-holder" (9). Casaubon's Work is described this way by Eliot: "he told her how he had undertaken to show . . . that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally revealed" (14). Oh no! Run, Dorothea, run!

Instead, after only two days of being around him, Dorothea is already thinking of Mr. Casaubon: "'He thinks with me,' said Dorothea to herself, 'or rather, he thinks a whole world of which my thought is but a poor twopenny mirror. And his feelings too, his whole experience--what a lake compared with my little pool!'" (15). Yikes. By page 17 she's feeling "reverential gratitude" that he might make her his wife.

In these beginning chapters, we hear several times from the narrator about Dorothea's ardent nature--"a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent". She was looking for "a guide who would take her along the grandest path". If she hooked herself to Causabon's wagon, then, she thought, "it would be my duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works" (17). "There would be nothing trivial about our lives . . . . It would be like marrying Pascal" (18). At which point I didn't know whether to laugh or cry for the poor girl.

Peggy--More Literary Houses--includes Mr. Casaubon's house? Oh, please let us know what you find!

I don't think if you're on Chapt. 5 that you're behind. We're doing a book a week and Book One has 12 chapters; so that would put you on a good pace to pretty easily finish out Book One by Sunday night, no? It's just a goal, after all, certainly not set in stone.

Oh, Look! Several of you have already realized that *MM* fits the TIOLI challenge of an author whose last name begins with the last letter of the first name. I just entered there too. If everybody did it, we'd be heavy with points!
(And Becky, I wasn't worried about being behind as we stated our goals, but I do have the idea that people are taking off with this one. And now I've read a little more, so I'm actually in chapter 8, which is very O.K. Now I'll probably not read any more of it until tomorrow.)

OK Peggy, people can "take off"--that's fine. I'll be doing one book a week, which is what I said at the beginning I would be doing. No way I can do more at this point. But whatever people want to do is fine--no problem.

Oh well isn't that ducky? That means both of these bricks can be in the TIOLI challenge. Hallelujia. It means too I can keep up my 'two tiolis per month' unblemished record.

I have more to say but I mun be off to do errands with snow in the forecast and no snow tires yet (next week!). I have only just finished Ch 5 myself, Peggy, so you are doing at least as well as me!

Here Becky is the tidbit from the end of Ch 5 on the subject of 'Dodo's' character (anyone in your household ever use the word 'Stop being such a dodo." to mean 'Stop being such a buffle-headed dough-brained ninny?' Not a coincidence, I expect.

Anyhow, here it is "It was this* which made Dorothea so childlike, and, according to some judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness; as, for example, in the present case of throwing herself, metaphorically speaking, at Mr. Casaubon's feet and kissing his unfashionable shoe-ties as if he were a Protestant Pope." (*her 'ardent' nature) Ah me.

The odd thing is that I almost feel more sorry for Mr. C. at this point than for Dodo - and oddly I don't remember him being quite this laughable and repellant last time around. Memory lapse? Change in me? Who knows.

I feel sorry for him in that he made the proposal and later realizes that all the feelings he thought he would have are just not there, but once the proposal was made it couldn't be retracted without a loss of reputation. As for Dodo, I'm somewhat exasperated by her. She has been warned by friends and family. She let's her ambition blind her.

At this point, I feel sorry for Sir James. He really seems to care for Dorothea. However, a lot of my sympathy for him will depend upon what he does from this point on.

>83 sibylline:. It's her sibling, younger sister Cecilia, who has nicknamed Dorothea "Dodo." Every time she calls her that, I think of the dodo bird. I'm thinking that even in Eliot's time, that's a nickname that wouldn't have been perceived as complimentary. I think it fits her, especially coming from a younger sister.

I'm still in Chapt. 3, so I think you're all pretty much ahead of me.

Do let us know about More Literary Houses Peggy!

Those planning to list Middlemarch for this month's TIOLI challenge do know you will need to finish the book this month rather than next for it to count? I haven't listed my copy, I'm going to try to aim for my 100 pages a week.

Re Dorothea and Casuabon, I feel more sorry for her at the moment, she seems to have got rather confused about marriage and wants a father-figure more than anything else (Freud would have a field day), maybe because Mr Brooke is a not a father-figure?

#85 Also sorry for Sir James but I think he would actually have been quite unhappy married to Dorothea (or rather she would have made him quite unhappy about being married to her). I can't remember what happens next (which is nice) but I have my fingers crossed for Sir James and Celia.

I'm not certain I feel that sorry for anyone at this point. Dorothea and Rev. Casaubon seem to deserve each other in their self-righteousness. Sir James was upset for about two minutes, then did a complete turnaround by setting his sights on Celia aka "Kitty". I like that nickname better than Do Do.

I'm glad that I've forgotten most of the details of the book; it's like reading it with fresh eyes. At least there's one good thing about a poor memory! Oh yeah, I have a gazillion other plot lines running around in my head from the approximately 700 books I've read since I read this in 2000.

Yes, one thing LT is making me aware of is that reading a book once... well.... it may not be enough. Reading them like this though, with a thread you can return to to refresh your memory.... that is golden.

Hmmm I'll have to finish it in one month to meet the Tioli requirement, oh well, I'm not going to worry about it.

I agree that Sir James and Dodo would not be a happy combination -- maybe not the worst, but one full of sighs and misunderstandings and cross-purposes. I thought the scene where Uncle Brooke is trying to steer Dodo towards seeing Casaubon as he really is not as she wishes him to be was very touching, he didn't seem such an ass then -- although you might say he doesn't try hard enough.....

Okay, I don't feel sorry for Sir James anymore. But he seems like a very 'amiable' person, as described.

I do feel a bit afraid for Dorothea, but I'm not overly sorry for her at this point, since she's being so stubborn.

The author is doing some foreshadowing, don't you think?

>83 sibylline:. The repellently laughable Mr. C. Or the laughably repellent Mr. C. I would vote for memory lapse rather than a change in you, Sib. Just sayin'.

>90 BookAngel_a:. Angela, give us some examples you've found of foreshadowing.

91- I should have done that right off the bat, shouldn't I?
I'm headed off to bed now but hopefully I will find what I was referring to and post it tomorrow...goodnight everyone!

Here's my favorite couple of sentences so far!
"Hence, he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling, and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was. As in droughty regions baptism by immersion could only be performed symbolically, so Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him; and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion"
(repellently laughable/laughably repellent! Thanks, Becky!)

For those, like me, who had no idea what 'Sappho's apples' referred to in chapter 6 -

Sappho's poem reads:

Shall I compare you
To a lone red apple
High atop the tallest tree
Some say all who came
Passed it by
I say none
Can reach that high.

I am reading 2 chapters a day. I do not think I will be done with the book before the end of November, so am not posting it to the TIOLI challenge. I

That's pretty much my pace as well, Stasia. My goal is a book a week, so if I keep to that pace it will take 8 weeks. I don't even know what a TIOLI challenge is. Thanks for the Sappho poem.

>93 LizzieD:. What grabs you about those sentences, Peggy?

>89 sibylline:. I agree, Sib, that a thread like this where you can refresh your memory about a book is valuable. I've taken a stab now and then at keeping a reading journal, but never very successfully.

Which reminds me--and those of you who have been here at LT for longer than a year will be able to answer this--will this 2010 75 Books Challenge get archived somewhere?

#95: will this 2010 75 Books Challenge get archived somewhere?

Becky, neither of the past 2 years prior to this one has been archived yet. I can still get into both the 2008 and 2009 groups. I have no idea what the policy is as far as archiving, but if you are concerned about needing to get back into this year's group next year, I do not think it will be a problem.

Yeah, I'm thinking that particularly these group read threads would be nice to have access to. Wow, that's quite a sentence. Yes, my first language is English--haha.

#97: Yes, my first language is English--haha.

And you speak it like a native :)

I note that several of you have chimed in about Mr. Casaubon--about feeling sorry for him or not feeling sorry for him. I've been thinking about him in comparison to Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. We recall that Mr. Collins is also a clergyman. He proposes marriage to Elizabeth and is refused--so he quickly recovers and within days proposes to Elizabeth's close friend, Charlotte Lucas, who immediately accepts his hand in marriage.

Mr. Collins is a hilarious figure that Austen's narrator encourages us to laugh at and not take seriously. Eliot doesn't seem to be encouraging us in that direction with Mr. Casaubon. We can't simply laugh him off, even though he is a ridiculous figure. I mean, good grief, what a love letter that man writes! (beginning of Chapt 5). I would suggest that the key to the answer to why we react differently to these two characters, Austen's Collins and Eliot's Casaubon, can be found in the reactions to these two men of Austen's Elizabeth and Eliot's Dorothea.

Another question I have as I read through this thing, is something that I find myself asking pretty often about either very good or very bad (that is, well-written or badly-written) characters: Why should I care about this person? So Eliot is spending a lot of time in these beginning chapters introducing us to Dorothea. People here have said that they feel afraid for her, or that they do or don't feel sorry for her. Do we care about her? And if so, why? And I would submit that if Eliot (or any author) has created a character about whom the reader doesn't care (something that happens way too often in contemporary fiction, IMO), then she has failed. So what I would say is this: yes, we care about Dorothea, but then that begs the question: Why?

#99: So what I would say is this: yes, we care about Dorothea, but then that begs the question: Why?

I think one of the things that Eliot has tapped into with Dorothea is something most of us feel when we are thinking of marriage - hope and anticipation of a new life. In creating a situation that is universal, we can feel greater empathy for her as a character, don't you think?

Another thing I think Eliot did was, by making Dorothea an orphan, created sympathy for her from the outset of the book. Even though she has her sister, she no longer has her mother around for counsel.

ETA: One other thing - Dorothea is young. I know that I tend to feel more sympathy toward younger characters in books simply because of their age and inexperience.

Just my two cents

Thanks for playing, Stasia--heh. I'm just throwing this stuff out there for people to chew on. Take it up or leave it, as you will.

Yeah, I really like your take on feeling "greater empathy for her as a character"--I like that. And I also like what you say about what Eliot is doing with her in creating sympathy for Dorothea with the reader. She's very young, so we can forgive her for being foolish--even "stupid" as the narrator says at one point: "Dorothea so childlike, and according to some judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness" (33). So when Eliot has the narrator call her "even stupid," then I find myself going the other direction and hoping that this young woman will come to her senses a little bit.

So here's another question--what is Eliot's opinion of Dorothea?

#101: Thanks, Becky.

I began last night. I've just finished where the sisters divide their mother's jewelry and have gone to a dinner.

The scenes in books from this era where women are dismissed from conversation or otherwise infantilized make my muscles tense.

I agree with Stasia that there is an inherent sympathy for Dorothea because she is young and an orphan. I remember well the feeling of wanting a life of meaning and of having zeal with no outlet. So far, I like her very much.

What a rich vein to mine!

First - Peggy -- YES! That is a very funny and sly and sharp sexual dig at Mr. C. George was no Jane in that regard! Sex with Mr. C. is just unimaginable really. Ghastly. Worse than any of the Hallowe'en reading.

Stasia thank you so much for Sappho's apples -- she never ceases to move and amaze me as a poet.

Which leads to a further remark -- GE's evident thoughtfulness, well-readness, opinionatedness, currentness -- MM is, in that way, more like a contemporary novel, very caught up in the now, the day's doings -- improving the lot of the cottagers, Whigs & Tories -- Austen mentions these things once in a while, but the references always seem sort of dreamy and distant, not so immediate and important.

