Middlemarch - CaB Book Club 1

[selectivememory]

I had a lot of spare time in the last week, and I finished the book the other day. I'll still try and post along with everyone else at the end of each week though. Tremendous book all in all; thanks to Astronaut Omens for the initial recommendation in the other thread. Would definitely put it up there with the very best novels by English authors (and probably above Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, both of which I also read this year and loved).

So a few notes I had about Book Four:

On Casaubon, despite Eliot constantly remarking "oh poor Casaubon!", I'm finding it very hard to have much sympathy for him, and tend to think that Ladislaw is correct to believe that he has done a pretty abhorrent thing by getting Dorothea to marry him [actually just interupting my old notes to add that I share Janie Jones' squeamishness at the thought of Dorothea actually having sex with him]. I think the bits where Eliot writes about his insecurities over his work, and how Dorothea's criticisms and then her own moderation of her criticisms somehow serve to bring the perceived scrutiny of the outside world into his home, have been very revealing, and again are more examples of her very nuanced and perceptive psychological writing. He's clearly a man who should never have married anyone, let alone a susceptible person like Dorothea, who had not experienced enough of life to understand what she was getting into. I'm also enjoying the fact that Eliot has focussed more on his petty and spiteful concerns, given that he is a man prone to such ridiculously formal modes of expressing himself, and just generally fancies himself as someone of "higher" concerns than most people.

I enjoyed all the bits with Sir James and the Cadawallers trying to put Brooke off running for office. It was mentioned upthread about Dorothea's motives in her interest in the cottage-building for the tenants, but it does seem clear by this point that she is very socially-conscious, and I did like the way that she managed to use Brooke's hopes of running for office as a way of getting him to consider his conduct (although you have to say he is astonishingly dense for not even realising himself how much of a hypocrite he would be, as someone running on a reformist platform). And actually, just because I thought it was another psychologically perceptive bit of writing, and the insight stuck with me after reading it, here's the bit where Brooke finally begins to see how bad a landlord he's been:

It is wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them. Even our own persons in the glass are apt to change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never complain or have nobody to complain for them. Dagley's homestead never before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it did today, with his mind thus sore about the fault-finding of the "Trumpet," echoed by Sir James.

[pancreas]

Very behind. But I realised academia really is full of Casaubons. Life moves on, people who know a certain bunch of techniques which got them a permanent job when they were younger, but don't seem to be able to develop, so they keep hitting their heads against the same wall. Sort of devoid of their previous reputation they move into teaching or admin because no-one cares about their research any more. It's very well-observed actually, the impotent rage and misery, protectiveness etc. that Casaubon shows.

[Astronaut Omens]

I found this John Mullan article useful as an overview of some of the relevant history: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/middlemarch-reform-and-change

Looking at this article again in light of the more political material in Book 4, maybe the most relevant thing to the 1870 readers was that there'd been a Second Reform Act in 1867, far more important than the 1832 one in terms of the number of people (well, men) that got the vote.  So politically, very similar issues had recently been raised, and the analagous political backdrop for a writer living now to use would be the 1975 Euro referendum.

Something that interests me, not specifically this book but generally in the culture and literature of the period, is what a massive elephant in the room sex must have been when these girls returned from their honeymoons, having been chaperoned to within an inch of their lives beforehand and unlikely to have experienced more than a kiss, if that. Then they're back in Middlemarch, fully deflowered married women. Does GE touch on it at all? I know I couldn't get out of my mind the thought of Dorothea and that fusty old man getting jiggy. The speculation raised by some of you that he's impotent was quite a relief.

Looking back, I didn't find anything which exactly fitted what you said, but quite a bit more that was suggestive of impotence.   This passage from Ch. 28, the first when Dorothea returns from Rome, is quite haunting if it's taken to have a double meaning about sexual failure (the surface meaning is Dorothea's frustration about not being able to help Casaubon with his work).

The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great beforehand, seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor-walled landscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in full communion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; the delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken into uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment. When would the days begin of that active wifely devotion which was to strengthen her husband's life and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she had preconceived them; but somehow—still somehow. In this solemnly pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new form of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.

