Middlemarch by George EliotMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
It’s been famously called “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” I’m not grown up yet, in that sense–I’m young enough that my life still stretches out before me with boundless possibility, having yet to reach the age where constraint after constraint, however gladly assumed at the time, imperceptibly narrows the space of our potential lives until we realize that the better part of our obituary is written and the remaining variations minor.
I’m not there, but George Eliot made me feel keenly how circumscribed the lives of men and women are, whether by wealth, sex, class, social standing, or their own failings; or by those more elusive barriers that go by names like “honor” and “duty.” I don’t want to make you think this is a sad book; on the contrary, one cannot but be struck by the morbid beauty in respecting these circumscriptions.
I think those who are skeptical of old books might find less to find fault with here; the values of the protagonists are hard to criticize, and Dorothea’s and Lydgate’s dilemmas seemed shockingly modern to me. Who hasn’t had a bunch of money and been frustrated to find that there isn’t a book that just tells you what the best way to donate it is–or fantasized about reforming the medical profession only to run into entrenched interests trying to maintain the status quo–or wanted to do important research but you know it’s just so hard to find the time–or thought that surely the best way to do good must be to marry a great man and aid him in his works? (read the book to find out how that one works out)
View all my reviews