Why do we care about Dodo -- yes, there are the larger circumstances, obviously she is making a terrible mistake, but it is really the small details, to me that make a character come to life: her relationship with her sister, for example. Her indecision and inconsistency vis a vis the emeralds, her obtuseness -- all combined with being physically attractive and very 'vital' -- that description of her hands, as the hands of someone who would be doing things -- I found that deeply poignant. Dodo might have had a great time going West on a Conestoga...... settling the prairie -- she has that kind of energy and idealism. I'm not much like her, btw, so there is little to no identification, whereas I do identify strongly with several of Austen's protagonists.... but I care. I'm more of a Celia, I guess.

I have a close friend who over and over again hurls herself into the political fray, often on a very local scale -- opposing this or that -- and emerges bewildered every time that people are so rude to her. Before she was 20, she had a baby, interestingly, with a man 20 or so years older who she hero-worshipped back in the wild communal 60's --- Now she runs a landscape business -- works with her hands, is still just as passionate, although a wee bit more cautious, and I love her dearly, although I often cringe when she gets into one of her frenzies. She gets this tone in her voice and I know I should run! Anyway, she is my personal Dodo.

Worse than any of the Hallowe'en reading.

I just fell off my chair laughing.

I think we've all known a Dodo -- or perhaps have been a Dodo -- that is, a passionate, idealistic person who jumps into a situation before thinking it through. That's the connection I find with Dorothea. I want her to take her blinders off and realize that she deserves more out of life than sacrificing herself to "furthering all his great ends." At the end of Chapter 5..."She was not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon." It's quite clear that GE is just as appalled as the reader about this upcoming marriage.

I think Dodo is very ambitious, albeit her ambition is religion, and there was no outlet for ambitious women in that time, the only way to realize ambitions was through marriage She sees Mr. C as having the same views as she does and if she helps him realize his great work it would be as she herself had accomplished something.

Now this stuff is the reason I love group reads!!! Here are some of the things I'm thinking in no particular order .....
Dorothea and Why I Love Her: She seems very real to me - so young and eager, so inexperienced, ignorant, arrogant (usually a disastrous combination), lovely, genuine, honest, stubborn, under-educated. She has the capacity for great caring and giving that is totally unguided. Like me in my youth (and you too, Becky....We talked about this once, didn't we?) she has to stumble on whatever she can find in an environment that isn't particularly interested in teaching bright young women. Casaubon is the best she's seen, so she grabs. That's quintessential youth! I also liked her large, capable hands, and I think I recall that GE had similar hands. It will take a lot to fill them, and a lot has never been offered to her.
Mr. Casaubon's Stream of Feeling: So witty!! It touches the sexual dryness and invokes a religious image for a clergyman. "He determined to abandon himself" !!!! How impossible is that!?! His resolution of the question is not that something is lacking in himself but that the poets have all been liars and bombasts. He would suspect that Dorothea is lacking somehow, but that would be to put into question his own taste in choosing her. Absolutely devastating. And while I'm on Mr. C.....does he have a first name? I vaguely remember reading it, but can't locate it now.
THE PROPOSAL! Becky, I'm right with you in thinking about Elizabeth and Mr. Collins - who also doesn't have a first name. I'll add Bradley Headstone's proposal to Lizzie (whose namesake I am) Hexam in Our Mutual Friend. He is also a scholar of sorts with ambitions to improve his beloved, but he is passionately in love with her, and that proposal is a wild mass of self-serving desperation. He says that he would kill for her --- quite a different proposition from living or dying for her. Lizzie is justly frightened of him and runs like the mischief.
What Does Eliot Think About Dorothea? Well, she sees her very clearly since she is able to make us understand her so well. I think she loves her and pities her as we do. I suspect that she has projected a lot of herself as a young woman into Dorothea except that she's made her lovely to look at. Poor Mary Anne.

Lizzie, you get an "A" for the day! I love what you have to say, and Prof Carroll would love you too (re: #2). I've decided to leave his picture there, by the way. I had thought of deleating it, but the more I see it, the more I feel that this thread is "blessed" (haha) by the spirit of Joe (Call me Professor) Carroll.

And I certainly didn't mean to leave out Yolana and Donna--and everyone! Joe would be so pleased--although he would never show it.

How about 'Joe' Casaubon? Aw, just joshing. And I too had that thought that Dodo is indeed a stand-in for the young Mary Ann (didn't she tangle up with an older fella first, and then a younger nicer one next?) except the one thing she wasn't: a delicious babe.

I'm loving all the posts! Some confirm thoughts that floated through my head and others give me new ideas. Thank you!

Do you know, I've never read Our Mutual Friend and I love Dickens, I just haven't. Horrors!!!!!!

As I read yesterday I thought to myself: "She doesn't want to marry him - she wants to go to college!"

One of the big reasons she looks forward to this marriage is to LEARN things...

>111 BookAngel_a:: Many of us married in hopes of learning things, although perhaps not precisely the sorts of things Dorothea wants to learn...

At the beginning here I find myself quite unusually impatient with Dodo, finding her almost too saintly for words, a quality that grates. However, she's so earnest, so very well-meaning, that one keeps whispering, "Oh, Dear, don't do this!"

And I agree with Peggy (#108); Casaubon's thoughts on marriage are so awful they're very funny. "Determined to abandon himself", indeed! Why, the man couldn't abandon himself to enjoy a ripe peach...well, that turned out to have more meaning than I first intended. Gad, what an odious creature. Blech.

>110 sibylline:, Oh love it, love it. Joe Casaubon it is!!! You're in good form today, Sib.

(blushes) And Gail you had me snorting! Many of us married in hopes of learning things...... Is that why I got married? I have often racked my brain in wonderment.

Just wanted to let you know that I am reading Middlemarch--I just finished Chapter 5--but have overextended myself a bit this month so am struggling to stay afloat. This thread has made the experience so much richer for me so thanks for all the insights. I've also been cheating and checking the Sparknotes occasionally and noted that they say Casaubon's first name is Edward.

>115 phebj:, etc. Edward Joseph, of course! Thank you, Pat.
(>109 labwriter: What an affirmation! Thanks, Becky.)
>111 BookAngel_a: "---she wants to go to college." Exactly!
>112 Matke: Marrying teaches us stuff whether we want to learn it or not.
What a super group!!!

We've renamed him--haha. I like the ring of it--"Joe Casaubon." Hilarious.

I love Cadwallader's response to Sir James: "Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves."

Isn't that the truth? lol

I'm loving the chat between Cadwallader and Chettam in the fishing tackle room......

A new favorite phrase describing Mrs. Waule (one of the characters introduced in chapter XII where I'm currently reading), "....there remained as the nethermost sediment in her mental shallows..." OW!! OW!! OW!!!

The book finally arrived at the library. So now I'll get started and get caught up.

I'm tickled to pieces by the interactions on the visit to Lowick -- post-its everywhere as I chuckled my way through Chapter 9.

Right after Stasia's quote this: Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable. sigh, bliss.

But a man may wish to do what is right, and yet be a sort of parchment code. I have no idea what a parchment code is, but I get it.

"He has go no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying glass, and it was all semi-colons and parentheses." said Mrs. Cadwallader.
Bryson in his Notes From a Small Island mentions that one of the things about the British that he loves is that two of them can't be together without cracking a joke ere long. This made me think of that.

Sweet: he (Chettam) was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to hide or confess.

And I haven't even gotten to 9, also festooned with post-its -- but I will say I love the image of Sir James transforming into a prince from a rose-bush, and Dodo's dismissal of 'Renaissance-Corregiosities' because 'she had never been tuaght how she could bring them into any sort of relevance with her life.' --

And Celia "It was a new opening to Celia's imagination, that he (our Joe) had come from a family who had all been young in their time-the ladies wearing necklaces."

And of course, the plot thickening, as Will arrives on the scene...... and both feel the attraction immediately (yet unconsciously) as is made explicit.

>122 sibylline:: Lucy, Mrs. Cadwallader has a way with words! That particular phrase had me in stitches as did the second part of it..."Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains."

Well, I've done my required reading for the week through Chapter 12. I feel like I'm back in Junior High School with my "cheat sheet" of names with arrows drawn between them complete with hearts, happy faces, and sad faces! My interpretation goes something like this:

Dodo should like Sir James, but she wants to better herself by marrying the old goat Mr. Casaubon. He is flattered by her attention but it turns out that he needs a pet not a wife.

We meet a bunch of new people at the end of Part One. Will makes eyes at Dodo and beats a hasty retreat to Europe. Dr. Lydgate is the new surgeon in town who falls for the pretty young thing Rosamond (think "eye candy") who is on the prowl for an accomplished husband. Eureka! Fred is Rosie's brother who may have a little gambling problem...

Stay tuned for Part Two.

I'm enjoying this immensely. I usually don't stretch out my books for so long, but this group is such a hoot that I'll continue at this pace. Have a great week end!

a pet not a wife very very nice!!!!!

I'm having a lot of fun too!

Someone on LT on another thread (can't remember which one) recommended the 1994 BBC mini-series of Middlemarch. I just got it from Netflix and saw the first episode and loved it. The actor who played Casaubon is Patrick Malahide and this is what he said about playing the part:

Upon a reference in the novel, Malahide modeled Casaubon's appearance on that of British philosopher John Locke by shaving his crown "so that all you see is a head, a dome of intellect with long hair in the back." Despite Casaubon's black frock coats, deathly pallor, and social frigidity, Malahide's performance conveyed the gentleness, intelligence, and complexity that originally seduced Dorothea.

"Casaubon's a fearful man. He has great ideas of his own destiny, but when he comes face to face with it, he's overcome by fear. The fear leads to suspicion and then the suspicion leads to bitterness. And he dies an embittered man. What I found so interesting was that George Eliot never condemns him, never pillories him even though he behaves so appallingly."

Here's a picture:

How marvelous!

I had the oddest thought while messing with my books today that both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and to a lesser degree Robert Graves DID just what Casaubon was aiming to do -- uniting mythologies with underlying universal archetypes. That it isn't/wasn't merely a silly ambition, just a hugely ambitious one. But it is interesting that Eliot voiced it.

Pat, that's wonderful! Thanks for posting the pics, etc.

>126 sibylline: That's not an odd thought at all, Lucy. I'm right there with you. Also add Frazier and The Golden Bough which dates from 1890. And I taped the Malahide *MM* when it was on Masterpiece Theater and had forgotten it, so that's two things that I sort of "knew" and didn't share. I'm glad we have readers who are awake the rest of their time!

Yes, after I posted I thought of Frazier too.

I'm going to treat myself to the Middlemarch production after I finish the read, I think. It's been long enough since I read it, that so many details are gone, it is almost like reading it fresh, just that I know in the big picture way, how it will all go.

I watched the Middlemarch production on PBS when it was on originally and it spurred my first read of the book some 16 years ago (wow! has it really been that long? Hard to believe it.) I am going to watch it again after I read the book this time.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, Pat.

From chapter 9: "A light book-case contained duodecimo (emphasis mine) volumes of polite literature in calf, completing the furniture.'

Duodecimo (sometimes abbreviated to "12mo," and sometimes pronounced "twelve-mo"), a term from bibliography, refers to the format of a book. A duodecimo is smaller than even an octavo — about the size of a modern popular paperback. A sheet is folded over so each sheet consists of twelve leaves (or twenty-four pages). The average hardcover book today is the rough size of an octavo. Duodecimos have traditionally been the format of choice for popular writing.

In wonder what Casaubon considered polite literature?