I read the ending of book 4 as Dorothea's accepting of the asexual, unpassionate nature of their relationship.
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand into her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together.

There is also the name of Casaubon's house- Lowick.

[Astronaut Omens]

Ladislaw is the character who it's hardest to know quite what to think about. At times he seems one of the most perceptive people in the book, and he's often cast in a favourable light compared to both Casaubon and Lydgate, but his view of Dorothea sometimes seems sentimental, his view of Casaubon verges on gothic fantasy, and Mr Brooke's high opinion of him: "He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know" seems like a warning from Eliot about his limitations. (The Mark E Smith line "He couldn't tell the difference between Lou Reed and Doug Yule" came into my head re. Mr. Brooke here).

[Astronaut Omens]

It was mentioned upthread about Dorothea's motives in her interest in the cottage-building for the tenants, but it does seem clear by this point that she is very socially-conscious, and I did like the way that she managed to use Brooke's hopes of running for office as a way of getting him to consider his conduct (although you have to say he is astonishingly dense for not even realising himself how much of a hypocrite he would be, as someone running on a reformist platform).

I love how giddily enthusiastic Dorothea suddenly is in this scene, as if she's suddenly come back to life.

[Astronaut Omens]

Two of the narrator's interjections in Book 4 I find really striking, for different reasons. What she's getting at, exactly, in the stuff about "historical parallels" at the end of Chapter 35?- I'm guessing that she's thinking of some particular controversy over an inheritance in the past, but why the need for an apology, ironic or otherwhise?
This interjection is also quite a jolt in tone because it brings us back to the cosmic-ironic-philsophical-historical view just at the point where we've been quite engrossed in straightforward storytelling entertainment about Featherstone's will. (I reckon Featherstone had two wills solely because he couldn't make his mind up as to whether Fred was a good 'un or not).

The other is the bleak portrait of Dagley's life at the end of Chapter 39, that last sentence especially is brutal, and again a fair example of what evocative use Eliot gets out of abstraction and telling rather than showing.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Two of the narrator's interjections in Book 4 I find really striking, for different reasons. What she's getting at, exactly, in the stuff about "historical parallels" at the end of Chapter 35?- I'm guessing that she's thinking of some particular controversy over an inheritance in the past, but why the need for an apology, ironic or otherwhise?

I puzzled over the meaning of that section too. I'll try to come to your question towards the end of this paragraph. I think the need for an apology is a fairly general idea about appropriate subjects for serious literature, if we think of the tradition of mock-heroic poetry for example. Having gone ahead of the schedule in Part 6 I paused to read Silas Marner this week, which is one landmark in writing about the lives of ordinary people and which celebrates the simplicity of its poor hero and his adopted daughter who arrives accidentally from better off bad parents. There are a couple of chapter epigraphs in Middlemarch and one at the beginning of Silas Marner quoting from Wordsworth, whose preface to the Lyrical Ballads was one of the most important statements promoting new appreciation of low subjects during the late romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Sorry if I'm saying things you and everyone else already know. While the narrator settles ironically on the advice that we should read the vultures going after the benefits of Mr Featherstone's will as a parable with added 0s to the amount of money involved (Silas Marner has a more pronounced fairy-tale and parabolic style) the 'historical parallels' to me suggested Eliot's use of chapter epigraphs, in this case the one from Regnard's Légataire Universel about the pleasure of seeing people get nothing from a will reading. You can read about possible historical parallels that might be created in alliance with that in this essay although it would end up with another possibly low subject in Gianni Schicchi: The Story of Dante's Gianni Schicchi and Regnard's Légataire Universel. I also though that chapter and its focus on the zeros had a nice effect on the way of reading the earlier line about the 'inevitable heir to nothing in particular'. Are we supposed to think also of Augustine's 'two wills' competing when we read this chapter?


