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Thinking about how Eliot is emphasizing how little is happening to Dorothea—she barely gets out in Rome, the "stifling oppression" of her forced indolence back in Lowick—and yet she undergoes these big internal shifts. By the end of Book Three it seems like she is finding her big project: Caring for a husband who will be, not a titanic leader, but a helpless invalid, whose own ego needs to be protected along with his failing organs. Also noticing how Eliot structures these books—which came out serially, like episodes of big TV shows!—around cliffhangers. She picks us up in the middle of Fred's debt emergency ("we have seen"), weaving us back into the story, and then drops us off with sudden turns: Rosamond and Lydgate's engagement, Casaubon's collapse, the death of Featherstone and the mystery of the will.

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I've been reading it too! Let's do an event!

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Aug 2, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

An important theme of Book Three ("Waiting for Death") is the awakening or deepening of conscience. Mrs. Garth makes Fred "feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse." For Lydgate, it is "a helpless quivering which touched him quite newly," a moment of naturalness like a feather-touch, making Rosamund his inescapable reality. Mary's difficult decision gives her pangs of conscience presumably. And above all, we have Dorothea's realization that she had in her anger helped bring on Casaubon's fit. This comes across in her discussion with Lydgate: "Dorothea sat as if she had been turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense that her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of scenes and motives." I also love the part where she turns to Lydgate "Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death..." The tone here is almost like Lear turning to Edgar on the Heath, asking the cause of thunder. Eliot speaks of a cry from soul to soul.

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I loved just after that when Eliot pulled back the camera (temporally) and said, "For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced on him by this involuntarily appeal—this cry from soul to soul"

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Jul 30, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Reading Mona’s comments this week, and Ann’s new response to my comments from last week, and all I can say is, “Wow!” There is so much to be gained by checking into this thread and following along with the readings each week. Thank you, Mona and Ann, for taking the time to share your thoughts. Your contributions are very much appreciated.

Last week I was protesting about some of the book’s long narratives, and Eliot’s tendency to look at key situations from every angle. This week I learned "why." Instead of continuing to be a repellent, I found myself drawn into the story now with emotional attachments I rarely hold for fictional characters. The illness of Fred Vincy? OMG Heartbreaking. Lyndgate’s call to serve the house of Sir James Chetam? A really exciting prospect. Mary Garth’s admonitions about Fred’s lack of contribution to the world and insensitivity to all but himself? What a missive we should all think long and hard about. The revelations go on and on. The bricks Eliot mortared into place paragraph by paragraph have built a monument to the ages.

The issue of social standing was again thrust before me this week. Eliot has given me more of the awareness and vocabulary to address an issue that has not been at the forefront of my mind for long, even though I may be dimly conscious of it at times. There is a social hierarchy running through almost everything, if you take a moment to analyse most social encounters. For the moment I have become sensitized to my own desires for similar standing with friend and relationships, and to the feeling I get from more “successful” friends (in terms of career, monetary accomplishment, publications, etc.), that their time is somehow more valuable than my own. What to do with this momentary awareness, before I lapse back into the blind routines and actions of life (or is this a permanent reality template)? Probably not much, but boy oh boy, it’s like that Great White shark prowling the beach that you never see or think about just below the surface of the waves. If the movie Jaws made you think twice about swimming at the beach, the book Middlemarch makes you think twice about the social constructions of class and where you fit into them.

I can see something of myself in Mr. Casaubon when it comes to writing a book. Quivering, afraid to commit something to writing for fear it will be criticised. It makes me want to stick to my plot lines and the points I want to make and just write it for myself — to hell with the critics. I don’t need to go back and keep editing over and over and never finishing because it’s never going to be perfect. Criticism will come no matter what we write, good or bad! So just keep writing. Go team!

I asked last week if Eliot’s constant citation of other historic works was a desire to 1) rise to the level of a classic by comparison; 2) leaven the situation with emotions comparable to a prior well known work; 3) make it known she is consciously aware that in the big picture nothing is new or original but simply a rebirth of a similar concept or theme; or 4) impress us with her knowledge and prior learning? Ann let it be known it may also be none of these things. Eliot may also have simply made up the quotes in some chapters to be funny! What a sense of humor. Bravo!

I am coming to look at this book as a satire on egotists who do not have the ability to think of anyone but themselves, who in the process of living their own lives of self righteousness and self importance, make clowns of themselves instead. I wonder if my theory will continue to have merit as we proceed to the end of the story....

I found the Featherstone death scene to be unbelievably masterful. I am in awe of Eliot’s narrative. Amazing work. I must stop here.

Lead on Mona. Thank you again!

