Re the reference to Mrs. Lemon's in Mona's post - Rosamond was her star student if I remember, the one who did everything perfectly. She modulates all her movements as she does her thoughts and molds them to fit her desires. Lydgate is soothed by her perfection, then he is frustrated by it, as in blocked by it. He judged her wrongly, or saw only what he wanted to and didn't use his scientist's ability to observe Rosamond in her natural surroundings and come to the obvious conclusions. This is excused by his being so in love with her, his attraction to her that is purely physical. He wanted her for no more than an ornament to adorn his pleasant and self-protecting home life. His regard for her when pushed to his limit is condescending, he thinks she must stay in her place and obey him subserviently. Because he can't figure out how to control her.
He does a lot of thinking. He loses hope (his pride) and starts gambling. Then he takes money from Bulstrode.
Rosamond's love for him is dependent on her mental image of him. When she cannot mold him as she did before when she knew nothing about him as a person and merely projected onto him her desires, he loses all attraction for her. All attraction.
A blow-by-blow demonstration by Eliot of how mental activity determines even more than reality does. Whatever reality is!
A similar thing seems to happen with Bulstrode, his mental activity dictates his actions and he is not present except in his strongest desires.
"But of course intention was everything in the question of right and wrong." And, "Does anyone suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid - necessarily goes to the roots of action! Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?"
Whoa.
Bulstrode is obsessed with secrecy and will slice and dice a million ways to come up with the right answer: keep hiding. This is how he derives a sense of power.
Like a man trying to outrun an avalanche.
And still, still Eliot does not openly flatly condemn him, not in so many words. Though she also leaves no doubt of his guilt! I don't really know how she accomplishes both of these things at once, except that she has shown us his thoughts every step of the way, and then insists on there being other possible reasons that we can't really, know.
A very wide and generous view.
I found it odd that Lydgate did not at the time question more the circumstances of Raffles' death. I think that is the one place where I felt Eliot cutting her cloth to fit her argument. But that's all right, she more than earns her cuts, I feel. And they are not unbelievable, only a bit convenient, perhaps.
Book 7 was so absorbing once I dedicated my mind to it that I really forgot about Dorothea and only recalled near the end of the Book that she had been gone a long time. And then I only felt admiration for Eliot for doing that. Talk about confidence! She must have known she could make her disappear and not lose any readers because of it but they would stay the course with her with the great reward coming .. maybe.
I think GE is asking us--how far would you go to cover up your faults to remain in the world's regard? This far? A person takes this step, and then this step, and then they are so far in. It so struck me when Rosamond finds Lydgate's medical interests almost "a vampire's tastes." Medicine was an abstraction for her at the outset, but up close it is so near death and decay, things most people avoid, especially someone as appearance-obsessed as she is. We see Lydgate's scientific abstraction in his lack of horror at the spectacle of someone, an otherwise healthy person, dying of drunkenness before his eyes--he has only a theoretical interest. And he is quite lacking in self-doubt. He thinks he is right, but doesn't worry, for Raffles's sake, that he might be wrong. He had "repeatedly acted" in such cases (yikes) with a "favorable result."
Lydgate takes an interest in his poor patients and we can infer that he is a caring person. He is very firm and clear in his orders to Bulstrode not to give alcohol, and to stop the opium. Both orders are ignored and Raffles gets worse and then dies. He might have died anyway, but he might not have. The main thing is, as far as I can tell, that the orders were not followed, which took away the chance that Lydgate's approach, though not the conventional one, might have done some good - but even if it had, it would not have been possible to claim that the treatment secured the result.
If the orders had been followed and Raffles had died, someone would surely have said that Lydgate's methods were to blame!
He takes the money and it does cloud his professional judgment. Otherwise why would he be worried about insulting Bulstrode by questioning him, especially in the matter of a death?
"and if he examined the housekeeper - why, the man was dead." Wait, what? You're not going to examine the housekeeper? For real?
It is an interesting take on how money obligations influence behavior in the most professional of men. Financial debt is ok when conceived as a work of charity or compassion. Otherwise it's just a bribe, which is what Lydgate does, unwittingly, accept.
Makes you sort of glad for credit cards.