I enjoyed the different style and energy of Silas Marner and I thought it would be worth mentioning that Chapter 11 describes a relationship between the two sisters Nancy and Priscilla Lammeter which reminded me of the opening scenes with Dorothea and Celia and the interest in aesthetic contrasts.

"What do you think o' these gowns, aunt Osgood?" said Priscilla, while Nancy helped her to unrobe.

"Very handsome indeed, niece," said Mrs. Osgood, with a slight increase of formality. She always thought niece Priscilla too rough.

"I'm obliged to have the same as Nancy, you know, for all I'm five years older, and it makes me look yallow; for she never will have anything without I have mine just like it, because she wants us to look like sisters. And I tell her, folks 'ull think it's my weakness makes me fancy as I shall look pretty in what she looks pretty in. For I am ugly--there's no denying that: I feature my father's family. But, law! I don't mind, do you?" Priscilla here turned to the Miss Gunns, rattling on in too much preoccupation with the delight of talking, to notice that her candour was not appreciated. "The pretty uns do for fly-catchers--they keep the men off us. I've no opinion o' the men, Miss Gunn--I don't know what you have. And as for fretting and stewing about what they'll think of you from morning till night, and making your life uneasy about what they're doing when they're out o' your sight--as I tell Nancy, it's a folly no woman need be guilty of, if she's got a good father and a good home: let her leave it to them as have got no fortin, and can't help themselves. As I say, Mr. Have-your-own-way is the best husband, and the only one I'd ever promise to obey. I know it isn't pleasant, when you've been used to living in a big way, and managing hogsheads and all that, to go and put your nose in by somebody else's fireside, or to sit down by yourself to a scrag or a knuckle; but, thank God! my father's a sober man and likely to live; and if you've got a man by the chimney-corner, it doesn't matter if he's childish--the business needn't be broke up."

[...]

As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the large parlour together, any one who did not know the character of both might certainly have supposed that the reason why the square-shouldered, clumsy, high-featured Priscilla wore a dress the facsimile of her pretty sister's, was either the mistaken vanity of the one, or the malicious contrivance of the other in order to set off her own rare beauty. But the good-natured self-forgetful cheeriness and common-sense of Priscilla would soon have dissipated the one suspicion; and the modest calm of Nancy's speech and manners told clearly of a mind free from all disavowed devices.

[Astronaut Omens]

I puzzled over the meaning of that section too. I'll try to come to your question towards the end of this paragraph. I think the need for an apology is a fairly general idea about appropriate subjects for serious literature, if we think of the tradition of mock-heroic poetry for example. Having gone ahead of the schedule in Part 6 I paused to read Silas Marner this week, which is one landmark in writing about the lives of ordinary people and which celebrates the simplicity of its poor hero and his adopted daughter who arrives accidentally from better off bad parents. There are a couple of chapter epigraphs in Middlemarch and one at the beginning of Silas Marner quoting from Wordsworth, whose preface to the Lyrical Ballads was one of the most important statements promoting new appreciation of low subjects during the late romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

But this is exactly what I'm confused about! GE is writing 70 years after Lyrical Ballads, and in the interim there were lots of novelists writing about working-class characters, e.g. Dickens, Gaskell, and, as you say, GE herself. And this apology appears after a chapter which hardly seems "low" in subject at all! It might have made more sense if something similar had appeared in the chapter about Dagley's dismal situation, or even in the earlier bit about Fred's activities amongst shady horse-dealers, but everyone connected to the story about Featherstone's will is at least middle-class, even if they have the threat of poverty hanging over them.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Sorry for stating the obvious, I was trying to get to the main suggestion that the 'historical parallels' might indicate the use of epigraphs.

I suppose the appearance of an apology of that kind so long after Wordsworth, who himself didn't find complete agreement among the romantics, could be partly because those years were not a straightforward progression from romantic social attitudes associated with Blake and Wordsworth and when poor or rural characters were treated in novels there may still have been conventional assumptions about what they brought to their novels in terms of comedy, poetry, thought and feeling so that Silas Marner was still something unusual in 1861 and the ideas still ones that could be appealed to sensibly and ironically by the time of Middlemarch.

