Thanks for writing back! I think where Eliot really resides in Middlemarch is in the character of Mary Garth. The young woman of outer ordinariness and inner beauty who helps Fred become an adult. The beautiful creatures that the eligible men flock to like Rosamond Vincy are a kind of mystery to her and she experiments with them to disco…
Thanks for writing back! I think where Eliot really resides in Middlemarch is in the character of Mary Garth. The young woman of outer ordinariness and inner beauty who helps Fred become an adult. The beautiful creatures that the eligible men flock to like Rosamond Vincy are a kind of mystery to her and she experiments with them to discover how their characters are formed. In Rosamond’s case her beauty ultimately translates into shallowness and, though one can’t say it’s really her “fault,” the destruction of Lydgate, who ends up losing his integrity and his scientific focus. Dorothea is a different case: more self-aware, more concerned with inner growth. Her mistake is that she feels she can be a helpmeet to Casaubon, who in the end is a fraud and, in despair, resents Dorothea for her youth and her sacrifice. I love Eliot, but in a different way than I do Tolstoy.
Thanks for writing back! I think where Eliot really resides in Middlemarch is in the character of Mary Garth. The young woman of outer ordinariness and inner beauty who helps Fred become an adult. The beautiful creatures that the eligible men flock to like Rosamond Vincy are a kind of mystery to her and she experiments with them to discover how their characters are formed. In Rosamond’s case her beauty ultimately translates into shallowness and, though one can’t say it’s really her “fault,” the destruction of Lydgate, who ends up losing his integrity and his scientific focus. Dorothea is a different case: more self-aware, more concerned with inner growth. Her mistake is that she feels she can be a helpmeet to Casaubon, who in the end is a fraud and, in despair, resents Dorothea for her youth and her sacrifice. I love Eliot, but in a different way than I do Tolstoy.
I would love a Tolstoy reading list from you. I have read the great big novels but never knew quite where to go next.