Good Q! Probably his mother and aunts stuff? Boswell's travel through the Hebrides? Milton? Pope? All those naughty novelists? Fielding, Smollett, Defoe and so on? More likely books like Evelina and the Brontes and Austen? Would Becky's book have an answer to that?

#131/132 I actually took What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew out of the library yesterday. A quick check of the glossary (120+ pages long!) and the index doesn't have any reference to "polite literature" but I haven't started to read the book. It looks like a great book though and I'm going to hunt down a used copy to order. It should come in handy for Stasia's Austenothon. :)

The other LTer who recommended the DVD said she watched one episode after every 1 to 2 books of Middlemarch and that's what I'm thinking of doing. All these "study aides" (including this group read) are helping me get alot more out of this book than I would on my own.

I have the DVD of Middlemarch on reserve at the library. Now to find time to watch it! I also own the Daniel Poole book. I haven't read it from cover to cover, but find it an invaluable resource when I'm reading Austen, Dickens, and now Eliot.

>131 alcottacre:: Stasia, that's fascinating information about duodecimos and octavos. Thank you for having an inquisitive mind and sharing your research with us.

#125 Thanks for posting that Pat. Add me to the list of people planning to watch the BBC adaptation. I'll probably get it out next month so I don't risk watching it before I read it.

#133 I bought one on amazon a couple of days ago for 96 cents after reading about it here. They had lots of cheap copies.

#136 Thanks, Yolana. I keep meaning to look for a copy on Amazon but haven't gotten there yet. 96 cents sounds great.

>133 phebj: My library has a number of copies, and I've just ordered one to be sent to my branch.

I can never remember to pluck my copy of the Poole off the shelf when I walk by, but I will. I also have Rachel Brownstein's Becoming a Heroine that I enjoyed almost 20 years ago but never finished. The Eliot featured is Daniel Deronda, which I've never read, but she does discuss *MM*. I'm trying to remember whether this is the book that points to the repressed sexuality of young women loving to ride and uses Dorothea as a case in point.
We're doing well, folks! I'm a very little ahead of schedule, reading chapter XV which seems to be mainly a look at Lydgate's professional choices and ambition through the author's eyes.
And now I'm off to do something concrete - like pushing the vacuum or typing some correspondence.

#134: No problem, Donna. I love the internet for being able to quickly find answers to my questions.

Well, I'm a bit behind in reading and posting, but I'm determined that today will be catch-up day. More later . . . .

It's a beautiful day and I need to work (I still need to work) on the gardens outside, so that's where I'm headed. Before I do that, I thought I would post a couple of things and then plan to come back later and make it to the end of Chapt. XXII.

I'm reading through the posts and not seeing too much of the conversation targeted at the later chapters of Book One. I'm glad to hear about the DVD--I'll have to check that out. The photos that were posted make me want to see it. I love period pieces, just for the dress if nothing else, and in this one I'm very interested to see how Dorothea would be portrayed, among other things.

>126 sibylline:. Sib, I would agree. Casaubon is trying to do a huge thing and he just doesn't have the great mind needed to pull it off.

We haven't said too much about Celia in these posts. I think she is meant by Eliot to be the "normative" point of view--she has the conventional thoughts and feelings of most women of her class at that time, and I think we also are to believe what she has to say about people as being "correct." Celia sort of stands around popping Dorothea's balloon for the reader, like when the narrator says of her in Chapt. VII: "Celia, whose mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of other people's pretensions much more readily." Eliot herself stands behind it all, gently mocking everyone. I just think she really can't help herself.

If Celia is the conventional young lady of the time, then certainly Sir James Chettam is the same--conventional, that is. It would seem that the reader is meant to take what he says at face value, as in Chapt. VIII: "He had no sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that Dorothea was under a melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost some of its bitterness by being mingled with compassion." He also indicates to the Rector that Dorothea is "too young to know what she likes."

Hilarious--Chettam says to the Rector, "But look at Casaubon. He must be fifty, and I don't believe he could ever have been much more than the shadow of a man. Look at his legs!" But even as we laugh with Chettam, we're being told by him how we ought to think of Casaubon: "'I don't like Casaubon.' This was Sir James's strongest way of implying that he thought ill of a man's character."

Anyway, enough of that. . . been sitting around too much lately. Gotta get outside while the getting's good.

Ed to fix bolding.

Chapt IX.

The narrator says, "A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have appetite for submission afterwards." I think that's Eliot giving her opinion about marriage, straight up. I don't read even a hint of mockery or irony in that statement.

In Chapt. 9 we come to find out more about how Mr. Casaubon came to be in possession of his home, the manor house, Lowick: "the death of his brother had put him in possession of the manor also {as well as the old parsonage, which is where he lived before his brother died}.

Dorothea first sees the house at the latter end of autumn, when the house had "an air of autumnal decline." Dorothea, naturally, finds the place "all that she could wish." So it seems that she was as deluded about Lowick as she was about "Joe" Casaubon--heh.

Also in Chapt. 9 we meet Mr. Will Ladislaw, one of Joe's cousins. This is hilarious: "Ladislaw had made up his mind that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry Casuabon, and what she said about her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed that opinion even if he had believed her." So we're made immediately pretty much aware of what Ladislaw thinks of his cousin Casaubon. Then Casaubon and Mr. Brooke have a conversation about Ladislaw, and we learn that the feeling is mutual. We're also treated to more of the pedantic-speak of Casaubon's "normal" conversation with people.

"Celia laughed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say something quite amusing."

Chapt. X.

So if Celia is Eliot's normative pov for young ladies of her class, then how is Eliot using Ladislaw? How are we to take what the narrator has to say about him?

Will saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reluctance on the intentions of the universe with regard to himself.

It's interesting that the narrator intervenes with the first "I" that I remember in the text: "Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto shown their disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel more tenderly towards his experience of success than towards the disappointment of the amiable Sir James." What is Eliot doing here?

Then Eliot (and I think it is, again, pure Eliot) gives us her assessment of education normally provided for women of this time: "For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world adapted to young ladies which had made the chief part of her education . . ." --"toy-box history of the world"--those sorts of phrases make me love Eliot!

For the first time, Dorothea finds herself irritated with Casaubon. Characteristically she blames herself: "'Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind,' she said to herself." So the narrator tells us that Dodo convinced herself "that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right." Ooof, methinks that's something that our Dorothea is going to be doing a lot of in the near and not-so-near future.

Does anyone want to take on the dinner party that was held at the Grange? Eliot manages to pack in layers of information here.

Someone once told me that I was too "earnest," and I felt at the time that I ought to be insulted, but I couldn't quite figure out why. Now I know why. This is Mr. Lydgate: "'She is a good creature--that fine girl--but a little too earnest,' he thought. 'It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after they own taste.'" Ooof.

#142 "Celia sort of stands around popping Dorothea's balloon for the reader"

I really like that - you describe it very well!

#143 "A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have appetite for submission afterwards"

That's interesting, I didn't think of it as Eliot's opinion of how marriage should be so much as a description of what society at the time expected.

Chapt. XI

Dorothea has gone off to be married, so in the interlude we learn more about Mr. Lydgate, the young medical doctor of Middlemarch: "Lydgate was young, poor, ambitious." Oops--watch out! This chapter also introduces us to Miss Rosamond Vincy, who seems to have set her cap for the ambitious young doctor. She's the daughter of a manufacuturing family, and of course her mother would like to see her make a good marriage and advance socially.

Chapt. XII

Rosamond and her brother Fred Vincy go to Stone Court, "the substantial dwelling of a gentleman farmer," home of Mr. Peter Featherstone, uncle by marriage of Fred and Rosamond. There is talk in the Featherstone family of the "cleverness" of the new doctor. We learn that Rosamond has reasons for her visit to Stone Court, one of which is to speak with Mary Garth, Mr. Featherstone's practical, plain, and kind nurse.

A discussion of the plainness of Mary Garth: "For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue." Rosamond Vincy and Mary Garth are compared. "Rosamond thought, 'Poor Mary, she takes the kindest things ill.'"

Clearly Rosamond's agenda is to pump Mary for information about the young Doctor Lydgate. Then there's a funny discussion between the two women about Fred, Rosamond's brother and someone that Mary Garth has known since childhood--and is probably in love with.

Rosamond and Lydgate are introduced, surely as Rosamond hoped they would be. We learn more and more than Rosamond is not a nice person: "Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress"--uh oh.

And so we go on to Book Two: "Old and Young." Bye for now.

#146 I enjoyed the last two chapters of Book One, but they felt like quite a sudden change from the story about Dorothea and Mr Casaubon. I've been trying to figure out why Eliot started that particular story arc in chapters 11 & 12 rather than waiting for Book Two. Perhaps it will all become clear later.

And great work on the updates and thoughts Becky.

Always interesting, Becky!
"a woman dictates before marriage..." I read that as satire (with the norm being a more democratic give-and-take between the partners). Is that what you meant? Do you mean that GE is describing what she sees around her? Is 21st century marriage as a whole that much different? (Hence, the divorce rate because we certainly do not expect her description to be true.)
"We learn more and more that Rosamond is not a nice person." I find that an interesting comment too. We're certainly supposed to find Rosamond limited, I think, but I'm finding her position parallel to Dorothea's. Both have ambitions beyond their grasp and are reaching in the direction they consider "up" with what comes to hand. Rosamond's ambition to rise socially is not admirable, as I find Dorothea's to rise mentally and spiritually, but I do see them as sisters under the skin. What say you all?
Nice spotting of the "I" because I too am interested at where she steps in and states an opinion. I'll try to keep up with them better.

>148 LizzieD:. Hi Peggy. Yes, I read the "woman dictates before marriage" line as GE describing how she sees women around her behaving, and she is not amused, I think we can say. Of course I'm taking biographical details from the author's life as my cue, which some would say {{horrors}} shouldn't be done. But I don't hold with that. She had opinions, did our George Eliot, and she put them in her novels.

I think it gets a lot more difficult when trying to figure out, OK, is this the narrator saying this or is it GE? I think it's a mistake to think that GE and the narrator are always the same, although I also think there are instances where the veil between them is very thin. Who's to say--it's a judgment call, I think. Maybe quite learned papers have been written on the subject, but if so I've never seen one. It's just a thing that interests me.

As for Rosamond, I may be getting ahead of myself. I would say that I'm at least somewhat suspicious about her character--and maybe a little bit worried for Lydgate.

Anywho, I'm no Middlemarch or Eliot expert--far from it. Mainly I just throw this stuff out there to see what other people (like you, for example--grin) are thinking.

>147 souloftherose:. Maybe we'll find out why GE did that later, somewhere in Book Two. Maybe she didn't have a good reason, but only needed to fill up the end with something while Dorothea went off and became Mrs. Casaubon. I don't know how much of GE's writing of this was constrained by the magazine publication. That might have had something to do with it. Dunno. Anybody?

Good points, Becky. I hadn't even thought about the magazine, but I'm sure that's how this was published. I keep getting flashes back to a GE bio that I might have read back when I read *MM* the first time. My only problem is that I don't seem to own it, and I have huge, gaping holes in my memory - more than usual - leading me to wonder whether I'm not recalling a bio included in another novel. I read Mill on the Floss at about the same time.
I guess I just don't want Rosamond (and women like her, and I know some and love some) dismissed as having an inferior character; she does, but why she does is interesting and helpful to get at.
You are also right about the distinction between narrator and author, but I think we're already reading GE into our analysis because in this case it's right to do so. (So now I'm the one with the *grin* who is eager to see what you think.)

I love what you have to say about Rosamond. Let's see what she does. She will undoubtedly be interesting, I have no doubt.