I wonder if in this case it's something about the scrabbling after money being unseemly (going back to something that I brought up earlier, the carelessness about money appropriate to a gentleman, especially in the age before the Reform Act, and apparently to Dorothea and the narrator too in the first chapter). The story of the French play in the chapter's epigraph being associated with Dante suggests a way of elevating the subject - and I'd note there how popular Dante became among the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites, who are one example of a preference - even a revolt - in favour of elevated subjects in Victorian England.

[Astronaut Omens]

Thank you for the link to the Dante/Regnard essay, I really enjoy reading that kind of literary detective stuff. I'm not sure if Gianni Schicci was a criminal mastermind as much as Simone was an utter dunce! Given Regnard's sources are unclear, I'm not sure that a contemporary reader of Middlemarch would neccessarily have been struck that there was a link with Dante, but in any case, all the erudite references in the epigraphs do tend to give the book an elevated tone.

I suppose the appearance of an apology of that kind so long after Wordsworth, who himself didn't find complete agreement among the romantics, could be partly because those years were not a straightforward progression from romantic social attitudes associated with Blake and Wordsworth and when poor or rural characters were treated in novels there may still have been conventional assumptions about what they brought to their novels in terms of comedy, poetry, thought and feeling so that Silas Marner was still something unusual in 1861 and the ideas still ones that could be appealed to sensibly and ironically by the time of Middlemarch.

How do you think the portrayal of Dagley fits in to this? Is Dagley a well-drawn character or the kind of working-class comedy grotesque that too many lazy writers are guilty of creating? Is his chapter, to use the current parlance problematic?

As I said a bit earlier, I really love the close of chapter 38 and the way it outlines, with a sense of injustice, how Dagley's worldview has been cruelly limited by his situation. And the fact that he doesn't really know what the Reform Act is going to do, but is fuzzily attracted to it on the grounds , in some way, it's going to bring a hard rain a-falling down on Brooke and his ilk seems to have very exact contemporary resonances:

"An' I made out what the Rinfrom wer- an' it wer to send you an' your likes a-scuttlin'"

But on the other hand, as good as this chapter is, I think I'd be quite annoyed with, if not surprised by, a modern author who dwelt on Dagley for such a short period of time, it feels like the book would benefit a lot from a bit more of his story.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Yes, I think it's unlikely a contemporary reader would have known the play let alone the link with Dante, but I think that's compatible with the turning away from the difficulty of that kind of potentially dignified parallel towards the solution of a constant parable.

Historical parallels are remarkably efficient in this way. The chief objection to them is, that the diligent narrator may lack space, or (what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of them with any degree of particularity, though he may have a philosophical confidence that if known they would be illustrative. It seems an easier and shorter way to dignity, to observe that-since there never was a true story which could not be told in parables.

I was stressing the Victorian credentials of Dante to highlight a) that the Pre-Raphaelites resisted the lower interests of Wordsworth and Eliot and b) that even if the historical situation of Gianni Schicci is not a perfectly elevated situation, its literary use by Dante might make up for that 'if known', in much the way that adding the zeros to the will improves it.

I think it's about three weeks since we were reading those chapters so I'm not very confident of answering about Eliot's treatment of Dagley. Since we're not starting Book 7 until Monday, I'll see if I get time to reread the chapter tomorrow and reply.

[Astronaut Omens]

Are we supposed to think also of Augustine's 'two wills' competing when we read this chapter?

That would be funny if Eliot had this in the back of her mind, because (going back four weeks ago now!) it could be connected to the story in two ways:

1)We're be rooting for the "carnal" side to win and the money to go to our mate Fred so he can carry on having lashings of grilled bone for breakfast, rather than the "spiritual" side to win, i.e. the almshouses for old men that the second will says will be built.

2) We're rooting for Featherstone's "spiritual" son, Fred to get the money (not technically his child but he's come to look upon him that way) rather than his "carnal" son Rigg- (it's insinuated near the beginning of 35 that he's Featherstone's love-child).