I think you are getting at something else, though, while I went off on a tangent. I want to say that Rosamond is such a very unlikely and unwise match for Lydgate in almost all ways except that he finds her so attractive.
Ok, I have never done anything so very bad, but if I did, I honestly do not know how far I would go to keep it a secret. It's a bit scary to think about that. (If you think I've told Mom about all the times I stole money from her purse, you would be sadly wrong. However, I would tell her now!)
You make an important point; if, in fact, Lydgate's orders had been followed and Raffles died, the doctors in Middlemarch would almost certainly blame Lydgate for going against the conventional practice and thus, letting Raffles die.
I want more on Raffles. What a black swan. He enters Middlemarch and ruffles feathers like a fox in a chicken coop. How did he become so degraded? What had gone wrong in his life? If Eliot says, I missed it. We get his deathbed, and a few other deathbeds in this book, but no marriage beds. However, deathbeds lead to marriage beds.
Good question! There is a certain elan in the way Eliot describes him, he's a talker, a spinner of words, an improvisor. Another alter ago for the writer.
Yes, Ann. Hugo House posted a video of Charles Baxter who talked about what he called "Captain Happen" for fiction writers. Funny video. Tedious long intro, though. Raffles is the trickster figure who makes things happen. The other trickster is death.
He also shines a bright light on the past. He’s a strange kind of blackmail historian of the personal histories of Bulstrode and Ladislaw’s family, so that’s why we can’t help liking him a bit.
Unless you think of chapter 61 as coming to life. There, we learn about Bulstrode’s past through his own oblique interior monologue, but Raffles has set his thoughts juddering through the halls of the past. “Once more he saw himself, the young bankers clerk, with an agreeable person, as clever at figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of theological definition, an eminent though young member of the Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury...” the happiest time of his life! Until things get complicated...
What a great suggestion that the absence of Dorothea from most of Book Seven is correlated with its moral chaos! Sometimes the absence or silence of a character can be as significant as a presence. And she will return to an altered landscape after the murder (yes, murder) of Raffles and frightening response of the townspeople: so glad you chose to quote extensively there, the new appetite for dinner invitations and even the benefits to commerce from shared malice is rather terrifying. Ancient Greek texts refer frequently to death by stoning, which almost seems preferable to being ostracized in Middlemarch...
I'm just starting in to Book VIII, and it's so discouraging that everyone is trying to squelch Dorothea's impulse towards solidarity! Her fidelity is such a blast of spiritedness amidst the blight. Bulstrode is a malefactor yes but I feel like GE helps us feel his sense of being trapped--how often under more modest circumstances do we try to keep people thinking well of us when we know better? I feel GE is more merciless towards Rosamond but maybe that's me!
Can I just add that Dorothea's absence from most of the book is correlated with Will's absence. Throughout previous books, we have been treated to one or sometimes several windswept encounters between our major protagonists. But Will is out of town, so no grand talk about wishing for the perfect good. Also, in this book we get to see what the town of Middlemarch is like without the idealism of arguably its two most loving inhabitants, and it's not such a pretty picture.
Spent the late afternoon finishing the last chapters of Book 7 whereupon I was so worn out by it I fell asleep! Bulstrode, a murderer. Oh my gosh. How sinister it is when he hands the key to the wine cabinet over. Yikes.
And just now read Mona's fabulous post which I will reread tomorrow as well as write a "proper" comment : )
I’ve caught up!!! Good grief!! This section, as well as the waiting for the death and funeral of Featherstone have such a Dickensian feel. Or Dickens was influenced by Elliot. Well my dog has just run off with my sweater because I’d ignored his ruffs. Must go walk him!
I felt sort of complicit in Raffles' murder. GE shares Bulstrode's thoughts so we understand his fury with the blackmailer and his subsequent relief. The narrator has been sympathetic to him, but he shows no redemption. He prays hypothetically: "__'if I have herein transgressed."
GE is harder on Rosamond. Rosamond and Lydgate are both disillusioned, and that is common. But a married couple should work together in adversity. I saw an "Ivanka Trump" dress which has been hanging in my closet since 2015, and thought that, in the 21st century, Rosamond could start a design business with her father and make her own money. Would that make the couple happy? I'm a bit more partial to Lydgate. Some of Rosamond's suggestions are not bad (asking the relatives or Bulstrode for money), but Rosamond's sabotaging him is inexcusable. Lydgate is stubborn but not sneaky.