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Oh so glad you are finding this so satisfying! Thanks for joining in! Sometimes it seems to me that the novel itself is a product of the effort to think through shifting social hierarchies. Marriage being so central to it because it is a rare opportunity to shift one's status—if only under narrow constraints. Dorothea, Rosamond, Mary—they're all thinking about how to create a life in which they can be themselves, be protected from instability, realize their dreams. The boys on the other hand seem to have the ability to pursue their interests within their defined roles, even if there is friction: Lydgate's science, Casaubon's studies, Will's art, Farebrother's entymology, Fred's pleasure-seeking. But no one is just accepting their status and its conventions (Chettam maybe?). Even Mr. Brooke has his little intellectual and political adventures! And how did Bulstrode get where he is?

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Jul 31, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg, Mona Simpson

The English critic Barbara Hardy long ago argued that Casaubon is impotent--as Mrs. Cadwallader says, a great bladder for dried peas to rattle around in....and then there's the line, in this week's reading I think, in which D thinks of Lowick as now seeming terribly shrunken. Go back to that moment in Rome when we're told that Casaubon had not found marriage a raptuorous state, but that since he cannot find any fault in Dorothea he assumes that the poets have exaggerated the force of masculine passion. He may not think anything is wrong....but can we imagine that she does, and moreover that she might blame herself? Given how little she knows, and given too that in Rome she has been exposed to all those naked bodies painted on the ceilings of palaces and churches,

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There's this interesting tension in her between confusion at the "severe classical nudities and smirking Renaissance-Corregiosities" and "eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings" of Italian art on the one hand and her impulse toward affection and at-ease-ness with her body on the other.

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Jul 31, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg, Mona Simpson

I also wished that Dorothea had not been so allergic to Sir James! But then where would we be!

Does anyone else feel that Eliot is having her cake and eating it too, especially over Casaubon? On the one hand she says that for her part she is very sorry for him, and on the other she shows us how horrible he is. And he is horrible, even if we know why or whatever the heck else.

If I'm understanding her correctly Eliot says that procreation did fall under the list of things Casaubon saw as the outward correct way of marriage. ".. he had always intended to acquit himself by marriage .. a reason to for losing no more time in overtaking domestic delights before they were left too far behind in years."

But marriage not to mention sex is stronger stuff than he can take.

So they both made a mistake, and not of an altogether opposite nature. Since reality seems to be playing little part in either of their imaginations.

I like the stag book cover illustration very much! It's from a pretty sad chapter though, where Dorothea feels as if life were shrinking away from her and she is being relegated to some land of the ghostly and perpetually ineffectual.

She's reduced to talking to a picture on the wall.

And this is also rather disturbing: "No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome." But we know!

But I still wonder why she ever wanted "the delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior" in the first place! Sounds like another form of ghostliness to me!

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I think she is trying for us to see all the characters both from the inside and out, and she has the biggest challenge with Casaubon. Maybe she has set the challenge for herself because she is struggling with stereotypes or perceptions of "the intellectual" that she both herself harbors and resists! Like him she is physically unattractive, socially awkward by the standards of "the town," bound to solitary pursuits, self-judging; unlike him she rejects sterile abstraction, is curious and affectionate toward humanity, embraces the present. I wonder if Casaubon might have found someone closer to his own vibe (as Eliot did) who could have reached him.

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To your last remark about someone reaching Casaubon - I think the "point" of him is that he is unreachable and more, he doesn't want to be reached. I think that is the main thing, and he is just realizing that about himself - a little too late in the day, because for whatever reason (the arrogant male assumption Eliot loves to skewer?) he thought he could be and now he's got Dorothea and all he can think about is the bad effect on his ridiculous dead-in-the-water project.

And Casaubon is not even really an intellectual is he? It seems like he's just pretending to be one, trying to be one, but he's a failure at it, and he knows it, too.

But it's all he's got between himself and the world, I guess. This kind of brittle facade.

I guess Eliot could only write Casaubon because like you say she had seen that arid side of intellectualism though she didn't occupy it herself.

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I think you get Eliot’s attitude toward her character Casaubon exactly right here. How she is struggling with the stereotype of the intellectual (her own natural self-image) and how, not in a cruel way but in an honest way, won’t let the intellectual get away with anything.

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Aug 1, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Good comment! My take: as a good and decent social animal Dorothea wants first and foremost to help others. And to help others in concrete ways (the plans for the cottages). That’s a good thing. She also wants to participate in the “big world,” but doesn’t know how, since that world is exclusively run by the men. Thus her desire for “the delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior” is not necessarily a weakness in this case: depending on someone with experience and a capacious mind might be her best option, given her naïveté and youth. The problem is Casaubon: he can’t connect his ideas to reality in a way that creates a “living” text just as he can’t produce a viable “copy” for the next generation by joining physically with Dorothea. Again, this is just my assumption -- that Casaubon is impotent.