For me the scene with Mary, Featherstone and the two wills, with Mary forced to make a life-changing choice constrained by ignorance of the facts becomes more  closely linked to the other character's problems the longer the novel goes on. (It also reminded me of abstract philosophical conundruums like the Monty Hall Problem).

I love the scene where Farebrother talks to Mary about the will in chapter 52, which is a part of the book I'm not ashamed to say I got a bit tearful at! But I'm not sure where people are up to now, there's a few fairly big spoilers in Book 5....

[Smeraldina Rima]

Good work. I think you can go on about Book 5. We're meant to start Book 7 on Monday, so if anyone's further behind they will know to tread carefully in the thread. selectivememory and pancreas might have more to say about Books 5 and 6 now? Or anyone who's been reading along more quietly.

[Janie Jones]

We're meant to start Book 7 on Monday...

Great, I'm up to speed.
Small detail that's annoying me: (also spoiler warning for anyone far behind)
GE emphasises at one point that Dorethea hasn't seen Will since Casaubon's death, some time ago. But surely as his 2 closest living relatives, the pair of them would have been thrust into proximity at the funeral? Or didn't people have funerals in those days? Surely a senior churchman would have quite a fancy send off? And if Will didn't attend, it would be quite a notable snub? GE just says the old fella was buried and doesn't mention a funeral at all which I find odd.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I don't really have an answer but brief reading about Victorian funerals suggests attendees required an invitation. How long did Dorothea take to learn about Casaubon's codicil? If she found out before sending out invitations then maybe we can invent a story where they all decided not to invite Will. They may alternatively have been such unsociable occasions that his attendance has been treated as nothing.


I reread the Dagley chapter and I'm afraid I couldn't come up with a strong moral opinion about his representation. Some things that did interest me were the way in which it follows up the discussion of parabolic readings in Chapter 35 with the two dogs echoing and commenting on their owners Dagley and Mr Brooke; and the emphasis placed first on the painted scenery and then the 'narrative of [Dagley's] experience' which perhaps warns us against judging any part of this representation as a transparent one. If we've learned one thing by this point it's to be suspicious of the better part of contrasts so here Dagley's 'midnight darkness' set against the rector, the curate, the landlord and all the lights of Middlemarch, suggest to me that he is ignorant in the rules of this game. I also find it interesting that animals and Dagley's family are united in being among the characters whom the mostly omniscient narrator doesn't seem to know or care everything about: 'an aged goat (kept doubtless on interesting superstitious grounds)'/ 'probably charitable advances on the part of Monk'). Dagley comes out of the exchange with Mr Brooke with more credibility and pleasing loyalty to his son.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I should have been looking up Georgian not Victorian funerals shouldn't I? It seems to be a different set of rules for dramatic mourning:

https://www.geriwalton.com/mourning-in-georgian-era/

Wives Mourning for Their Husbands:

The first week wives were not to appear in public.
They were also not to be without a handkerchief, even in private.
The second Sunday they were to be "much affected with the sermon; the handkerchief not omitted."
After the first month, the widowed wife could attend a tragedy and then "weep in character, either at the play, or the loss of her husband."
The second month, she was allowed to attend a comedy and she could "smile but not languishingly."
The third month, allowed for laughter at a play or dancing at Cornelys' with her perspective bridegroom.
The fourth month permitted her to jump into her intended arms, and "finish her widow-hood."

Another website suggests that women took part in Georgian funerals at a distance.

[selectivememory]

selectivememory and pancreas might have more to say about Books 5 and 6 now?