This is George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), for those of you who don't know what she looks like. I would say that this is a pretty representative photo (photo?--heck, I don't know, it's probably a painting) of her--it's definitely not someone's "worst picture ever" of her.



She lived with George Lewes, but wasn't married to him. Wow!

I would say that is actually a fairly complimentary photo of her, from those I've seen.

Well I was behind 9 or so posts as folks report in at the end of the first week, and what a delight the comments are. And gosh, my last substantial post was more than 25 ago at 123!! However, the phone is ringing and dinner is ready, so I will return later with my thoughts on 10-12, plus I really need to reread all the comments again before I do so I don't repeat what others have already said and possibly think about some q's raised.

I just finished Book One and have also been slowly making my way through the Introduction to my Oxford World Classics edition.

Some random comments:

About Dorothea's attaction to Casaubon (from the Intro)--"Orphaned at a young age, Dorothea seems to long for a husband who can assume the role of teacher and a "father." I tend to forget she was an orphan because we don't hear anything that I can remember about her childhood.

At the end of Chapter 5, when Dorothea asks Celia to give her a kiss before going to bed, "Celia knelt down to get the right level, and gave her a little butterfly kiss." Butterfly kiss is one of the entries in the glossary of the Pool book and is defined as: "one brushing one's eyelashes along somebody's cheek." So sweet!

About Rosamond (from Chapter 11): "She was admitted to be the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school where the teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female--even to extras, such as getting in and out of a carriage."

Also from Chapter 11 (Lydgate on Miss Brooke): "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 blues eyes for heaven."

From Chapter 12 (Rosamond is looking in the mirror with Mary next to her): "Mary Garth seemed all the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphs--the one in the glass, and the one out of it, who looked to each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite." I agree with Becky, that Rosamond is someone to be watched out for.

I don't ever think I've seen a picture of George Eliot! I hate to say it but she looks a little like Casaubon. I also saw this quote from the director of the BBC series:

"George Eliot said she was like Casaubon because she was very lonely and she translated very heavy books from German. She understood this thing of being smothered by research and books, and not being able to live."

Well, the dinner party in Chapter Ten. Let me just say writers who not only handle the complexities of a large dinner party -- minor characters, dialogue, and so on... awe me. GE perfectly captures the echo and refrain of the way people talk at social gatherings - not quite hearing, not quite listening, absorbed in what they want to say, who they want to impress -- talk at a party has many odd layers and disconnects. And it's also funny and very real. Now that I'm older, I have to admit that I sit around occasionally discussing doctors and ailments and I probably sound just as stupid!

Fascinating too how GE puts the main characters in the background -- waiting for the end of the chapter to give Lydgate's opinion of Dodo. So the chapter does double duty of introducing another set of Middlemarchers -- widening the scope of the novel, promising that it is maybe about a little more than settling who will marry whom.

And Becky, thank you for your candour about yourself and your experience. I remember a writing adviser once saying to me, "You are very ambitious." (not to be famous, but at what I was attempting to do) and I was SO taken aback! If I wasn't, what was the point, I thought? Plus I couldn't quite tell if this person thought I should aim lower or was wasting my time or what. Now I understand that remark so much better.

And then the shift, first to Lydgate (thinking about Miss Brooke to create a link in our minds) and then the intro of Miss Vincy (cleverly mentioned in the previous chapter, in such a way we know she is socially inferior, though marrying well could alter that)... and from Miss Vincy to the whole Vincy, Bulstrode, Featherstone complex, a different niche of Middlemarch society, the aspirers rather than the arrived. Lydgate is in fact a bridge -- he comes of good family, but he is, like a clergyman going to have access to many homes at many levels of society, while not giving up his right to hobnob at the top level unless he proves himself to be troublesome in some way. The 4th paragraph in Chapter 11 is very explicit about these social matters.

A very striking difference is in the conversational style between the young people of this aspiring set -- it is blunter, less self-conscious, earthy even and you can see 'Rosy' struggling to be more of a 'lady' around some fairly hopeless family members who don't care as much as she does.
I love Mrs Vincy! 'Why, my dear, doctors must have opinions,' said Mrs. Vincy, "What are they there for else?"
And what a sentence that last one is!!!!!

Mr Featherstone is almost Dickensian -- and I hugely enjoyed his tirade against books and reading! And I like Mary -for me a dimension opened, Fred became rounder and more interesting a fellow for the fact that he likes Mary too.

This made me chuckle, Mary and Rosamund as they finish up: I did not mean to quarrel," said Rosamund, putting on her hat.
"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?"

How appropriate Lydgate and Rosamund would fall in love -- they are both.... ambitious, artificial, and yet, they are genuine too as a type of person, which is interesting. Their mutual glance is like a recognition.

The dialogue between Rosamund and Fred at the end was sublime. Such spirit and spite, laced with affection and great intimacy. Loved it!!!!!!!

I would hazard that the busy GE who had strong opinions indeed about social mobility and such matters and wanted, in Middlemarch to recreate the tensions both within and between these two 'classes' which were just ever so slightly too close for comfort -- distinctions which we in America now can barely comprehend now but which at that time were very so huge. Only rarely would Miss Vincy and the Miss Brookes end up at the same affair, and there would, imagine be flutter on both sides about whether to 'recognize' or 'snub' or what. Introducing this secondary theme in Book One is surely by design, however sudden it feels, to anchor it as an important one.

I hope I haven't gone on too much. And I thought, when I started I wouldn't have that much to say. How silly am I?

And I thought, when I started I wouldn't have that much to say. How silly am I?

Love it!

I did a lot of editing Becky..... esp that last long paragraph.

Just a quick note to say that I'm here, I read book one, so now...on to book #2! I'm enjoying it so far.

(I heard that some have compared Eliot to Austen or vice versa, but now that I'm reading my first Eliot book, I cannot see why. From a reader's perspective - they are quite different!)

I won't be around much this week since I'm helping with the library's book sale in addition to my office job. Enjoy book 2 everyone!

I finished book 1 in the wee hours this morning and am now on to book 2 as well.

It is interesting for me to note that up until last week, I am not sure I had ever heard of Teresa of Avila, but have now run across her in two books: Middlemarch and Cutting for Stone. I am now looking for Cathleen Medwick's book Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul because my interest is piqued.

edited for spelling

>155 sibylline:. I like Mary Garth a lot. It speaks well of Fred that he's interested in Mary, but I'm not sure the same can be said for her--haha.

Very good point -- but many women like a project !

Monday and Tuesday are the two busiest days of my week so I'll start in on Middlemarch again on Wednesday. Great comments and food for thought, everyone!

Please please please jump in with more comments, fellow readers....????? Don't be afraid: what you might think is silly, might be actually very insightful and meaningful to someone else besides you -- and believe me, it is the greatest way to 'fix' the book in your mind to try to capture something about it that struck you. I love comments, people see and think things I would never notice.

Ditto, ditto--couldn't agree more, Sib. It's hard to get the benefit of the "group" in "group read" if people lurk without posting. I'll post here if no one else does--and so will Lucy--but I already know what I think--haha--I'd like to read other people's comments. Not that "no one" has been commenting; but I think Lucy and I both agree: the more, the merrier.

I have to get some sleep before I can post coherently, so I am off to bed shortly. I will post when I get to Middlemarch some time in the wee hours tonight.

Will look forward to it, you have the art of being succinct, which I do not!

Enjoyed the opening quote of ch. xiii -- Eliot seems to have a sort of book thing going on -- attitudes toward books being revelatory of character and degree of cultivation -- say in Mary Garth, it is a very important indicator, since you wouldn't necessarily expect it.

It is interesting how Book II opens with (at least) two chapters about the Middlemarch families and not the Brookes. I could go on and on, but I want to leave open room for others.
One quote that had me chortling, Lydgate declaring, I have not yet been pained by finding any excessive talent in Middlemarch And that just caused me to have a 'duh!' moment, even the NAME of the book means something about who and what we are dealing with! clever clever George!

The interview between Vincy and Bulstrode! Then Mary and Fred and more delightful interaction...

I've sort of elided the two chapters, but that's ok.

#167: Will look forward to it, you have the art of being succinct

That is pretty much because I have nothing to say, what with all the English majors in here :)

Oh no, my dear, that's no excuse -- I'm not an English major anyway, I just can't shut up! (Prolly not much difference between those two features, though).

#169: It is a good enough excuse for me :)

I do not seem to have much problem with not being able to shut up either, Lucy.

I finished Book One late last week. Needless to say I read it when I was kind of out of it and having trouble concentrating. But I've been reading Book Two for the past couple of days and must say that now, I can hardly put it down. Bulstrode is being revealed to be a such pompous ass and I love this quote from Ch. 13:

"To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from." Hahaha.

In this sense, Eliot reminds me very much of Austen (whether she likes hearing that or not). Austen made many droll, ironic, sarcastic comments much like this.

I'll finish Book 2 tonight, but I've taken lots of notes so that I can join the conversation and put in my two cents worth when others get into Book 2.

167- That was a memorable quote for me too! It almost made me snort, lol...

Sorry, haven't posted much (and I'm feeling overwhelmed by how insightful all of you are--I'm just enjoying the reading!). I can't help the feeling as I'm reading Book Two that this is a "commercial break" where we are actually biding our time while waiting for the Casaubons to return from their honeymoon. I suppose it will all come together, but it was probably a good idea to write it this way--I was getting ready to pop Dorothea, and the respite is nice.

>173 tloeffler:. Oh, Terri, you know that all of you are wonderful, insightful readers--I'm constantly overwhelmed by the reviews that all of you write. I'm glad all of you are here in this group read, and I just hope when everyone can (yes, we do have lives--ha!) you will post your thoughts about Eliot and her book.

I was thinking some this morning about "class" in Eliot (and Austen as well), especially since in Book 2 Eliot is starting to introduce some of these other characters. So I turned to my trusty resource, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool (when that book first came out, I thought, how typical--what the woman "ate," what the man "knew"--but I digress).

There's a chapter in Pool titled "Who's Who in the Country" that is very useful for understanding class as these people knew it.

As Pool says, rural England was governed by a strict hierarchy.

Landed Aristocracy: old, powerful families with hereditary titles and large estates. These would be estates of thousands of acres of land and would typically be rented out to farmers who rented homes on the land and worked with rural laborers under the supervision of the lord's land agent.

The Gentry: people who have less land than the aristocracy, maybe somewhere around 1,000 to 3,000 acres. These people were the real local leaders in country matters, and they're the ones we typically see in Eliot and Austen. The upper ranks of the gentry would have included knights and baronets. They owned their own land and often rented it out for farming. The lower tiers of the gentry class included those with long ties to the region, who would have been designated as "squire." It's from the gentry class where Jane Austen draws most of her characters. For the aristocracy, idleness was a badge of merit. So for anyone who had pretensions for moving up in status, the less manual labor a person had to do, the more status that gave him or her.

Mr. Arthur Brooke, Dorothea's uncle, is a nontitled member of the gentry, although he is not a squire. We also know that although he's kind-hearted, he's a fool, and Dorothea looks down on him. He tries to stand for parliament on the Reform platform. Pay attention to what Eliot has this man saying about the politics of the day, out of the mouth of a fool, and from that you can pretty well infer where Eliot stood.

Mr. Casaubon fits into the gentry class. He is "the Reverend Mr. Casaubon"--a younger brother who went into the clergy and then inherited his land from an older brother.

Sir James Chettam is also part of the gentry class.