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I actually woke up this morning feeling a little bad that I had called Casaubon "horrible" .. I must be more sympathetic to him than I thought! At what point is it okay to just not care about why he's horrible and simply find the whole thing btw him and Dorothea repulsive and wrong, like Sir James does?

I imagine you are right about Casaubon, and I think Eliot's language points to that. Dorothea's confusion about what has happened might contain that kind of experience which she probably would not even understand, given how young and naive she is. Mr. Brooke says she can read anything now she's married, but he's assuming she knows things she might still not know. Maybe that's why it's funny.

When you think of sexual spark I am only getting a little from Celia and Sir James, not any of the other couples or would-be couples. Certainly not from Rosamond and Lydgate, where all is superficial and egotistical.

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A little from Will?

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Jul 31, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Will check in in a day or so. Have to finish the readings first! (Was going to say the dog ate my homework ...)

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I had to sprint at the end there myself!

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Aug 3, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I don’t disagree with you. The aridity of Casaubon‘s mind makes his actions more and more cruel as time goes on. He has his propriety and his “Christian” principles and his big project (he senses it is a failure or is going to be one), but they are really a screen for not having to deal with others as living-breathing human beings. It seems like everyone in his world is a function of whether they impose on his frail constitution or work schedule, and this is especially so after his illness. So while I felt some sympathy for him early on, sympathy that I think Eliot’s writing prepared us for, I now find him in this part of the novel more and more repugnant. As readers we can measure that repugnance by the rising level of Dorothea’s feelings of desperation. Precisely because Dorothea is by nature, kind and solicitous and wants to serve something noble this desperation should tell us something.

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Aug 6, 2023·edited Aug 6, 2023Author

Just now in Book Four Mona raises the possibility that Casaubon's (and Brooke's) fussy documentary projects reflect unease with the status of the landed wealthy, needing to justify their existence and their prestige in this new social world, which was something I hadn't thought of.

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This was my favorite section of the book so far, like others have noticed things are picking up. Instead of easing into a bath we are now going whitewater rafting. There's a lot to comment, but what sticks out for me is the last scene between Mary and Mr. Featherstone. It just feels so dramatic, I want to see how it could be so adapted on the screen.

Another thing that really interested me is how Eliot drives home the theme of selfishness. Practically all of the men in the book are incredibly selfish, from the loveable rogue Fred Vincy who manages to get his much poorer friend in debt, to Lydgate whose egoism blinds him to the damage he is doing to Rosamund's reputation and affections by courting her (and who has no evidence to assume she is playing like he is except for the fact that he really wants it to be that way), to Casaubon who not only won't provide his wife with the affection she desperately needs, but who wants to cut her off from potential friendships due to his own jealousy. It seems like a proto-feminist commentary—the way men are able to be selfish because they don't have to see how their actions affect the women around us.

Arguably the only two characters that are truly unselfish are Mary Gaunt and Dorothea Brooke, who form an interesting dichotomy. Mary is unselfish in part because she has to be. Due to her family's class, she has to part with her wages to get them out of a debt, or make a difficult choice that she knows will ruin her reputation. Dorothea, as a member of the upper class, doesn't have to be generous (she could have the attitude of Rosamond Vincy and be far more justified in it if she chose to), but at the same time, her wealth gives her more leeway to be unselfish instead of striving.

I highlighted a lot of lines in this section, but my favorite definitely comes from Mary in the last chapter. "I will not let the soil of your life close the beginning of mine."

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Aug 3, 2023·edited Aug 3, 2023Author

Whitewater rafting indeed! Yes a lovely thing about this quote is that Mary’s virtue doesn’t come off as prissy or self-satisfied. She just has no interest in being a compromised person.

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Aug 15, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I loved that line too!! That scene really moved me, in a way I haven’t been in the book. It felt so urgent and true that he was pressuring her to do something that would soil her future and though she was portrayed as dutifully following orders and putting up with all the visitors, she had a strong spine and refused! She saved her future in this moment.

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And the no-one-is-watching element. What you can get away with becomes such a theme later, the difference between observable virtue and virtue that has no regard for witnesses.

