Tracks are still visible in these sections of the two separate stories “Middlemarch” one was. How would our experience be different if Eliot had begun with Lydgate, the Vincys, the Garths, Featherstone, and Bulstrode?
I never thought of myself as a "narratologist" before, but if the shoe fits .. : )
It's interesting to see where Dorothea disappears from the narrative, in Ch. 10 where GE throws a convenient dinner party and deftly shifts to another group of Middlemarchers. I do miss Dorothea and Celia when they disappear - and I mean the two of them together, for Dorothea needs to be "thrown into relief" to borrow a phrase from the beginning! On her own I don't think she can carry the narrative for long. They all need each other for that.
I was thinking along those lines reading the chapters about Lydgate. GE seems almost more interested in him, his past, what makes him tick, his personality, than she does Dorothea. Maybe it's Dorothea's way of thinking that sets the tone for the rest, so the others are all compared to her in some way, when it comes to their assumptions and blindnesses? Lydgate thinks he's not going to make an error after making one before -thinking he'd fallen in love with a woman who actually killed her own husband on purpose - a murderer !.. and still he lives in this kind of self-satisfaction that he knows what he's about .. re-reading that chapter yesterday I saw more of the dark humor in it and the way GE is both building Lydgate up and alerting us to his vulnerabilities to which he himself is comfortably insensible.
I think starting with Dorothea was a good idea because it makes you think you are going to read a love story but you get something different .. if she had started with the Vincy's she would have lost the determining factor of Dorothea's idealism .. it is a very tight little picture in the beginning that sort of naturally widens out to include others who in some way are all variations on Dorothea's pure example.
There's a really interesting section in Michael Gorra's Portrait of a Novel in which he talks about how serial publication affected the structure of the Victorian novel generally and Middlemarch specifically. Worth a read!
Thanks for another great introduction to these chapters! The imaginative exercise you urge on us, to ask what if Book Two had been presented first, is a challenging one. At first, i was flummoxed. From simplicity to complexity is part of it, doubtless, as you say. And into a new kind of striving and status-consciousness? Not sure. Here is what I was able to come up with, and doubtless multiple answers are possible. Eliot introduces us first to the landed gentry of/around Middlemarch. We learn to like and perhaps even love some of them. Then, we are introduced to the "lower orders," those who have to make money and strive. We might be tempted to look down our noses at such, as indeed does the beautiful Rosamund (with her reverence for rank) and her suitor Lydgate. Not so fast, is Eliot's message. For here too is nobility, but of a different sort (there is even an aunt named Noble, a subtle hint)! Here too are gentlefolk. earn to love those Middlemarchers, with their whist suppers, their bowls of punch and their fine social distinctions. This is a profoundly radical subversive message (even if it presents itself in the guise of a capitalist bourgeoisie). This message is enabled by setting up a cognitive trap of sorts, presenting at first an appealing but too-limited world of landed gentry.
I am puzzled by the favorable treatment of Anglican (church of England) Farebrother over the unseen Tyke and brooding Bulstrode when in previous novels Eliot showed herself capable of some of the most powerful portraits of evangelical Christians, especially Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, but also in Felix Holt the evangelical milieu is portrayed much more favorably. Could be a case of “been there done that.”
Success and finer aspirations missed out what is beautiful about the social fabric of Middlemarch. The Middlemarchers I most love the Vincys and Farebraother and many of the minor characters exist beyond that dichotomy, playing a beautiful game. I can hardly explain what I mean...
Thank you all for the chance to reread Middlemarch - and with such fascinating contributors. It is making reading thoroughly enjoyable.
I have a question about the quotes at the beginning of chapters. Many aren't attributed, not that I'm likely to know the attribution anyway. They don't really seem to reflect much of what's happening in the chapter. I'd be interested in hearing anything anyone wants to say about them.
My parents were kind and convivial (as Mona describes the Vincys). I could never figure out why their children are more like Rosamond and Fred-- calculating, willful, vaguely dissatisfied. So, perhaps we are the children of “strivers”. Thank you, Mona, for the therapy!
About Rosamond’s feelings and Lydgate’s family connections: “consider whether red cloth and epaulets had never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but ... bring their provisions to a common table and mess together...” I was thinking that Rosamond was vain and self-centered compared to Dorothea. But GE sets me straight Now I get that the two women mirror each other-- as was suggested in previous comments from the group.
There’s something to be said for loving the main character of a novel. After reading David Copperfield, I couldn’t read Dickens for several years. I knew no other character would capture me in the same way. Dorothea for all her faults is a great heroine. I’m betting that Middlemarch wouldn’t work without the first 10 chapters, and in that order!
Jul 22, 2023·edited Jul 22, 2023Liked by Ann Kjellberg
Mr Bulstrode is such an interesting character; the small town provincial version of the Victorian capitalist villain: Melmotte in Trollope's masterpiece, The Way We Live Now, is the cosmopolitan equivalent, but both men share the feature that their backstory is mysterious, and of course will turn out to be their undoing. 'five and twenty years ago nobody had ever heard of a Bulstrode in Middlemarch '... and as Trollope says of Melmotte 'Altogether the mystery was rather pleasant as the money was certain'. And in Dickens' Little Dorrit we find Mr Merdle, like Bulstrode and Melmotte, a banker: ‘Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President of the other.' All three are newcomers to that shallow class of people eager to welcome them in, looking to them for favours and handouts, and all three men hide terrible secrets. They stand as symbols for the authors' contempt for the hypocritical standards of 'smart society'. For both Merdle and Melmotte, the con they are practising eventually falls apart with disastrous consequences. I'm very worried about poor Mrs Bulstrode....