Lydgate taking the money from Bulstrode is an interesting contrast to Will's refusal of the money.
Yes, GE is harder on Rosamond. There is a line where she refers to Rosamond as superficial. I can see Rosamond working w Ivanka Trump by and by (Brooke-speak).
I was just asking above whether it was my own prejudices that made me feel that Eliot does not grace Rosamond with the sympathetic dimensions that other characters get! Or maybe Eliot like me is resentful of the pretty girl who gets what she wants. I feel like Ivanka is perhaps less dreadful in a way than Rosamond because I imagine Ivanka knows when she is being unscrupulous and doesn't care. Rosamond has to see herself as an angel.
Okay, I finished!!! What an ending. What thoughts GE conveys. Can’t wait for Mona’s insights on Sunday!! I’m so glad I read this book with you all. Thank you, Anne and Mona!
I love these posts and look forward to reading them every week. What a pleasure to dive into Mona's impressions and thoughts on this wonderful novel, and I especially love, this week, the advice to young writers <3
Hi Unmana thanks so much for checking in! I wonder how many of you out there are reading the comments and not speaking up. Maybe you will come out of the shadows for the grand finale!
I have to mention now that I didn't know that you were providing this wonderful read-a-long community for a book that I just happened to pick up this summer! I'm caught up now. I was joking with my daughter that I'm reading a book that took 779 pages to get suspenseful, but now it IS, and I'm not to be disturbed while reading it!
I was absolutely mortified by Rosamond's behavior, but we are under a hurricane and flood watch, so must pack and run!
Doug, stay safe!!
Doug, what news? That would be a story, Summer Reading participants caught in storm surge, unable to tear selves from denoument of Middlemarch!
Re the reference to Mrs. Lemon's in Mona's post - Rosamond was her star student if I remember, the one who did everything perfectly. She modulates all her movements as she does her thoughts and molds them to fit her desires. Lydgate is soothed by her perfection, then he is frustrated by it, as in blocked by it. He judged her wrongly, or saw only what he wanted to and didn't use his scientist's ability to observe Rosamond in her natural surroundings and come to the obvious conclusions. This is excused by his being so in love with her, his attraction to her that is purely physical. He wanted her for no more than an ornament to adorn his pleasant and self-protecting home life. His regard for her when pushed to his limit is condescending, he thinks she must stay in her place and obey him subserviently. Because he can't figure out how to control her.
He does a lot of thinking. He loses hope (his pride) and starts gambling. Then he takes money from Bulstrode.
Rosamond's love for him is dependent on her mental image of him. When she cannot mold him as she did before when she knew nothing about him as a person and merely projected onto him her desires, he loses all attraction for her. All attraction.
A blow-by-blow demonstration by Eliot of how mental activity determines even more than reality does. Whatever reality is!
A similar thing seems to happen with Bulstrode, his mental activity dictates his actions and he is not present except in his strongest desires.
"But of course intention was everything in the question of right and wrong." And, "Does anyone suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid - necessarily goes to the roots of action! Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?"
Whoa.
Bulstrode is obsessed with secrecy and will slice and dice a million ways to come up with the right answer: keep hiding. This is how he derives a sense of power.
Like a man trying to outrun an avalanche.
And still, still Eliot does not openly flatly condemn him, not in so many words. Though she also leaves no doubt of his guilt! I don't really know how she accomplishes both of these things at once, except that she has shown us his thoughts every step of the way, and then insists on there being other possible reasons that we can't really, know.
A very wide and generous view.
I found it odd that Lydgate did not at the time question more the circumstances of Raffles' death. I think that is the one place where I felt Eliot cutting her cloth to fit her argument. But that's all right, she more than earns her cuts, I feel. And they are not unbelievable, only a bit convenient, perhaps.
Book 7 was so absorbing once I dedicated my mind to it that I really forgot about Dorothea and only recalled near the end of the Book that she had been gone a long time. And then I only felt admiration for Eliot for doing that. Talk about confidence! She must have known she could make her disappear and not lose any readers because of it but they would stay the course with her with the great reward coming .. maybe.