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Aug 3, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Don’t know about the rest of you, but my take on Rosamund is that Eliot is not sugarcoating her self-absorbed, acquisitive nature. Between Mary Garth and Rosamond Vincy there is no question, as Eliot presents it, which one is morally superior. Rosie is beautiful, like Dorothea, but she is not outer-directed, like Dorothea is. She is polished, socially sophisticated, but ultimately shallow. Lydgate, who at base is a good guy who wants to help others and set himself up in a career and become a serious scientist, is a sucker for her beauty and is simply following his instinct (he wants her and her version of womanhood ) and is not sufficiently aware of what he is getting into. (Full disclosure: my stupid, masculine reaction. 😎)

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I feel like Eliot shapes Lydgate's response to Rosamond as an illustration of his limitation—a modern man of that moment who was still not modern enough to be interested in women as full humans; his science has not disclosed that to him. Will and Fred, on the other hand, appreciate character in women, instinctually, but it's also a mark of sophistication.

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Aug 3, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I very much agree. That L falls for R the way he does and for the reasons he does shows his limitation.

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Aug 3, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

easier to be selfish (or generous) when you’re rich.

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Yes, the contrast of Dorothea's generosity, which is sort of a hobby, and so far hasn't directly benefited anyone we've seen, and Mary's seems to make that point with emphasis!

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Aug 1, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Sorry to leave the Casaubon marriage bed :), but I peeked ahead and there’s more to say about that in book 4. There’s so much comedy in the unwelcome family at Featherstone’s house as his end nears: “None the less they came to Stone Court daily and sat below at the post of duty, sometimes carrying on a slow dialogue in an undertone in which the observation and response were so far apart, that any one hearing them might have imagined him listening to speaking automata . . .”

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Aug 3, 2023·edited Aug 3, 2023Author

Maybe all that buffoonery is setting us up to be as surprised as Featherstone is by Mary's moral clarity… I for one am myself not all that sure how she is so sure. I guess she knows (sadly) that no one would believe her, whatever Featherstone does, and she'll be blamed by whoever loses out.

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I just loved Mary’s stand for herself!! What an intelligent and strong young woman!

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Jul 31, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I confess haven't read the books, just your excellent analysis of them. I had an interesting thought from your opening paragraphs. Would you say that the prevalence of birth control had the biggest effect on destroying the traditional, rigid and ceremonial structures of marriage described in Middlemarch?

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I'll let Mona weigh in, but it's delightful in a way that the posts and comments are interesting enough to read without the book! (It does also seem that part of what Middlemarch is describing is that social fluidity, the ability to move between classes, if only a little, was having a big effect on marriage—and, with it, family and domestic life—at the time she was writing.) Maybe you'll dip in!

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Aug 6, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

It’s fun to collect some of the literary allusions in part three. When Fred approaches, Mary is reading Mrs. Piozzi’s recollections of Samuel Johnson, an alternative to Boswell. We have William Blake in one epigraph. Brooke recommends Dorothea read Smollett to Casaubon, which he compares to eating thistles. Sir Walter Scott is a frequent presence. He was at the height of his popularity. Mary had already referred to the novel the Pirate in part two. Now our auctioneer flips through Anne of Geierstein, reading its opening out sonorously and proud of his correct pronunciation of the title. Lydgate knew Scott’s poetry by heart when younger but no longer reads any literature. Reading as a shared pleasure is associated with Scott, for Eliot, who even includes a poem epigraph about reading Scott with her brother as a child (ch.57). She and her father also read Scott to each other later when he was failing. So polite literature, reading as shared pleasure and adventure, something of the late eighteenth century and what you might read together in Keepsake.

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I do think you would like this new book by Claire Carlisle! A lot about her and Lewes's reading and friendships and influences. It's striking to me how many of these writers who were so important to her seem so antiquated to us now, and yet she still seems so fresh.

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Aug 6, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Yes, I think she is paying tribute.

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Aug 6, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

To a tradition of the novel as adventure romance and a more innocent time

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Aug 3, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

I thought I'd share that there's a new book about George Eliot, and a livestream talk with the author through the New York Society Library. More info here:

https://www.nysoclib.org/events/clare-carlisle-marriage-question-george-eliots-double-life-christine-smallwood

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I've been reading it actually! Trying to think of a way to bring it in. Maybe we'll do an event… Claire Carlisle is interesting, she comes it it, like George Eliot, from philosophy, and is treating marriage as a philosophical problem.

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Jul 31, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

Yes, Dorothea clings to the shreds of romantic illusion like the castaways in The Raft of the Medusa, a French painting of 1818. Link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa

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Ha! A treacherous journey indeed!

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Aug 6, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg

GE loved her science and everything Darwin was about (cf. Gillian Beer). Adapt or your species, in this case, subspecies, dies out. Sounds totally apt, although going on under the surface.

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Yes! I'd probably end up changing my mind about everything if that happened : )

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