Pool leaves out the class of people who are "in trade," perhaps because his chapter was about who's who in the country. But he makes the point elsewhere that as the 19th century wore on, society was changing. Industry and manufacturing created new sources of wealth that could compete with the wealth of landowners. The "professions" were also becoming both more influential and more respected: doctors with new real scientific knowledge; clergy who took their posts and education more seriously. So here's a new developing class of people:

Mr. Walter Vincy and Mrs. Lucy Vincy, a respectable manufacturing family, naturally wishing for their children to advance socially.

Tertius Lydgate, of good birth but small financial means, yet one of the new set of physicians who wish to advance his profession.

Nicholas Bulstrode, a wealthy banker married to Mr. Vincy's sister Harriet.

Yeomen, or gentlemen farmers: A farmer was one who often would have to dirty his hands working the land himself. However, a gentleman farmer might be prosperous enough to maintain a lifestyle like that of the gentry. Pool says that the yeoman was a small landowner who was the "mainstay" of the countryside: "Owing to nineteenth-century economic realities, the yeomen either lost their land and descended to the status of rural laborers or became tenant farmers of the big estate holders" (165).

Laborers: The laborers, along with local tradesmen like the carpenter and the blacksmith, made up the "cottagers," people at the bottom of the rural social ladder who inhabited the small thatched dwellings in the local village or one of the estates. These were the types of dwellings that Dorothea was all excited about improving on Sir James's estate.

Mary Garth is in here somewhere, among the yeomen families, probably not as low as the laboring class. She works as Mr. Featherstone's nurse; her father is a surveyor and land agent involved in farm management. Both would be considered to be "in trade" because they accepted money for the work that they performed.

Certainly I'm no expert on "class" in Austen or Eliot, but this gives you some idea of what these characters were meant to represent. Remember that society was changing, the concept of class was fluid, and people were in a position where they could move up or might move down, far more so than had ever before been the case.

Ed. just to tweak things here and there.

Excellent post, Becky. It is noteworthy too that Eliot chooses to situate both story threads on people falling on either side of the Gentry/Trade line, neither group so far up or down as to be either without hope of rising or free from fear of falling.

T - I know what you mean that it feels like a 'break' from the 'real' story..... there is just a hint of 'comic relief' in the whole Bulstrode/Vincy/Featherstone crew, isn't there?

Speaking of a break from the real story, I came here on purpose to ask how the rest of you deal with GE's non-narrative writing - as, for instance, the passage in chapter XV that begins, "Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorizers than the present..." (p 146 in my edition) On my first reading, I couldn't wait for her to finish. Now I read this extraneous material (or is it? Somebody instruct me) readily, patiently, but with no desire to sit and think about it. Is anybody actually dealing with it?

I haven't read Ch XV yet, however, the 'narrator'/GE has intruded here and there and I did spend a moment thinking about how up to some point in the 19th century writers, good ones, could get away with these bossy 'dear reader' intrusions. Changing tastes? I can't think of any contemp. writers (20th to now) who can get away with that sort of thing -- tastes changed? People wanted to remain lost in the story? There was no need to pretend anymore that the novel had a 'lesson' in it, or 'useful' application -- just so you know, while I'm writing this I am sipping tea and throwing little pieces popcorn to the dog, that is, the ones I'm not eating.

>176 LizzieD: Wow, yes I came across that last week, reread it a dozen times and chalked it up to my coming down off of anesthetic and pain killers. LOL.

I must say it's a bit of an intrusion and since I'm on a quest to read as many of the classics that I've missed as I can, I'd never seen that type of thing before. You're right Lucy, contemporary writers don't do that at all.

In one of my notebooks, I wrote this: "the notoriously intrusive Victorian narrator." I also think it's generally agreed that Eliot does a poor job of integrating the plot lines.

I'm smoking chicken--first time I've done this by myself. DH makes getting the fire started look easy. Sigh. It took me an hour to do what it takes him 15 minutes. The Canadians better love this chicken! Heh. Gotta go--I'm obsessing about the temperature of the smoker.

Aha! And interesting too -- about not being great at getting all the plot lines to work together - not that I consider that an essential thing at all.

Now this passage is just plain bad writing in the intrusive narrator vein, just wayyy too convoluted: Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration:-reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs Hunh?????; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exagerrations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. And if that wasn't bad enough it gets even worse!!! But these kinds of inspiration Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle action inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is th last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space." Whaaa???

My theory about this sort of attack of pomposity is that Eliot really really wants to be a heavy-hitter; bringing in some of the cool and interesting stuff about medicine and contemporary science, making the novel 'relevant' but yowza. Just awful stuff.

Somehow-or-other I've gotten to Chapter XVII -- I sat for quite a while waiting for my child to emerge from play practice...... they went late, making up for missing out yesterday (after-school cancelled - snow).

I can't remember anything about this plot, so I have no idea how things are going to go for Lydgate and Rosamund! But I am sufficiently intrigued with Lydgate -- he does represent something new and different and Eliot is not wrong in noticing and wanting to present him.

Becky -- he makes me think of Hamilton, a bit.

Is she dissing Blake with the bat's wings and all? What is that about? Anybody know? Hmm better go look at Blake's dates......

wow, disappear for a day or so and miss great discussions.

I'm also fascinated by Lydgate. Oddly he reminds me of both Dodo and Casaubon. He's very passionate and ambitious about accomplishing great things in medicine and when he does fall in love he does it in a big rash way. But he has very detached thoughts about marrying and falling in love (except for his one big love back in the day).

180- Passages like those are why I have a hard time comparing Eliot to Austen. But they both make fun of the society they lived in, so I guess I see the comparison.

I'm liking this so far. I'm to the point where Dorothea is beginning to 'see the light'. Suddenly I'm liking her a lot more, and I'm starting to detest Casaubon. Initially I didn't know what to make of Dodo except to be afraid for her...and I felt a bit of compassion for him, since everyone mocked him. But that's probably because I was seeing him through Dorothea's eyes. She is really turning into a great character.

I must say the writing is what made me leary of reading Middlemarch. I tried to read Silas Marner last year and gave up after 50 pages. I also bailed on Wives and Daughters by Gaskell and The Return of the Native by Hardy. Middlemarch has been easier than I expected but there are sentences and passages that I just don't understand. But for the most part, I've stopped worrying about it because I'm enjoying the story. I think what I like the best is that all the characters seem relatively three dimensionable.

I must say the writing is what made me leary of reading Middlemarch. I tried to read Silas Marner last year and gave up after 50 pages. I also bailed on Wives and Daughters by Gaskell and The Return of the Native by Hardy. Middlemarch has been easier than I expected but there are sentences and passages that I just don't understand. But for the most part, I've stopped worrying about it because I'm enjoying the story. I think what I like the best is that all the characters seem relatively three dimensionable.

I am only up to Book 2, Chapter 14, so I seem to be behind everyone else, but I agree with Yolana - I like Lydgate. I am wondering if Eliot gave us 2 couples (Dorothy and Casaubon and Lydgate and Rosamond) who have such unrealistic expectations for comparison purposes.

Pat, I picked that passage for just that reason - sometimes (all too often) the best writers succumb to the temptation to gas on in this ornate and convoluted and incomprehensible way!).

I listened to The Return of the Native being read aloud by Alan Rickman and I loved it -- he really brought out the humor as well as the pathos of all the people in it and did amazing local accents. He won a best audio of the year for it, but there are some who didn't like it, but for me, it opened up a whole dimension for Hardy -- mainly how incredibly funny he can be -- all because of that masterly reading. I'm now quite keen to read the rest of Hardy -- I've only read Tess.

I'm back with a little more to add - which is that I think we approach the 'great writers' with altogether too much reverence, expecting it to be hard going, missing the fun bits because we are 't really expecting them -- that's why Rickman's reading was such a revelation to me, he was having so much fun.

I'm behind on my reading as usual... I have a free afternoon which will be spent reading MM.

>177 sibylline:, 178: Regarding the modern version of "Dear Reader" intrusions from the narrator...there are plenty of these in Jose Saramago's The Elephant's Journey, but they were short and rather humorous.

There's another kind of digression that I'm ambivalent about --- and that is the informational digression. (Is there a literary term for this?) I'm thinking about Melville and Moby-Dick and all that cetology and ropes and blubber-rendering. I thought itt a 19th century convention that had disappeared until I started reading Richard Powers and was treated to the same kind of instruction about DNA or computers or sand cranes or whatever his focus in a particular book. I realize that doesn't have anything to do with *MM* but I'm compulsive about getting stuff out of brain and onto page....
Meanwhile, I think I'm still ahead of many of you, but I just enjoyed this sentence from chapter XXI. It's a truism, but appallingly well stated: "We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves..." That has the ring of universality and Victorianism to me.

I think one thing that really helped me appreciate some of the humor and depth of the characters in Middlemarch was watching the DVD. It's really well done, imo.

Maybe I'll try the Rickman audio of The Return of the Native Lucy. Somehow hearing the language is easier for me to listen to than it is to read. I do admit to feeling like a dunce when I try to read Victorian literature.

Re: the language--does anyone know if that is how they talked at that time? As you said, Lucy, ornate and convoluted?

>188 LizzieD:. Digression--yep, you got the term, Peggy. Oh, you nailed it with your Melville example. How I hated reading that book, because I'm one of those people who is congenitally incapable of skipping anythng. And then Richard Powers--haha, you make me laugh with that one. Ack.

If anyone is really interested, there's a book I would recommend titled Dear Reader: The Conscripted Audience in Nineteenth Century British Fiction, by Garrett Stewart. It's not nearly so dry as the title makes it sound. This is one of those books that I bought when I was in school because the topic interested me, but that I never had time to read. It looks to be an excellent treatment of the evolving reader.

Wow: Zero ratings and zero reviews of this book from LT readers.

And what about those battle scenes in War and Peace??? I'm not against information dumps in novels, Pynchon, for ex is a master who comes to mind, but it has to work somehow with the story (which he does -- so that you are dying to know even MORE about the origins of the Pinkerton Detectives or Nicolas Tesla whatever when he is through with you). Some of it is just showing-off. With Eliot here, I feel, as I said, that she is determined to be in the big leagues and is choosing to have this sciencey-modern guy- medicine angle, I'm OK with it because in fact it was one of the areas that was about to start exploding with discoveries and change and improvements but I don't think she is finding it at all easy or natural to do and to make fit with the story.

Pat -- both Anthony Trollope and John Galsworthy are delightful to read; the first solidly a Victorian and the second with a leg in the more modern world since he lived into the '30's or so.... And the Wilkie Collins and his marvelous tales -- not quite as heavy-handed as some of the big boys and girls.

The Garrett Stewart sounds worthy..... alas we don't have time to read everything we want to. Readers certainly do evolve -- just think how out of fashion the short story is, how readers used to wait month to month for installments, chapter by chapter of many of the books we casually have on our shelves!

True words: "we don't have time to read everything we want to."

For those who are interested, there's a biog of Eliot: George Eliot: A Life written by Rosemary Ashton, 1996 (undoubtedly there are others). I like what Ashton says in the Preface: "The present Life of George Eliot is intended to be a critical biography rather than a purely documentary one. I proceed on the assumption that the reader is interested in George Eliot the writer as well as George Eliot the woman. Since writing is what she did for a living, I discuss her writing from both the point of view of its origins in her life and from the point of view of the reader responding to the works" (xii).

P.S. However, the cover illustration is an absurd unlikeness of GE.

How did I like it? Ref. the quotation at the top.

