Group Read: Middlemarch, Second Thread

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Group Read: Middlemarch, Second Thread

Denna diskussion är för närvarande "vilande"—det sista inlägget är mer än 90 dagar gammalt. Du kan återstarta det genom att svara på inlägget.

1labwriter
Redigerat: nov 14, 2010, 7:19 am

Here's the new thread for MM. Group Read: Middlemarch

Here's the link to thread #1, Group Read: Middlemarch



George Eliot's (Mary Ann Evans) Birthplace

Please don't miss the great posts yesterday on the other thread from Roni (ronincats), Pat (phebj), Bonnie (brenzi), Angela (BookAngel_a), Claudia (bahzah), Terri (tloeffler), Heather (souloftherose), Peggy (LizzieD), Lucy (sibyx), Gail (bohemima), Donna (Donna828), Stasia (alcottacre), and Laura (lauranav). Wow, that's quite a roundup!

2alcottacre
nov 14, 2010, 7:08 am

OK, I found us again.

3Matke
nov 14, 2010, 7:56 am

Thanks for sending us to the new thread. And great picture!

I think it was Pat who talked about the, um, possible/probable sexual incompatibility between Mr. C. and D. I hadn't thought of that before, but it certainly makes sense in the context. If you consider that he'd probably been celibate his entire life and here he was with a new young thing on his hands, expecting at least a bit of a tumble...And not just in that area, either; she is so very young (19 or so) compared to his nearly 50--just the physical affection part was probably on a widely divergent scale as well.

Does anyone think that the right partner for D. may have been, actually, Lydgate? I'm considering that idea, but I need some input from others. I think she could have helped him to be more of what he really wanted to be, and that he might have lightened her up a bit. What do you all think?

4labwriter
Redigerat: nov 14, 2010, 9:02 am

Hi Stasia!

>231 sibylline:, Thread One, post from sibyx. btw I've been meaning to go back to the ch in the Vatican to post pix of some of the things they were looking at, just the interior of St. Peter's is indeed enough to blow most circuits in yr. brain, and then all the stuff....... I haunted it for a week in my early 20's. -- Anyway I have a feeling it matters, that GE chose which statues to highlight. Hold me to that -- I can't do it from home, given our slow internet, but I can from my internet bakery or the library.

Oh what a great idea, Lucy. I'm a visual person, love the illustrations, love this idea. Maybe I could post an image and you could comment?

At the beginning of Chapt XIX, we find Dorothea standing in front of "the reclining Ariadne, then called the Cleopatra . . . the drapery folding around her with petal-like ease and tenderness" (130).



Comments, anyone? Lucy, do I have the right statue?

5labwriter
nov 14, 2010, 9:14 am

Hi Gail. I think I was working on my post while you were posting. I love questions like that--"What if"? Well, what if . . . should Eliot have paired Dorothea with Lydgate?

6sibylline
nov 14, 2010, 10:06 am

Yes yes! And it illustrates exactly what GE wanted to alert her readers to - without having to be explicit - that Rome awakens her sexuality and being her ardent self, that is probably saying something. I think the posts yesterday were incredible, thank you! What a treasure to find them today.

I'm just not getting any cafe time this weekend, but let me see what I can do from home.

The discussion between Will and D at the end of Book II -- just has the tenderest sort of flow and back and forth as Will realizes who D really is and is falling in love, and trying to contain his anger. I also feel that for the first time, I'm getting more of a picture of who Will is, that his determination not to just leap into the first thing that comes along hasn't just been laziness.

D's attempt to get Will to reassure her about C's scholarship is an amazing piece of writing, too. So revealing of her character, of how her attitude to Will and to C is changing, how she sees things is changing. Amazing.

And C. even if he is a dry old thing, isn't that stupid. GE's refusal to turn him into a merely a caricature is what gives the book depth too.

Fascinating idea about Lydgate and D -- but then we would have had no plot! No story! But yes, temperamentally they might have suited quite well. It makes perfect sense. And what is interesting is that it was merely a matter of weeks and she would have met him..... I wonder if GE set it up that way, wanted us to notice and thing, 'how too bad!'.

I'm off to see if I can find some pix.

7-Cee-
nov 14, 2010, 10:08 am

IMHO, Lydgate and Dorothea would have made a more interesting couple to each other - but how would that affect the story to come? I guess tensions make a better read and give the author more room to comment on the differences/similarities of human nature. Not having read this before, don't know where we are going...

Also, since they were so concerned with social status at the time, would it have been the right move for Dorothea? As far as I can see, age, love, interests, etc were not criteria for a "good" marriage. When did couples start marrying for love/passion? And overall, is it working out any better?