I did have some notes somewhere. I'll dig them out next time I have access to my laptop.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Look forward to it. Chapter 65 stood out for me in Part 7 with the tragicomedy of Sir Godwin Lydgate's letter and the psychology of Lydgate and Rosamond afterwards. It had another echo of Silas Marner in the last lines about Lydgate's method of excusing Rosamond's percieved misbehaviour: 'He wished to excuse everything in her if he could - but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an animal of another and feebler species. Nevertheless she had mastered him.' In Silas Marner the genders are the other way round and the strength of animal corresponds to the reversal as Dolly Winthrop 'took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would be so," and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.' In this light, Dolly's patience with a troublesome animal comes across better than Lydgate's confused attempt to excuse a feeble animal, as though even if it is being pointed out that Mr Winthrop is benefiting from being regarded as an animal, Dolly's affectionate pessimism is respectable.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Book Seven then lads and it's all kicked off. Bulstrode's predicament with the ailing Raffles, and the way Lydgate's financial woes are dragged into it, provide some really thrilling chapters. I love the way that, following the funeral, Eliot immediately puts the intricate social web of Middlemarch she's been weaving for the last seven books to work. In this small community, where Bulstrode has bothered so many people, he was never going to get away with it. I don't really get the sense that Eliot takes much glee in knocking her hypocrite off his perch though. The chapter where he talks himself into neglecting Raffles is quite sympathetic, even as Bulstrode essentially decides to bump off some poorly bloke.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Book 8 spoilers:

Coming to the end now, I enjoyed Dorothea's Neighbours style interruption of handholding in Chapter 77 and Will's surprising transformation into Heathcliff in the next chapter: 'No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead than I would touch any other woman's living.' As well as waiting for the last book to see Will's passion that clearly, it seems like we're getting to see the best of Dorothea's goodness in the next chapters. It's not obvious to me exactly how it will end.

[Janie Jones]

I finished it. Can we talk about the ending yet?

[Smeraldina Rima]

From Monday if we stick to the weekly schedule (this is meant to be the last reading week), but I think it would be better to do it while you're interested and add a warning.

[selectivememory]

Ah, sorry, I forgot to post my old notes... I didn't label them clearly, but I think this probably refers mostly to events in Books Six and Seven.


I didn't really have much to say about Books Five and Six, although I did like how in the section detailing Bulstrode's history Eliot never really lets him off the hook for his hypocrisies, even if she is at pains to explain how it happened and how he was able to be that way, in terms of what sort of things he had to tell himself. I also loved the parts when she depicted how the town gossip slowly swelled until it had completely destroyed his reputation.

Felt terribly sad for Lydgate in all of this. Mostly his situation is all down to his marriage with Rosamond, which surprisingly for me turned out to be more disastrous than even Dorothea's (who by this point in the book seems to be in a pretty good place). Rosamond is horrible, and just completely incapable of seeing her own shortcomings and having any kind of empathy for her husband. Yes, he did have some daft ideas about what married life would be or should be like, but everything she does after their marriage pushed him towards that situation with Bulstrode and Raffles (and I don't think he was blameless in the Raffles affair, although not anywhere near to the extent he was judged to be by most in the town), and while he is willing to revise his ideas about marriage and tries to meet her halfway she is intransigent.

Actually, I can't remember at what point this bit occurred (possibly towards the end of Book Six), but I did note that I loved that conversation between Dorothea and Ladislaw before he went away, when he was trying to put across his feelings to her and she wasn't sure until the end whether he was referring to her or to Rosamond. I was almost desperate for them to speak directly and plainly to one another, but the way it went felt so true to life to me, and I was kind of agonising for them both as it just seemed like they were doomed to keep talking past one another, until it became clear to Dorothea at the end that Ladislaw was talking about her.

[DukeDeMondo]

I love the conversation between Lydgate and Farebrother in Chapter 63. "It's rather a strong check to one's self-complacency to find how much of one's right doing depends on not being in want of money. A man will not be tempted to say the Lord's Prayer backward to please the devil, if he doesn't want the devil's services." Brilliant.

I finished it not too long ago, and I loved many parts of it, in the end, even if some of it tried my patience, with all of this bawling and huffing and every halfways nippy piss a fucking "epoch," and I reckon I will certainly go back to it now and again. I have notes made but really they would be little use to anyone else, just wee nods at myself, remember this great say on page 6xx, recall if you will the nonsense that goes on in chapter Maybe3, think on the way this goes there in Book Splat, and think about maybe you could steal it one of these days if you twist it just right when nobody's looking.