I never thought of myself as a "narratologist" before, but if the shoe fits .. : )
It's interesting to see where Dorothea disappears from the narrative, in Ch. 10 where GE throws a convenient dinner party and deftly shifts to another group of Middlemarchers. I do miss Dorothea and Celia when they disappear - and I mean the two of them together, for Dorothea needs to be "thrown into relief" to borrow a phrase from the beginning! On her own I don't think she can carry the narrative for long. They all need each other for that.
I was thinking along those lines reading the chapters about Lydgate. GE seems almost more interested in him, his past, what makes him tick, his personality, than she does Dorothea. Maybe it's Dorothea's way of thinking that sets the tone for the rest, so the others are all compared to her in some way, when it comes to their assumptions and blindnesses? Lydgate thinks he's not going to make an error after making one before -thinking he'd fallen in love with a woman who actually killed her own husband on purpose - a murderer !.. and still he lives in this kind of self-satisfaction that he knows what he's about .. re-reading that chapter yesterday I saw more of the dark humor in it and the way GE is both building Lydgate up and alerting us to his vulnerabilities to which he himself is comfortably insensible.
I think starting with Dorothea was a good idea because it makes you think you are going to read a love story but you get something different .. if she had started with the Vincy's she would have lost the determining factor of Dorothea's idealism .. it is a very tight little picture in the beginning that sort of naturally widens out to include others who in some way are all variations on Dorothea's pure example.
There's a really interesting section in Michael Gorra's Portrait of a Novel in which he talks about how serial publication affected the structure of the Victorian novel generally and Middlemarch specifically. Worth a read!
Thanks for another great introduction to these chapters! The imaginative exercise you urge on us, to ask what if Book Two had been presented first, is a challenging one. At first, i was flummoxed. From simplicity to complexity is part of it, doubtless, as you say. And into a new kind of striving and status-consciousness? Not sure. Here is what I was able to come up with, and doubtless multiple answers are possible. Eliot introduces us first to the landed gentry of/around Middlemarch. We learn to like and perhaps even love some of them. Then, we are introduced to the "lower orders," those who have to make money and strive. We might be tempted to look down our noses at such, as indeed does the beautiful Rosamund (with her reverence for rank) and her suitor Lydgate. Not so fast, is Eliot's message. For here too is nobility, but of a different sort (there is even an aunt named Noble, a subtle hint)! Here too are gentlefolk. earn to love those Middlemarchers, with their whist suppers, their bowls of punch and their fine social distinctions. This is a profoundly radical subversive message (even if it presents itself in the guise of a capitalist bourgeoisie). This message is enabled by setting up a cognitive trap of sorts, presenting at first an appealing but too-limited world of landed gentry.
I am puzzled by the favorable treatment of Anglican (church of England) Farebrother over the unseen Tyke and brooding Bulstrode when in previous novels Eliot showed herself capable of some of the most powerful portraits of evangelical Christians, especially Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, but also in Felix Holt the evangelical milieu is portrayed much more favorably. Could be a case of “been there done that.”
Are we on to chapters 17-19 next week? I can no longer find the schedule.
Loving it!
Success and finer aspirations missed out what is beautiful about the social fabric of Middlemarch. The Middlemarchers I most love the Vincys and Farebraother and many of the minor characters exist beyond that dichotomy, playing a beautiful game. I can hardly explain what I mean...
Thank you all for the chance to reread Middlemarch - and with such fascinating contributors. It is making reading thoroughly enjoyable.
I have a question about the quotes at the beginning of chapters. Many aren't attributed, not that I'm likely to know the attribution anyway. They don't really seem to reflect much of what's happening in the chapter. I'd be interested in hearing anything anyone wants to say about them.
My parents were kind and convivial (as Mona describes the Vincys). I could never figure out why their children are more like Rosamond and Fred-- calculating, willful, vaguely dissatisfied. So, perhaps we are the children of “strivers”. Thank you, Mona, for the therapy!
About Rosamond’s feelings and Lydgate’s family connections: “consider whether red cloth and epaulets had never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but ... bring their provisions to a common table and mess together...” I was thinking that Rosamond was vain and self-centered compared to Dorothea. But GE sets me straight Now I get that the two women mirror each other-- as was suggested in previous comments from the group.
There’s something to be said for loving the main character of a novel. After reading David Copperfield, I couldn’t read Dickens for several years. I knew no other character would capture me in the same way. Dorothea for all her faults is a great heroine. I’m betting that Middlemarch wouldn’t work without the first 10 chapters, and in that order!
Mr Bulstrode is such an interesting character; the small town provincial version of the Victorian capitalist villain: Melmotte in Trollope's masterpiece, The Way We Live Now, is the cosmopolitan equivalent, but both men share the feature that their backstory is mysterious, and of course will turn out to be their undoing. 'five and twenty years ago nobody had ever heard of a Bulstrode in Middlemarch '... and as Trollope says of Melmotte 'Altogether the mystery was rather pleasant as the money was certain'. And in Dickens' Little Dorrit we find Mr Merdle, like Bulstrode and Melmotte, a banker: ‘Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this, Trustee of that, President of the other.' All three are newcomers to that shallow class of people eager to welcome them in, looking to them for favours and handouts, and all three men hide terrible secrets. They stand as symbols for the authors' contempt for the hypocritical standards of 'smart society'. For both Merdle and Melmotte, the con they are practising eventually falls apart with disastrous consequences. I'm very worried about poor Mrs Bulstrode....