I can't believe that picture!!!! How could Ms. Ashton allow her publishers to do that? It calls into question the seriousness of her effort to me.
I see that I own George Eliot: A Biography by Gordon S. Haight. One review here says that it is the classic, essential scholarly bio. The picture on the front of this book looks like others I've seen even though it's a little flattering. And, I take back what I said about the picture on the Ashton book. It's from an 1850 portrait of Marian Evans by François D'Albert Durade. (It always pays to check if you're going to be adamant, Peggy.) (Guess I should read this one too.)

The Ashton pic does seem a trifle idealized......

Thanks for the tip about the Haight biog, Penny.

I looked to see where the portrait of Eliot on the Ashton book came from too--and found what you found--but still, I think a biographer risks his/her credibility with such an obvious misrepresentation--not her nose, not her chin, not much of anything that looks anything like her. "Sentimental" might be the best thing you can say for it.

Brenda Maddox wrote a 2010 biog of Eliot, George Eliot in Love. One reviewer titles it "George Eliot for Dummies" and totally pans the thing. Oh well, nice try--ha.

I think I left off commenting in an orderly fashion somewhere around Ch 14 -- which ends with Fred giving his mother the money he has gotten from his uncle after handing over the letter from Bulstrode (and at the end of this chapter, we find Fred HAS in fact borrowed money - from Mary's father!!!)

Ch XV looks and feels different from what has gone before, massive paragraphs, a more distant and far-seeing narrative distance..... the description of Lydgate finding his vocation is lovely though and before he got down from his chair, the world was made new to him... All who have been seized by some passion know what she means... Anyhow, Lydgates choice of Middlemarch is made apparent, he wants a place where he will have privacy and autonomy, and yet, be intimate with his patients, part of a community. This chapter ends on an odd note with this (unconvincing) bid for our sympathies and understanding of Lydgate with this experience that shatters his trust in his judgement of women......

So what starts to emerge for Lydgate is that he is, despite his wishes to be left alone, going to be drawn into a typical small town stew -- in this case who to appoint to the post of chaplain at a new hospital.... we as readers see the train wreck coming long before Lydgate in his conviction that he can avoid taking sides does. He grows fond of one of the two candidates, Farebrother, and realizes that the man really needs the extra money..... so he is no longer indifferent.... he has made a few enemies here and there, Fred Vincy, Mr. Chichely the coroner.....

On Rosamund: "Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the most decisive mark of her cleverness." Eiiot grants Rosy a real gift as a musician, although E. sort of snatches it back and intimates that really it only sounds good, is not original, but the result of having had a good teacher and being good at imitation..... which I have to say is sort of a cheap shot, poor Rosy! As if how could anyone that pretty actually have real talent?

Anyhow - I love Farebrother (well-named) and was touched by this remark: I am some ten or twelve years older than you and have come to a compromise.... (about his ambitions)... he is gracious and kind and good. He warns Lydgate, at the end of Ch XVII that he will have to choose between him and Bulstrode's pet, the Rev. Tyke.....

I'm muddling around in chapter XVIII at the moment but I thought the bit about Lydgate's attitude about money was interesting. He had always known in a general way that he was not rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men. I'm reading a book about Alexander Hamilton, and I keep finding interesting parallels, for now, between Lydgate, handsome, ambitious, young and well-connected -- yet entirely on his own. An archetypal type of young man, I suppose, one to whom things could turn out well or badly --

It seems as if four chapters is all I can manage of this book before I become befuddled. In this case, I read a paragraph towards the end of Ch. 16 3x with very little comprehension. It's on page 155 in my edition and begins: "Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration..." I got hopelessly confused by the excessive verbiage as the paragraph continued...so I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on...

...I turned the page and laughed out loud as I read the beginning of the next paragraph: "As he threw down his book..." Well, I've never thrown down a book in my life, but I felt like it in my frustration with that unweildly previous paragraph! I think I'm going to pick up my Louise Penny book and go to bed to clear my head.

Other than these occasional roadblocks, I'm enjoying the book. The story of Lydgate and Rosamond is a classic example of Lucy's trainwreck about to happen. I want to tell him to run for his life, but he is so blinded by Rosy's blonde beauty, he doesn't stand a chance. I find myself wondering how Dodo and Mr. Casaubon are getting along.

>180 sibylline:: Backtracking here. I'm feeling better after reading your whaa?? comments, Lucy. I read this early in the week, but it didn't "take" as I hadn't read that convoluted passage yet. Duh.

Pat, I like what you said earlier about not worrying about it. Makes sense to me. My DVDs are waiting for me at the library. Yay!

I just finished Chapter 17 and that passage that Lucy cited back in msg #180 jumped out at me when I read it. I still tried to read it twice hoping it would make more sense but that proved to be useless.

I'm feeling a little sorry for Rosamond. Lydgate has his medical studies to occupy him after his dinner with the Vincys but she has nothing "to divert her mind from that ruminating habit, that inward repetition of looks, words, and phrases, which makes a large part in the lives of most girls." So glad I didn't live in the 1800s although I knew exactly what that reference meant!

I've been reading Middlemarch in the middle of the night, just before I finally get to bed, which may explain why I can't comment closely on the text/chararcters others can, though I believe last night's reading was about Fred.

The comparison between Jane Austen and George Eliot? They are very different but what they do have in common is the detailed portrait of the place of a class of women (and men) in their society at the time. Actually, nearly all 19th century novels offer this, even the really bad ones, but obviously the good ones are thoughtful, witty, illuminating and entertaining with it.

I read an anthology recently with extracts from Silas Marner in it that made me interested in reading that book - I had no idea that at least part of the storyline is concerned with the adoption of a baby from its dying mother and then bringing it up - baby care and child rearing in fiction are pet topics of mine at the moment.

Just checking in. I'm a few pages into Chapt. XVI. I understand what people are complaining about here--dense paragraphs that give up very little even on a third reading. I would say that it's one of those books that calls for a willing reader--willing to shrug some of it off, as you say, Donna, and willing not to get too hung up on the dense, digressive parts. I think of this book as something like one of those drawings where the figure and the ground are reversible--you know, like the ""face vase" picture.



What do you see, the figure or the ground? If you get so hung up on the places where, admittedly, the writing is just convoluted and bad, then you probably will become too frustrated with the book to make it through. Which would be a shame, because the book is worth it, and you'll miss things like Eliot having so much fun writing about Mrs. Vincy and her "blooming good-natured face, with the too volatile pink strings floating from her fine throat, and her cheery manners . . . certainly among the great attractions of the Vincy house" (109 in my edition--Chapt. 16).

I plan to read in this today--hopefully get through Chapt. 18 or so. Bye for now.

Yep, Donna, I don't think that whole digression made any sense at all, some kind of overreach -- and it is not what we are reading Eliot for anyway -- as Becky points out with that lively quote just above about Mrs. Vincy.

I had a funny thought about how so many of these novelists of this era point out that it is the unaffected people, of whatever class and circumstance, who are attractive, who are, in the main the ones we, the readers, care about. Then I thought, that is interesting, are readers (and writers) , in general a more unaffected, genuine bunch of people so we like reading about ourselves? Ha ha!

I get my snow tires today and I will feel so much better!
Weather is lovely, btw, lots of sun! 26 degrees and everything coated in glittering frost.

I'm just going to post quotes that jump out at me for one reason or another.

Chapt. 15. "the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance between intellectual alliance and the social good. Lydgate's nature demanded this combination" (99).

Chapt. 15. "Lydgate was ambitious above all to contribute towards enlarging the scientific, rational basis of his profession" (101).

Chapt. 15. "And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was clever with that sort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous" (109).

Ha--Lucy, now I remember your reference to Blake and your question in #180: Is she dissing Blake with the bat's wings and all? What is that about? Anybody know? Hmm better go look at Blake's dates......

I'm pretty sure Lucy is referring to this part where we're into a long discussion surrounding Lydgate's thoughts about marriage--surely not for five years because he has more pressing business. "Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration . . . or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly many with bat's wings and spurts of phosphoresence" (113) Seriously, is GE dissing Blake? It sure sounds like it! Lucy, that's a brilliant, close reading. Not only would Joe "Casaubon" Carrol give you an "A" for the day, but he might also smile! Haha!

Wow, that blew my mind so badly, I'm gonna have to go rake leaves or something for awhile. See ya later!

So the Q. is why would she so dislike Blake?

Aw shucks.... brilliant, close reading me, happy puppy.

Off to the dump. Anybody want some seventy (eighty)-year old (I am not kidding) ice-skates? The DH had to sort of go through a whole letting-go process when he saw me taking them out to the car, 'But those are skates for if somebody comes by and needs some skates' to which I said, "Do you seriously think anyone would ever ever put these on their feet, ever?" and he hung his head and whispered, "i guess not." -- I'll put them in the Swap Shack, but really! I don't even dare tell him, B. about the box of 'pieces of string too short to save' it might give him ideas. (That is, friends, from the Memoir Life Work by the poet Donald Hall.... and has zippety-doodah to do with MM, sorreee.) Back later. In my new rural setting I can let the leaves fall where they may, and the wind blows them away, it's amazing! In PH we had two huge trees, one in front and one in back that were so much work!

From the Donald Hall memoir: A man was cleaning the attic of an old house in New England and he found a box which was full of tiny pieces of string. On the lid of the box there was an inscription in an old hand: "String too short to be saved." Poor Knox--heh.

That's so great! The only difference in New England and N.C., then, seems to be that we save the string but don't label it!
As to *MM*, I find myself silently screaming, "Don't do it! Don't do it!" almost every time I pick the book up these days. I'm in chapter XXIV reading about Fred --- oh dear, oh dear. So far Mary Garth seems to be the only young person who isn't making sad, far-reaching mistakes....

Elkie -- belatedly, Silas Marner was the first GE that I just LOVED -- after reading it I went back and reread The Mill on the Floss (and felt that I got it the second time. Middlemarch has a different mood to it - a kind of formality? Or maybe it is just the pall that Casaubon casts over the whole story Anyhow, it is interesting how one novel and not another can be the one to 'unlock' an author for you. I had that happen last year with Hardy, even though I haven't yet tackled more of his novels, I know I will -- I have my eye on The Mayor of Casterbridge in fact....... any takers?????

Last night I was reading one of Eliot's long narrator cadenzas and thinking that really her use of language reflects the victorian love of detailed ornementation and intricasy that you could see in their fashion and furniture, much the way that Cormac McCarthy's prose really reflects minimalism in the beaux arts.

Thanks for that insight, Yolana. I probably would appreciate Victorian literature more if I knew more about that time.

Lovely insight Yolana --

So while I sat having my snow tires put on my car (yay) I read up to the end of Chapter XX where our raven-tressed heroine is weeping in her hotel room in Rome, having FINALLY begun to get what a terrible mistake she has made...... but let me start from where I left off -- namely XVIII where poor old Lydgate has to make the choice between Tyke and Farebrother...... one can't help but feel it is his first blunder on the road to perdition. XIX transports us to Rome and the company of Ladislaw and a friend who espies a lovely young woman, who, of course is none other than our Dodo. XX occupies itself with Dodo's ruminations. I found the passage near the beginning of the chapter which, while wordy, appears to be saying that basically the shock of seeing all that sensuality and glorying in youthful bodies in sculptures in Rome has tumbled poor Dodo into a frame of mind where poor old Casaubon is not looking so good, not for nothing Book II is called "Young and Old". Rome has had that effect on northerners and puritans again and again and again for well on three hundred years now...... She's too smart not to sense that something very big is out there waiting to be discovered, bigger than she could have ever guessed from her provincial education in her provincial village. And she sees that Casaubon is so limited he is not affected by it --- that he misses it altogether with his nose in some tiny detail and she begins to feel very alone. Sigh.