I'm grateful to the group for getting me reading it, for I probably never would have done so otherwise, and I feel that wee bit richer in myself for having sat down with it for a time.

[Smeraldina Rima]

^^ I didn't mean to have a dig at you or imply that Janie Jones would forget about the book by Monday. Just thought that some of the scheduling didn't seem to help and that it might be better to post whenever we want to write something. DukeDeMondo, if we do another one, you should share those small things that seem useless. You never know how interesting other people might find them. I'd completely forgotten the quote from Chapter 63.

[selectivememory]

No worries; I didn't think you were having a dig!

[Smeraldina Rima]

In Chapter 84 Sir James confirms that a funeral took place on the same day that Casaubon was buried quietly between Chapters 48 and 49: 'The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to be done.' Looking back to Chapter 49, at that time 'Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room' so perhaps she didn't attend the funeral while Will Ladislaw might have shown up without her seeing him.

I finished the book. As my comments have already made clear, I tended to experience it as a novel exploring the ways that our judgments and lives are thrown about by reactive passions. It's hard not to fall in love with Mary Garth; I get the feeling George Eliot put a lot of herself into that character. My edition had a poignant line break in the finale turning attention to one of the other Theresas:

When Fred was riding home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the wainscoated parlour, and was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife;
especially for Mr Farebrother.

Thanks for getting us to read the book, Astronaut Omens and to everyone who posted in the thread or read it without comment, making a far sadder sacrifice than the ones we know.

[Janie Jones]

In Chapter 84 Sir James confirms that a funeral took place on the same day that Casaubon was buried quietly between Chapters 48 and 49: 'The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to be done.' Looking back to Chapter 49, at that time 'Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room' so perhaps she didn't attend the funeral while Will Ladislaw might have shown up without her seeing him.

Thanks for that, I get snagged on things like that when I don't understand the timeline.

So, assuming everyone who is going to read to the end has done so, I think I'm the only person who disliked it? I'm very glad I read it and I hugely enjoyed this thread and was helped by every one of the comments but the book itself didn't thrill me. I love Austen so it's not just that I'm incapable of dealing with novels from that approximate era. The pace seemed all wrong - one minute you're caught in a moment of intimacy and passion, the next those particular characters have vanished, apart from a couple of summarising sentences tying up the loose ends.

Is it stupidly gauche to mention how anti-Semitic it is? And also, much like the current rows about tax avoidance (legal but seen as immoral) versus tax evasion (which is illegal), Bullstrode didn't actually do anything illegal did he?

I'm afraid I didn't like Mary Garth, pious bore, although attending to an old man's toilet needs for a living can't have been much fun for her. I agree with SR's feeling that she's the one George Elliot put most of herself into - GE was not a good looking woman, according to contemporary critics. 

Mrs Cadwallader is the only person I could imagine liking if I met her IRL.

[Astronaut Omens]

Which bits were you thinking of? In my memory there are characters who express anti-Semitic opinions (towards Ladislaw), but not really anything anti-Semitic about the story. I was surprised to see Farebrother been a bit anti-semitic in one remark in chapter 71, given that he's one of the most likeable characters, but that seemed to have a very definite purpose in the story- i.e. it was showing what Ladislaw is up against that even decent people like Farebrother have their prejudices against him.

It's fair to say that, at least in her later life GE was not just not anti-semitic but was actively philo-semite. Her next book Daniel Deronda is in part about a man discovering that he is Jewish, and she made a deep study of Jewish culture researching it, including learning Hebrew. That book ended up having some influence on figures in the political Zionist movement including Theodor Herzl.  (She has also been criticized by supporters of Palestine such as Edward Said precisely for this).
Re-reading Middlemarch made me want to look into 19th century utopian socialist experiments like those of Robert Owen and Saint-Simon (whose followers Lydgate is mentioned to have been involved with for a time) and there's obviously some crossover between that kind of thinking and Zionism as it was originally envisaged.

