‘Middlemarch is one of those books you can read when you’re 17 and make sense of it in a certain way, and then you can read it again 10 years later and see it in a whole new light. And 20 years after that it seems to be another book entirely’. So said Rebecca Mead, staff writer with The New Yorker magazine, in an interview about her book, My Life in Middlemarch (Penguin, Random House, January 2014). So much has been written about Middlemarch by academics, writers and eminent critics that I feel somewhat presumptuous in choosing it for my contribution to the Sofia ‘Revisiting’ series. However, I offer these thoughts as personal reflections at a particular time in my own life with the excuse that all readers are permitted to hold their own opinions.
I first read Middlemarch when I was 17 and in search of a literary refuge from A-level English set texts. The 900 pages of Eliot’s novel gave me the opportunity for total immersion in the lives of a cast of characters enmeshed in a complicated web of relationships, grappling with their own concerns and the situations in which they found themselves. Over the intervening years I have returned to Middlemarch several times and the tattered condition of my paperback version bears testimony to this. Although that faithful companion still sits on the bookshelf it is now beyond salvation by sellotape and I have (reluctantly) had to buy a new copy in order to write this article. I am normally a person who rejoices in throwing away worn out possessions but, strangely, in this case I cannot yet bring myself to put Middlemarch in the recycling bin. On a more positive note, the new Everyman edition I bought includes a genealogical table showing the connections between the main protagonists, which I would have found helpful when I first read the novel; I can remember spending ages trying to work out the complicated relationships which are important for a clear understanding of the plot.
I recall that my first interest lay in the lives of the individual characters, their relationships and their destinies. I suppose that, like Rebecca Mead, and many idealistic young women on the verge of adulthood, I identified initially with Dorothea, a principled and strong-willed young woman determined to use her privileged social position and wealth to do good for those less fortunate than herself. Unlike me, however, she had been denied the benefits of a broad cultural education leaving her open to the attraction of an ‘elderly’ (he was only in his 40s!) clergyman with a reputation for knowledge and scholarship. Combined with this thirst for cultural self-improvement is Dorothea’s desire to be ‘useful’ and, finding in the person of Edward Casaubon a man she believes will help her to fulfil her youthful aspirations, she enters into a disastrous marriage.
I was also drawn to the ambitious young Doctor Lydgate who arrives in Middlemarch armed with progressive ideas for improving medical treatment and is fascinated by Rosamund Vincy who is attracted to Lydgate, not for his professional acumen but because, through his relatives, he has ‘rank’. Again, another disastrous marriage ensues.
I realise now that my initial reading, powered by the enthusiasm and energy of youth, was far too rushed and, to my shame, I have to admit that I skimmed over some of the passages of authorial commentary in order to find out ‘what would happen next’.
I suppose it was another ten years before I returned to Middlemarch. It was on this second reading that I really began to appreciate the scope of Eliot’s accomplishment. The novel was written in 1871-72 when Eliot was 40 years old and living unconventionally with George Lewes, whom she probably would have married if he had been able to obtain a divorce from his wife. However, Eliot sets the novel in the period September 1829–May 1832, the years when Reform was beginning to shake the foundations of the Society on which her ‘Study of Provincial Life’ is based. Eliot is scrupulous in avoiding any anachronisms and thus, although she was well acquainted with Darwin, has to omit any reference to the impact of The Origin of Species which was not published until 1859.
Middlemarch is rather like a drug. Once hooked, I found I could not leave it alone! Just as the Jewish rabbis find something new each time they read the Hebrew Scriptures, I find that my interest in different characters and aspects of the plot changes as the years go by. Initially, I found the remoteness of Casaubon rather repugnant and could not understand how Dorothea could have willingly placed herself in thrall to him. Years later, I began to feel great sympathy for him as he realises that all he has been doing for so many years is accumulating fragments from countless sources and that his great work – The Key to of All Mythologies – will never be written. His reluctance to allow Dorothea to help is thus understandable: if she becomes involved, the secret of his inadequacy will be laid bare and he will have nothing left, not even his much-prized reputation for learned scholarship.
Bulstrode the banker, is also concealing a secret – the shady conduct through which he came into his wealth. I shared his desperation when, through a series of carefully plotted coincidences reminiscent of a Dickens novel, Raffles, a shady figure from the past, arrives in Middlemarch and threatens to reveal all. I am glad that Eliot seized the opportunity to show that this marriage is built on firmer foundations than those of Dorothea and Lydgate. Mrs Bulstrode ‘stands by her man’ and the way Eliot expresses this is particularly poignant: ‘after an instant of scorching shame in which she only felt the eyes of the world, with one leap of the heart she was at his side in unreproaching fellowship with shame and isolation.’
I have always found the Garth family the most lovable characters in the novel and was not surprised to learn that Eliot modelled Caleb Garth on her father. Mary Garth is the third important female character in the book and Eliot, who was always conscious of her lack of beauty, surely identifies with her plainness, contrasting it almost masochistically with the idealised feminine beauty of Rosamund Vincy. Mary Garth is also the most sensible, intelligent and realistic female in the book and Eliot leaves the reader feeling confident that if there is anyone who can knock young Fred Vincy into shape she is the woman to do it.
I have already made mention of plot devices similar to Dickens. Shades of Dickens also seem to inform the scene in the chapter ‘Waiting for Death’, which describes the vulture-like gathering of relatives anxious to ensure their rights of inheritance as they wait for Featherstone to die. Readers, of course, know that such efforts are futile as the will has already been written.
I have always been disappointed by Will Ladislaw as Dorothea’s choice of marriage partner and I share the view of Sir James Chettam who, Eliot tells us, ‘never ceased to regard Dorothea’s second marriage as a mistake.’ She had no need to marry for financial security and I find it interesting to speculate on what she might have achieved as a single woman of fortune blessed with a social conscience.
Nonetheless, I warm to Eliot’s conclusion which gives hope to us all. ‘But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’
Returning now, after another interval of more than twenty years, and reading at a more leisurely pace, I relish the wisdom and wit of the ever-present narrator and this time the following remark seemed particularly appropriate in the internet age and certainly struck a chord with me: ‘I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they are woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.’ With so much information available with one click on a keyboard, the temptation to ‘look something up’ and to explore further is difficult to resist. During this latest reading, I have strayed from the text to read articles about 19th century medical developments, responses to the beginning of political reform, the role of the clergy, the position of women and even an academic debate on whether Casaubon was impotent!
Carol Palfrey read English at Bedford College, University of London. She is a Trustee, and currently Secretary to the Board of Trustees, of SOF Network. She lives in Norfolk and is a member of the Octagon Unitarian Chapel in Norwich.