Loved your synopsis of Chapters XXVIII-XX, Lucy. Looking forward to reading them tonight. The first episode of the DVD I saw obviously combined Books I and II so I've already "seen" these chapters. I'm increasingly loving this story. Dodo seems like such an unfortunate nickname however.

Thank you, Lucy. Ditto what Pat said. More tomorrow.

I know this is insane but I've picked up this very short (67 p) novel -- with an afterword almost as long as it is, Virago edition of an out-of-character Eliot novel (novellini) called The Lifted Veil. I happen to have it because I have Viragophilia.... I know I've read it, but I can't remember it, and I just a) need the gratification of something short that I can get through and b) thought it might be interesting to read while reading another Eliot. So stay tuned, either it will be a great idea or my head will explode. The reviews of it btw are all listed under the Virago edition not the one that comes up with the touchstone where it is bundled in with a couple of other shorties of hers.

I don't think The Lifted Veil was very popular with people on the Virago group here, though I would still be tempted if I saw a Virago edition. I think I saw a non-V edition the other day which I resisted.

Well, even though our Lucy consistently calls her Dodo, I think that's a nickname used in the book for Dorothea only by her kid sister. I'm very happy that my childhood nicknames used by my brothers are (largely) unknown--haha.

So I'll follow the scheme of my posting from yesterday--picking out quotations that for one reason or another I find meaningful.

I'm still on Chapt XVI, but the end is in sight.

"Poor Lydgate! {says the narrator} or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing" (114). I think that one sentence goes far in letting us know Eliot's point of view of this particular couple and what we can expect of them in the coming chapters. This will either be their challenge to overcome or their downfall.

GE again gives us a head's up regarding Rosamond in a long paragraph which I won't quote here hear the end of Chapt XVI. Lydgate doesn't see it coming, but this is what he ought to be worried about: "Rosamond, in fact, was entirely occupied not exactly with Tertius Lydgate as he was in himself, but with his relation to her" (115).

GE continues to throw in the "clever" description of Rosamond's mind, plus she has her (at the end of Chapt XVI) reading (per my note) "extremely popular but second rate poetry" by Thomas Moore.

On to Chapt. XVII. See #196 for Lucy's discussion of same. Oh, I will never get through this book. Now I remember why I love GE so much. Her description of the three Farebrother ladies is just priceless (116 in my edition), as in "Miss Winifred Farebrother, the Vicar's elder sister, well-looking like himself, but nipped and subdued as single women are apt to be who spend their lives in uninterrupted subjection to their elders."

Mr. Fairbrother and his drawers of specimens (118). This reminds me of a Louisa May Alcott book--Little Men, was it? (1871) where Jo March was married to the German professor and they turned the mansion (inherited from Jo's aunt) into an orphanage and school. --Just an aside. I guess I remember the Alcott book because those drawers really caught my fancy. When I was 10 or so and reading those books I loved making collections of things--seeds and leaves and insects, etc. So now I have to re-read Little Men. haha.

It doesn't say much of Lydgate at this point to know from his conversation with Mr. Fairbrother that he has "hardly noticed" Mary Garth (121). We get another confirmation of the goodness of Mary Garth when Fairbrother says, "She is a favourite of mine." And then Fairbrother warns Lydgate away from Bultrode (121), but I get the impression that Lydgate isn't going to pay any attention to the warning.

Chapt XVIII through XX--see Lucy's synopsis, #209.

In XVIII we find Lydgate "often in consultation" with Bulstrode about his hospital (123).

Lydgate casts the deciding vote for the (paid) chaplain to the Infirmary, work that Mr. Fairbrother had long been doing without pay. The Rev. Walter Tyke is voted in over Mr. F. (129).

Chapt. XX. Lucy sets out the chapter better than I could. "All these crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday" (135).

Poor Dorothea. "He had not found marriage a rapturous state, but he had no idea of being anything else than an irreproachable husband, who would make a charming young woman as happy as she deserved to be" (138).

And here we have another couple, not unlike Lydgate and Rosamond, who completely miss the boat in understanding each other. So I'm thinking--"theme"--haha. "She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers" (139).

"Joe" Casaubon's assessment of Dorothea's attitude towards him and his work is chilling: "And this cruel outward accuser was there in the shape of a wife--nay, of a young bride, who, instead of observing his abundant pen-scratches and amplitude of paper with the uncritical awe of an elegant-minded canary-bird, seemed to present herself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference" (139); "facile conjectures of ignorant onlookers," he says to her (140). Oh, our "Dodo" is in big trouble--but we knew that.

Chapt. XXI. "Young Ladislaw" (which is how D. thinks of him, even though he's older than she is) visits Dorothea in Rome.

Ooops--our Young Ladislaw doesn't think much of his second cousin: "He had never been fond of Mr. Casaubon, and if it had not been for the sense of obligation, would have laughed at him as a Bat of erudition" (142).

Dorothea admires Ladislaw's smile and his good humor; he's won over by her frankness.

GE lets us in on a little secret about Mr. Casaubon's big project. Says Will: If Mr. Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble. . . . the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocket-compass while they have made good roads" (144).

Will continues to get a bead on the "real" Dorothea: "She was not coldly clever {that word again} and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling. She was an angel beguiled" (145).

It's been a momentous day for Dorothea: "To-day she had begun to see that she had been under a wild illusion in expecting a response to her feeling from Mr. Casaubon, and she had felt the waking of a presentiment. . . ." (146). As the narrator tells us, Dorothea had begun to emerge from her stupidity.

Chapt. XXII and end of Book II

An agreeable dinner with Will Ladislaw and the Casaubons; then the three go together on an outing the next day to see "a studio or two." They "happen" to find their way to a studio of a friend of Will's, Adolf Naumann, the setup for this meeting happening in Chapt. XIX. Will is clearly jealous when Dorothea agrees to Naumann making a "slight sketch" of her--he has some temptation to knock Naumann down when he was adjusting her arm (150). Will is clearly a tormented man.

Will comes the next day for tea when he knows Casaubon will be off at the library. He and Dorothea have a talk, and they both probably say more than they should, although in Dorothea's defense, she is undoubtedly innocent of Will's growing feeling for her. Says Will: "'And now you will go and be shut up in that stone prison at Lowick; you will be buried alive. It makes me savage to think of it! I would rather never have seen you than think of you with such a prospect.' Will again feared that he had gone too far" (153).

Then a discussion ensues between them that clearly shows Dorothea beginning to think about the implications of Ladislaw's comment about Casuabon's studies and "discoveries."

A rather ominous ending sentence: ""Dorothea did not mention Will again" (157).

The next read: Book III, "Waiting for Death."

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Happy reading.

I'm wondering how people might feel about "tweaking" the pace of this read a little bit. I'm the one who advocated for this slow pace, but now I'm wondering if reading this novel so slowly isn't putting some people off of it? I notice that Book III is only 50 pages long--not much reading for a whole week. Would anyone mind if we do Book III and IV next week? That would be about 140 pages (my edition). Please weigh in with your thoughts.

Becky, I can probably do Book III and IV next week, and if I can't, certainly don't mind if you guys get ahead of me a little. 50 pages seems like nothing and it makes sense to try and do 2 books next week considering the following week is Thanksgiving.

Btw, I loved your previous post (#214). I'm really enjoying all these different characters and for some reason, I'm fond of Casaubon. But then I have in my head the version from the DVD who seems somehow "wounded."

I might not be able to read both books, but I can try!

I might get book 3 and half of book 4 read...but I also do not mind if the group gets a little bit ahead of me.

I'm game! I wouldn't mind pushing on with all due haste.
Super post Becky. I had a host of ghastly nicknames from my older bro and sister..... If anyone is bothered I can stop --I just hate writing out her whole name mainly, but I could just switch to D.

Is Will being mean about the Casaubon's lack of German scholarship or does he know that for sure (I assume here she is referring to the work of those like the Brothers Grimm)? And what do we, so far, think of Will anyway? He seems to be very good at criticizing and seems apt to fly off the handle (I find that slightly stereo-typed -- his 'non' English blood making him a bit unpredictable and foreign and overly dramatic) and certainly is prolonging his 'gap' year...... has no clue what he wants to do with himself, so that it is not altogether silly of D. to think of him as 'young.' He is certainly a contrast to Lydgate, who while a prat in some ways, at least is passionate about his work and has a vocation.

And now I better get readin'!!!

"prolonging his gap year"--I just fell off my chair laughing. As the mother of a son who has done that, at least to some extent, I don't terribly fault Young Will for that. My examples of the opposite--people I've known who started out as Wunderkinds--have all become burnouts at an early age. So. . . maybe it all evens out, somehow.

I just had one of those "eureka" moments. It's just an idea--I'm throwing it out here. Would people in the group like to take ownership of one of these remaining books--meaning that you would be responsible for posting--something--in other words, be responsible for sort of taking the lead on posting for a particular book. So for example, if you have Book Four, then maybe you could pull out quotations that strike you as interesting, discuss the dynamics of what's going on with the characters in the book, do a little online research about an issue in one of the chapters that you find interesting, etc. It wouldn't mean that you would be the only person posting; it would just mean that you would be responsible for seeing that something is posted for a particular book. I really enjoyed posting on the chapters on Book Two, but I honestly don't have the time to keep posting that much for the rest of the book.

We just finished Book Two, so we have Three through Eight to go.
Do I have any takers? I know there are a lot of people out there who are reading this book here. It's a whole lot of fun and really quite engaging if you have something personally invested.

#220 I like that idea. If this were any other month I'd jump in. But I am woefully behind of all of you and won't catch up any time soon.

I have had a family implosion so reading time is severely curtailed. I have started Book I and would like to think sometime soon I'll get a few good stretches and finish Book I and II. I am loving all the comments. When I finally got the first 23 pages read I enjoyed seeing things you guys had commented on.

Becky, I also think it's a great idea but realistically I can't commit to anything until after December 7th when my Hemingway course ends (and the book group I have to lead on December 4th is over). At the rate I'm going, I'll still be reading Middlemarch then and would be happy to step in but am not sure where everyone else will be.

No problem. Just thought I'd throw the idea out there to see if anyone was interested.

I am behind everyone else I think, but I am putting in my two cents anyway. I am enjoying Eliot's portrait of Dorothy. I got a real sound picture of her before she was married, and in book 2, chapter 8, a good picture of her after her marriage. She was so sure she was doing the right thing by marrying Joe (I refuse to spell the guy's name out all the time, so I am sticking with Joe) and then after her marriage, shows the disappointment (and disillusionment?) that was inevitable.

I'm getting the sense that people are burdened by time constraints at this busy time of year--the holidays are coming at us pretty quickly. I propose that we go back to the original schedule: one book a week. That would put us on Book Three this week, starting Sunday or Monday, whenever your week starts.

I'm good -- though if 3 is really that short and time allows me, I'll push on.

Yes -- though hastened I think by being in a place like Rome where she can't help but be expanded into a new awareness of many many things -- it is poignant though, isn't it? It goes to show up too how hopeless Joe is that he isn't touched by it at all.

Ch XXI ends so sadly 'But Dorothea remembered it to the last with the vividness with which we all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born. Today she had begun to see that she had been under a wild illusion in expecting a response to her feeling from Mr. Casaubon, and she had felt in the waking of a presentiment that there might be a sad consciousness in his life which made as great a need on his side as on her own. .... The paragraph that follows and ends the chapter is equally poignant.