[Astronaut Omens]

It's hard not to fall in love with Mary Garth; I get the feeling George Eliot put a lot of herself into that character. My edition had a poignant line break in the finale turning attention to one of the other Theresas:

That line break is fantastic!
One possibility, plausible on the evidence of the erudite and well-read nature of the narrator (you could make an Arcades Project-type book out of the epigraphs) is that, more than Mary Garth, the character who most resembles Eliot herself was Casaubon, or rather, that he was a part of herself that she was trying to kill off, something she dreaded turning into, a what-not-to-do note.

Right, now for a miscellany of points I wanted to make and didn't!

I was re-reading the book, and one of the biggest differences between a first and second reading of the book is the way Rosamond comes across. The narrator's hard-to-pin-down ironic tone means that, on a first reading, Rosamond's rather scheming and unpleasant nature slowly creeps up on you, as initially it's not really clear that her character flaws are anything worse than amusing foibles. But once you know the ending, the basil plant that thrives on murdered men's brains etc., quite a lot of the narrator's descriptions of her, from the outset, seem not really ironic at all, and it's more obvious from the outset that Lydgate is doomed.

Speaking of the narrator, I thought it was interesting that two important minor characters whose inner life we never really get access to using free indirect speech are Naumann and Raffles, to similar ends. In both cases I thought Eliot deliberately withheld that to suggest something unutterable- that Naumann was an exceptionally wise and perceptive person, and that Raffles had something diabolic about him. The effect also works in making these two character's the more extreme part of their respective double acts- Naumann is cleverer than Ladislaw, Raffles is more malicious than Bulstrode.

Two scenes I liked to think about in parallel: Featherstone's deathbed scene and the "murder" of Raffles. Mary Garth and Bulstrode are both faced with a life-changing choice, and both of them act by not acting, Mary by not burning the will, Bulstrode by not telling Mrs. Abel to stop giving Raffles the opium. And in both cases, Eliot makes these scenes more ambiguous by later deflating the significance of the choice- in Bulstrode's case it's raised as a  possiblity that Raffles would have died anyway, in Mary's case, Farebrother turns up and tells her that burning one will would have invalidated the other.

One thing that seems a bit implausible to me in the story:  it seems a bit of a stretch to believe that Lydgate was silly enough to have used opium to try and cure Raffles of alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Obviously doctors make mistakes, but the dangers of opiates+ booze leading to serious breathing problems must have been well known. Lydgate tells Bulstrode not to let him drink of course, but it's always a possibility that an alcoholic is going to get hold of something to drink somewhere. That aside, I really like all the stuff about Lydgate and medicine, especially some of the Hansard-esque parts of book 5. Given that the NHS is currently running a campaign to try and convince people that they don't need antibiotics to cure the flu, it's funny reading about a doctor trying to convince people of essentially the same thing 150 years ago.

A few final thoughts on Dorothea's story- at the beginning of the novel Dorothea is typical of many young intellectuals in not quite realising that her two impulses – firstly the need for abstract, esoteric theorising and secondly the desire to bring about material social progress - are two very different, potentially contradictory things. She has to learn this painfully by throwing her lot in with Casaubon and then realising that she is cut off from the possibility of helping anyone. She has somewhat improved her position at the end by marrying Ladislaw, but there is a muted quality to that improvement, chiefly because she is primarily a wife and a mother rather than any kind of social reformer herself, "a pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another". It's funny that, after the early scene where Lydgate is more attracted to Rosamond than to Dorothea in Book 1, the book doesn't really go much into the possibility that Dorothea and Lydgate might have been happier together, but it is raised, at least by Rosamond in a sarcastic remark in the finale. It's surely part of Lydgate's tragedy that he couldn't see that someone like Dorothea was what he needed. Dorothea's eccentricity and fondness for "poor dress" would have stopped Lydgate from becoming so expensively bent on keeping up with the Jones', and she presumably would have had more to do than give "wifely help" if she'd been involved with the hospital.

(I need to say just a bit more then I'll stop, honest!)