I think GE is asking us--how far would you go to cover up your faults to remain in the world's regard? This far? A person takes this step, and then this step, and then they are so far in. It so struck me when Rosamond finds Lydgate's medical interests almost "a vampire's tastes." Medicine was an abstraction for her at the outset, but up close it is so near death and decay, things most people avoid, especially someone as appearance-obsessed as she is. We see Lydgate's scientific abstraction in his lack of horror at the spectacle of someone, an otherwise healthy person, dying of drunkenness before his eyes--he has only a theoretical interest. And he is quite lacking in self-doubt. He thinks he is right, but doesn't worry, for Raffles's sake, that he might be wrong. He had "repeatedly acted" in such cases (yikes) with a "favorable result."
Lydgate takes an interest in his poor patients and we can infer that he is a caring person. He is very firm and clear in his orders to Bulstrode not to give alcohol, and to stop the opium. Both orders are ignored and Raffles gets worse and then dies. He might have died anyway, but he might not have. The main thing is, as far as I can tell, that the orders were not followed, which took away the chance that Lydgate's approach, though not the conventional one, might have done some good - but even if it had, it would not have been possible to claim that the treatment secured the result.
If the orders had been followed and Raffles had died, someone would surely have said that Lydgate's methods were to blame!
He takes the money and it does cloud his professional judgment. Otherwise why would he be worried about insulting Bulstrode by questioning him, especially in the matter of a death?
"and if he examined the housekeeper - why, the man was dead." Wait, what? You're not going to examine the housekeeper? For real?
It is an interesting take on how money obligations influence behavior in the most professional of men. Financial debt is ok when conceived as a work of charity or compassion. Otherwise it's just a bribe, which is what Lydgate does, unwittingly, accept.
Makes you sort of glad for credit cards.
I think you are getting at something else, though, while I went off on a tangent. I want to say that Rosamond is such a very unlikely and unwise match for Lydgate in almost all ways except that he finds her so attractive.
Ok, I have never done anything so very bad, but if I did, I honestly do not know how far I would go to keep it a secret. It's a bit scary to think about that. (If you think I've told Mom about all the times I stole money from her purse, you would be sadly wrong. However, I would tell her now!)
You make an important point; if, in fact, Lydgate's orders had been followed and Raffles died, the doctors in Middlemarch would almost certainly blame Lydgate for going against the conventional practice and thus, letting Raffles die.
Maybe Lydgate would have deferred to Bulstrode even without the loan, because he needs him to support the hospital.
I want more on Raffles. What a black swan. He enters Middlemarch and ruffles feathers like a fox in a chicken coop. How did he become so degraded? What had gone wrong in his life? If Eliot says, I missed it. We get his deathbed, and a few other deathbeds in this book, but no marriage beds. However, deathbeds lead to marriage beds.
Good question! There is a certain elan in the way Eliot describes him, he's a talker, a spinner of words, an improvisor. Another alter ago for the writer.
Yes, Ann. Hugo House posted a video of Charles Baxter who talked about what he called "Captain Happen" for fiction writers. Funny video. Tedious long intro, though. Raffles is the trickster figure who makes things happen. The other trickster is death.
"May you live in interesting times..."
He also shines a bright light on the past. He’s a strange kind of blackmail historian of the personal histories of Bulstrode and Ladislaw’s family, so that’s why we can’t help liking him a bit.
It's true, those characters only come alive for us in what he says about them.
Unless you think of chapter 61 as coming to life. There, we learn about Bulstrode’s past through his own oblique interior monologue, but Raffles has set his thoughts juddering through the halls of the past. “Once more he saw himself, the young bankers clerk, with an agreeable person, as clever at figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of theological definition, an eminent though young member of the Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury...” the happiest time of his life! Until things get complicated...
And Bulstrode is only seen by us through others' eyes until Raffles starts to destabilize these fault lines in his character.
Yes, it's tremendously artful.
What a great suggestion that the absence of Dorothea from most of Book Seven is correlated with its moral chaos! Sometimes the absence or silence of a character can be as significant as a presence. And she will return to an altered landscape after the murder (yes, murder) of Raffles and frightening response of the townspeople: so glad you chose to quote extensively there, the new appetite for dinner invitations and even the benefits to commerce from shared malice is rather terrifying. Ancient Greek texts refer frequently to death by stoning, which almost seems preferable to being ostracized in Middlemarch...