As I read it I was thinking, no, Jane Austen never did anything like this -- the 'after' -- not for the protagonist anyhow, you see unhappier marriages or 'settling for' situations.... there is nothing like the above pause, where the thoughts and observations go quite deep with great compassion.

Onward!

>225 labwriter:: *Sigh of relief* Thanks, Becky. I have no hopes of reading two books in MM this next week as I'm still catching up with this week's assignment reading. I usually want to plow through a book like this to keep the momentum going, but I've had some other great books calling to me lately.

I simply HAD to read Pat Conroy's memoir on reading as soon as it came out. I also wanted to read The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest to give back to my daughter when she comes for Thanksgiving. And then, the new Louise Penny finally arrived at the library for me which means I have to read the one leading up to it. Book pressure!

I was so disappointed with Dr. Lydgate when he took the easy way out and cast his vote for Mr. Tyke instead of supporting his friend Farebrother (love that name!) I suppose he is being pragmatic by taking Mr. Bulstrode's side. I wonder if he feels a sort of kinship with him because they both came to Middlemarch with no connections. Bulstrode gained favor with the townspeople by marrying Harriet (Vincy) but Lydgate doesn't intend to marry for five years (ha!) so has to ride on someone else's coattails...and why not someone with influence? It is to Farebrother's credit that he holds no ill will against Lydgate.

I am beginning to muster up some sympathy for Dorothea's plight. She thought she would be a full partner in Joe-Ed's scholarly quests, but it becomes clear that she married a stodgy, stick-in-the mud rather than an intellectual who wanted a partner in writing his book. Her dreams are dashed..."the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday." Poor Dorothea indeed.

Two short chapters to read today *pant, pant* and I'll be back on target!

Becky, I'm happy to stay with the original schedule. I forgot we were reading different versions and what is 50 pages in your Book 3 is 85 in mine so I was being way optimistic that I could read two books next week.

Love those insights Donna! Esp about Lydgate and couldn't be more sympa about your book pressures.

Just peeking in to say that the first time I read MM, about two years ago, I really, really despised Casaubon, as I saw him at that time being the instrument of D.'s disillusionment and disappointment. However, on this second reading (and one reason I'm not posting much is that I'm finding myself reading chapters twice to get the full sense {oh, I'm delusional, I freely admit it} of what's being said), I find that Mr. C. is equally disappointed by the collapse of what he fondly hopes will be "delight" in his marriage. Should he have married? Probably not; he's just not suited for that kind of intimate, give-and-take relationship. But does his hope of a happy twilit marriage make him at fault? Perhaps not more than D. herself, who through the opposite end of the telescope (extreme youth and lack of knowledge of both herself and the world) makes precisely the same mistake: she expects something her partner simply cannot deliver. Instead of the extreme irritation with Mr. C. and to a lesser extent with D., this go-round I feel so very sorry for them both.

In fact, I feel much more sympathy for them than I do for Mr. Lydgate. Somehow it seems he should have been a bit more aware of what was happening and so less apt to be manipulated.

Here's a quote from the beginning of Chapter 9 that really struck me, and I apologize if someone already posted it:

"And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it."

Indeed.

Wow! What a thoughtful post. And fascinating. I kind of remember (as much as I can remember) being impatient and dismissive of Casaubon -- perhaps that is a younger person's reading, in our Lydgate-ish arrogance!!!!!

I noticed how slowly this was loading and realize that in a few posts we need a Thread #2!!! That seems amazing to me, given we are only 1/4 of the way.

btw I've been meaning to go back to the ch in the Vatican to post pix of some of the things they were looking at, just the interior of St. Peter's is indeed enough to blow most circuits in yr. brain, and then all the stuff....... I haunted it for a week in my early 20's. -- Anyway I have a feeling it matters, that GE chose which statues to highlight. Hold me to that -- I can't do it from home, given our slow internet, but I can from my internet bakery or the library.

That will be a treat, Lucy. I'm just popping in to say that I'll proceed to do my best, whatever that may turn out to be as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I have in hand my copy of More Literary Houses, which I find delightful if a bit romanticized. (Doggone my time! In my eagerness to get to it, I ripped the front dust jacket almost in two.) She has a double-page spread of Lowick Manor from the sunny side, and it looks like every Anglophile's dream of a country house. Dorothea's room is light with the windowed alcove that Celia admired and the "pretty frenchie tip-toe furniture" - all in all a place I'd rather live than the drawing room of another house, "everything spanking new and in the very latest fashion." I'll list the houses included in this one on the book page itself in case you're interested.....I'm sorry I'm not techie enough to scan the pictures for you, but that might not be legal anyway.
And was Rosalind Ashe the author of the GE biography you were mentioning, Becky? I'm curious to find out.

The one on my shelf is by Rosemary Ashton.

This week has been an absolutely crazy one for me so I am only just getting stuck into book 2 of Middlemarch and I haven't yet caught up on the 73 unread posts on this thread!

#173 "I can't help the feeling as I'm reading Book Two that this is a "commercial break" where we are actually biding our time while waiting for the Casaubons to return from their honeymoon."

That's sort of sums up how I feel about book 2 so far Terri.

#167 And Lucy, I also had the opening quote to Ch 13 marked up, although I had to read it a few times to figure out what Eliot meant!

I think I've read somewhere (perhaps in this thread, perhaps in the notes in my book) that where the epigraphs to chapters aren't referenced they're written by Eliot herself. I wasn't sure if that meant she'd written them as part of other, possibly unpublished, works and was quoting them in Middlemarch or whether she'd written them for Middlemarch itself. Does anyone have any thoughts?

#174 I am going to pick the Pool book up from the library this week Becky, but that was a very helpful summary post.

#185 "I am wondering if Eliot gave us 2 couples (Dorothy and Casaubon and Lydgate and Rosamond) who have such unrealistic expectations for comparison purposes."

That's what I have been assuming Stasia. It will be interesting to see how the two couples compare as the book goes on. I can't help feeling quite sorry for both of them.

#186 A digression: I love Alan Rickman! Do you remember who that audio book was published by? Does he read others?

#190 And my library actually has a copy of Dear Reader at the central resource section. Perhaps after the Daniel Pool?

#192 Rosemary Ashton wrote the introduction for my Penguin edition of MM as well as the notes and they are pretty good. And your quote is sadly too true.

And I will catch up on the rest of the posts later.

I've finished Book Two. All I can say about the Casaubons is "I told you so." THIS is why there are laws now about having to be a certain age to marry. And I love that she's enjoying having Will around, although I sense more trouble.
I like Lydgate, but I think he will have his hands full with Rosamund. And so far, Mary Garth does seem to be the most sensible of them all, but I'm not holding my breath!
I have to say, I really enjoy Eliots asides. It seems less like she's writing a book, and more like she's telling a story. When she starts to get verbose, I just skim.
So the final result is that we are just doing Book III this week? And although it's a good idea in theory for each of us to take turns commenting on the books, I just don't feel insightful enough to have anything memorable to say. I'm jus' readin'!

OK. Gonna get brave and jump in here. I just finished Book 2 myself. Not sure which is more amazing - the book or the thread. I'm quite enjoying them both!

I've been playing catchup since day one (for several disconcerting reasons) and finally feel in the right place. Needed to borrow my neighbor's plow to get through Bk 2! Re-reading helped... but didn't they edit books back then? There was waaaaay too much discussion over the choice of hospital chaplain. Geeze! By the time Lydgate walked in, I just didn't care anymore...politics, bleh!

Perhaps something will come of all this digression later?? I will admit that dispersed throughout all the "rambling" are some gems - that you all are mining. Fun! I'd love to skip over some of this stuff but I'm afraid to miss anything.

I'm really hoping this book will have taught me one thing by the time I am done. And that would be to mark passages that strike me as I read them... not wait to look for them later. I do believe my book will have that "porcupine" look.

I'm about ready to ditch the teeny tiny print in my Norton edition and jump over to the Kindle. Too much of a struggle for my old eyes and tiring. Oh well, I tried. :)

I've been keeping up with the reading schedule, but honestly, the book hadn't started to grab me yet until last night. I started book 3, and I'm finally feeling the interest in the characters that I feel when I'm really enjoying a book.

I guess I was just a slow starter with this one. So far the character that I trust the most is Mary Garth. She's so sensible and practical, not allowing her heart to eclipse her good judgment. Celia is a fun character too, and Dorothea is growing into a character that I can really enjoy.

I will start Book 3 tomorrow and probably steamroll my way to the end because my mind just cannot do the slow as you go. Hopefully the notes I take will keep me up with the thread discussion.

Anywho, I was completely stunned and put off by Lydgate's vote but I guess I should have anticipated it whe GE said,

For the first time Lydgate was feeling the hampering threadlike pressure of small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity.

I just didn't expect him to take the coward's way out. It may be foreshadowing.

I loved in chapter XX when the realization sets in for Casaubon and D.

"Dorothea was not only his wife; she was a personification of that shallow world which surrounds the ill-appreciated or desponding author."

Wow! What a surprise for D! And then:

"She was inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over the English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads: and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not so clear to her as it had been."

Priceless.

Then in chapter XXI Will Laidslaw shows up and ....well if this isn't foreshadowing I don't know what is. I smell a new love interest for D.

I finished Chapters XX to XXII (and therefore Book II) and was so happy to get back to Dorothea. Chapter XX opens with her “sobbing bitterly” and I was wondering if anyone else was thinking along the lines of this comment from the Introduction to my book: although a Victorian novel cannot be too precise on such matters, Casaubon may be sexually impotent, for Dorothea is to be found “sobbing bitterly” on her honeymoon and it may not simply be his deficiencies as a scholar that account for her disappointment. Not sure I saw that indicated in GE’s writing but certainly wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for C.

I think the essence of the relationship between D&C was summed up for me in this statement: She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers.

Some other things I underlined:

Dorothea on Casaubon: What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his; and such capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him by the general life of mankind had long shrunk to . . . a lifeless embalmment of knowledge. His mind was weighted with unpublished matter.

Casaubon on Dorothea (after feeling criticized for not getting further in his work): Instead of getting a soft fence against the cold, shadowy, unapplausive audience of his life, had he only given it a more substantial presence?

I loved Will’s friend Naumann’s successful flattery of Casaubon: My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas Aquinas in my picture there. It is too much to ask; but I so seldom see just what I want--the idealistic in the real.

I’m really starting to enjoy the humor in this book.

I'm a few pages into Chapter 15, so a little behind. This chapter starts off with the authorial commentary people were talking about above. Two current authors who have done this very blatantly would be Lemony Snickett and Brandon Sanderson in Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. Both are children's books, of course, and I found it quite irritating in Alcatraz, but still, there are two modern examples.

I had wondered at the source of the unattributed chapter epigraphs as well.

Today I finally was able to merge my time with the library's reduced hours and picked up the Norton edition of Middlemarch, so that I can now reference footnotes, and a book edited by Harold Bloom of literary criticism, Modern Critical Interpretations: George Eliot's Middlemarch, as well as What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. Now I just have to find the time to sit down and READ!

Sib says this thread is getting slow to load, so here's a link to the new thread for this group.

Roni (ronincats)
Pat (phebj)
Bonnie (brenzi)
Angela (BookAngel_a)
Claudia (bahzah)
Terri (tloeffler)
Heather (souloftherose)
Peggy (LizzieD)
Lucy (sibyx)
Gail (bohemima)
Donna (Donna828)
Stasia (alcottacre)
Laura (lauranav)

Wow, great posts, everyone. That's quite a lineup of readers. Hope I didn't miss anyone.