Middlemarch
by George Eliot is an extraordinary novel. The book has so many plot threads,
major characters and significant themes that I struggled a bit when it came time to choose
the content of this post. The fact that
the novel is so famous and so much has been written about it only exacerbated
my difficulties as I strove to say something different about it.
The book’s themes include the role of women in society,
an exploration of provincial versus cosmopolitan thinking, the degeneration of
marriage and relationships, serious musing on art and aesthetics, fate versus
free will and many other topics.
The primary narrative focus, more or less, is on Dorothea Brooke, later
Dorothea Casaubon. A pious and strong willed young woman, Dorothea strives for
a meaningful life. She endeavors to be the ideal woman. An ideal woman, the
narrative reminds us, is someone like St. Theresa who sacrificed her life for Christian
ideals.
Dorothea is drawn to and
marries the Reverend Edward Casaubon. The Reverend is a religious intellectual.
He is a driven man who has devoted his life to completing a monumental treatise
called The Key to All Mythologies,
which ties ancient mythology with Christianity. After Casaubon’s death,
Dorothea and Will Ladislaw, a young artist, become involved in a romance that
is marred by serious social complications
Another plot thread involves Tertius Lydgate. He is a doctor
who champions progressive forms of medical care. As the book progresses, he
woos and subsequently marries Rosamond Vincy. As Lydgate falls into debt, the couple’s
home life becomes acrimonious.
Fred Vincy is Rosamond’s
brother. This young man is earnest but irresponsible. His attempted courtship
of Mary Garth, another young woman with a strong personality, weaves another
thread into the narrative.
As the story progresses, the
various plot threads intersect and play important roles in the various themes
that are embodied within this book.
There are fans of this novel
who contend that it is the finest ever written. While I would not go that far,
in my opinion, it is among the finest. It has strong and complex characters, a
compelling and interesting plot, fascinating themes, some of which touch upon
the most basic and important elements of human existence. I also found Eliot’s
writing to be suburb. It is down to earth at times; at other points, it is sublime.
All of this combines into a wonderfully brilliant, aesthetic package.
As I do with many complex
works, I am going to concentrate on only one of the many interesting aspects of
Eliot’s work.
Disintegration
of Relationships
In this novel, Eliot
masterfully describes how the warmth of love can degenerate over time. The
author looks at two separate couples, Dorothea and Reverend Casaubon, and Lydgate
and Rosamond.
Dorothea and Casaubon are
each impressive and nuanced characters in and of themselves. Their pairing adds
intricacy to their respective complexities. Upon meeting Casaubon, Dorothea is
immediately drawn to his religious intellect and conviction. Though he is stodgy,
bookish and much older than her, Dorothea sees him as a perfect life partner.
The two quickly marry. However,
Casaubon’s relative mental isolation and lack of warm emotions, as well as his
inability to connect to Dorothea, cause friction. Casaubon’s somewhat
understandable jealousy of the budding friendship between Dorothea and Will
Ladislaw compounds the problem.
Eliot’s depiction of how the
relationship goes from unquestioning love to acrimony is brilliant. Dorothea
slowly comes to realize that she is looking for things in Casaubon that he is
not giving her. Though one clearly senses that Eliot’s sympathies lie with Dorothea,
Casaubon is not portrayed as a monster. In fact, Dorothea is shown to miss
certain aspects of his inner self that could have helped ameliorate the
couple’s problems had she been sensitive to them.
At one point it is observed,
She was as blind to his inward
troubles as he to hers; she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her
husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his
heart-beats, but only felt that her own was beating violently.
Dorothea’s evolution from near worship of Casaubon to a kind of wary cynicism
is believable and complex, as well as interesting.
The other couple, Lydgate
and Rosamond, is almost as interesting. The pair quickly falls in love and marries.
However, with time, rancor develops between the two. Lydgate is a man of scientific
curiosity who enjoys experimentation. The materialistic Rosamond soon becomes
bored with him and his interests. She begins to flirt with various men. When
the two begin to fall into financial difficulties, the narcissistic Rosamond
resorts to subterfuge in an effort to thwart Lydgate’s attempts to curtail
their expenditures.
As with Dorothea and
Casaubon, Eliot adds a lot of complexity to this relationship. Though the author seems to mostly sympathize
with Lydgate, the Doctor is shown to have shortcomings too. He seems completely
unable to see things from Rosamond’s point of view and begins every conflict by
eschewing all compromise. Though he cannot dominate or control Rosamond, it is
clear that he would like to.
Once again, Eliot is at her
best when she portrays the erosion of this relationship. The way that Rosamond transforms
from a loving bride to an uncaring, deceptive and narcissistic wife is
portrayed with great literary skill.
A vicious cycle is
illustrated. As Lydgate’s troubles mount, Rosamond reacts with less sympathy
and more criticism. Thus, Lydgate begins to confide in her less and less and
begins to keep things from her. As Rosamond realizes this, she becomes even
more embittered.
There are many common themes
shared by both of these relationships. Each involves two people who have
trouble understanding each other’s feelings. Even if one looks at Dorothea and
Lydgate as the more sympathetic members of the marriages, each of them has
trouble understanding the inner life of their respective mates.
Both relationships begin
warmly and gradually degenerate into misunderstandings, lost opportunities to
connect, selfishness, etc. All this is portrayed believably and with complexity.
The flaws in these relationships tie into what seems to be a major theme of
this novel, that is, the harmful effects of people not being able to see things
from other people’s point of view.
These two marriages end up
in very bad states indeed. In contrast to what one would likely expect in a
novel set in modern times, divorce was not an option for these characters. This
changes the entire dynamic of the situation. In the world of the nineteenth
century, there is no escape from the other person. Obviously this has an effect
upon the feelings and the behaviors of the characters.
At one point, Lydgate
contemplates the bad direction that his relationship with his wife is going in
and is apprehensive as to the result of further deterioration.
It
was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any
movement that might make it fatal. His marriage would be a mere piece of bitter
irony if they could not go on loving each other.
When Dorothea and Lydgate
actually talk, a moment of understanding comes to Dorothea when she realizes
that Lydgate and herself have shared some common experiences in regard to their
relationships. When it dawns on her that Lydgate’s experiences with matrimony
in some ways have paralleled her own, Dorothea reacts,
“Dorothea
felt her heart beginning to beat faster. Had he that sorrow too?”
Eliot’s depiction of these
relationships heading into trouble is simply brilliant. They are believable,
complex, and while at times painful to read about, have great aesthetic value.
This is but one of many reasons that Middlemarch is truly a great novel.