I'm just starting in to Book VIII, and it's so discouraging that everyone is trying to squelch Dorothea's impulse towards solidarity! Her fidelity is such a blast of spiritedness amidst the blight. Bulstrode is a malefactor yes but I feel like GE helps us feel his sense of being trapped--how often under more modest circumstances do we try to keep people thinking well of us when we know better? I feel GE is more merciless towards Rosamond but maybe that's me!
Can I just add that Dorothea's absence from most of the book is correlated with Will's absence. Throughout previous books, we have been treated to one or sometimes several windswept encounters between our major protagonists. But Will is out of town, so no grand talk about wishing for the perfect good. Also, in this book we get to see what the town of Middlemarch is like without the idealism of arguably its two most loving inhabitants, and it's not such a pretty picture.
Spent the late afternoon finishing the last chapters of Book 7 whereupon I was so worn out by it I fell asleep! Bulstrode, a murderer. Oh my gosh. How sinister it is when he hands the key to the wine cabinet over. Yikes.
And just now read Mona's fabulous post which I will reread tomorrow as well as write a "proper" comment : )
Thank you for setting us in motion in the comments!
I’ve caught up!!! Good grief!! This section, as well as the waiting for the death and funeral of Featherstone have such a Dickensian feel. Or Dickens was influenced by Elliot. Well my dog has just run off with my sweater because I’d ignored his ruffs. Must go walk him!
Welcome back!
I concur with folks saying Rosamond is a nightmare, but also I think Eliot keeps refusing to side entirely with Lydgate for a reason...
I felt sort of complicit in Raffles' murder. GE shares Bulstrode's thoughts so we understand his fury with the blackmailer and his subsequent relief. The narrator has been sympathetic to him, but he shows no redemption. He prays hypothetically: "__'if I have herein transgressed."
GE is harder on Rosamond. Rosamond and Lydgate are both disillusioned, and that is common. But a married couple should work together in adversity. I saw an "Ivanka Trump" dress which has been hanging in my closet since 2015, and thought that, in the 21st century, Rosamond could start a design business with her father and make her own money. Would that make the couple happy? I'm a bit more partial to Lydgate. Some of Rosamond's suggestions are not bad (asking the relatives or Bulstrode for money), but Rosamond's sabotaging him is inexcusable. Lydgate is stubborn but not sneaky.
Lydgate taking the money from Bulstrode is an interesting contrast to Will's refusal of the money.
Yes, GE is harder on Rosamond. There is a line where she refers to Rosamond as superficial. I can see Rosamond working w Ivanka Trump by and by (Brooke-speak).
I was just asking above whether it was my own prejudices that made me feel that Eliot does not grace Rosamond with the sympathetic dimensions that other characters get! Or maybe Eliot like me is resentful of the pretty girl who gets what she wants. I feel like Ivanka is perhaps less dreadful in a way than Rosamond because I imagine Ivanka knows when she is being unscrupulous and doesn't care. Rosamond has to see herself as an angel.
Okay, I finished!!! What an ending. What thoughts GE conveys. Can’t wait for Mona’s insights on Sunday!! I’m so glad I read this book with you all. Thank you, Anne and Mona!
Thank you thank you Robyn for joining us and being such an energetic commenter! You guys have all made this so fun.
I love these posts and look forward to reading them every week. What a pleasure to dive into Mona's impressions and thoughts on this wonderful novel, and I especially love, this week, the advice to young writers <3
Hi Unmana thanks so much for checking in! I wonder how many of you out there are reading the comments and not speaking up. Maybe you will come out of the shadows for the grand finale!
Probably more than a few! Substack doesn't exactly make it easy to comment.
I'm finding it so hard to track down the new ones...
I have to mention now that I didn't know that you were providing this wonderful read-a-long community for a book that I just happened to pick up this summer! I'm caught up now. I was joking with my daughter that I'm reading a book that took 779 pages to get suspenseful, but now it IS, and I'm not to be disturbed while reading it!
You're not the first person here who happened to be reading Middlemarch! It is destiny! Welcome and thank you for joining us!
Yes, we need a check-in, Doug!
A totally believable story, Ann : )