8sibylline
Redigerat: nov 14, 2010, 10:51 am

So here's an interior of St. Peter's:
St. Peter's

Findings for Meleager are, well, meagre -- at least -- what I think is that the bust you will see on the Wiki site might be what GE is referring to. It's a copy of a Greek piece that is lost, and there appear to be several copies of it around, one in the BM. I don't know that Meleager has any particular significance other than being a handsome and valiant young buck. But he also fits the 'awakening' aspect of our thoughts.

9sibylline
Redigerat: nov 14, 2010, 11:02 am

This B&B on the via Sistina is probably not too far off from whatever their accommodations were: sistina

The Farnesina: here

and Raphael's Cupid and Psyche here -- I'm trying to think if there is any reason why Casaubon would choose Raphael -- if I do think of something, I'll let you know. So far, nothing. Although their exchange about it, D. asking 'But do you care?' (About Raphael, about seeing the pictures) is not a question that C. is equipped to answer, he can only talk about things in relation to other things, how they are regarded, not what he feels himself.

10sibylline
Redigerat: nov 14, 2010, 11:09 am

On the day they go around in a trio, they see this Raphael: (click on the image to enlarge it) here

and Laocoon: here He of Virgilian fame who said 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." It's just possible that GE is fooling with us -- the gift that the Graeco-Roman world bears to D. being consciousness of what a fool she's been. Will/Rome as a sort of Trojan horse. But I may be pushing things a bit.

There are a couple of paintings referred to in Naumann's studio, but I need to stop doing this and do some reading!!!!

11sibylline
nov 14, 2010, 11:15 am

While scouting about I noticed or re-noticed a passage I had marked as a bit on the odd side -- Naumann and Will discussing 'fate' basically, let me see, about a page from the end of Ch 19 -- 'the universe straining towards the obscure significance of your pictures' -- I think that GE is touching lightly on a matter that troubles all artists -- which is 'why bother', why make art? Will comes out on the side of process, Naumann on product, I think. It isn't a passage that has a whole lot of significance, I don't think, but it does reveal a bit about Will. Process-orientation does usually entail higher ethical standards, as the 'how' of how you do somethiing matters as much as getting there.

12labwriter
nov 14, 2010, 12:28 pm

>11 sibylline:. Later in the same discussion between these two fellas you refer to, Sib, our pal Will Ladislaw says this: Language is a finer medium. . . . Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague. After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent perfection" (132,33--end of Chapt. XIX).

That seems like a hugely important statement, coming from someone who uses writing as their medium. Yet frankly, I'm seeing Ladislaw as pretty much of a lightweight at this point--so I'm not quite sure how Eliot means for us to take that statement, coming out of Ladislaw's mouth. Although I assume this is Eliot's point of view about the visual arts vs. language.

13Donna828
nov 14, 2010, 12:48 pm

>3 Matke:: Interesting idea, Gail. I agree with you that Dorothea and Tertius (?) would have made a good match. The book would have taken a whole new outlook on their "good works" and social and medical reform, etc. instead of the focus on mismatched relationships. There might even be some s-e-x introduced. I must say, I never thought of the celibate angle of Dodo and C's marriage. Vedy in-te-resting.

Love the image of the 'Cleopatra' and the links to the other visual effects. Thanks for enriching this section of the book for us, Becky and Lucy. I feel as if I've been to Rome now! I like art talk in books...especially when they lean towards humor as in the painting of Casaubon's head! This is one funny book...in places anyway.

14tloeffler
nov 14, 2010, 12:55 pm

Becky, I think that is an important statement. As readers, we use our imagination when reading, and thus, we all have our own idea of how characters and places look, based on the writing. In a painting, most of the thinking is done for you. You can create your own story about it, but the visual is set in stone. I agree that "language gives a fuller image." There are a limited number of stories that can be made up about a picture, but the pictures we can create from the written/spoken word are limitless.
And wouldn't you expect it to be Eliots point of view, as a writer? Of course she would prefer language!

15souloftherose
Redigerat: nov 14, 2010, 4:58 pm

#3 I hadn't thought about the possible celibacy of Dorothea's and Casaubon's marriage but there was a passage in chapter 20 about Mr C. not responding to Dorothea's caresses. Even if they weren't strictly celibate I can imagine him finding it very difficult to be warm towards her physically which could be almost as disappointing for our poor Dodo.

16sibylline
nov 14, 2010, 5:03 pm

Yes -- as I recall he sort of flinched when she patted his arm lovingly.

17phebj
nov 14, 2010, 6:24 pm

#11 and 12 Thanks for pointing out those passages at the end of Chapter XIX Lucy and Becky. I totally skimmed over them.

The more I think about this transition for Dorothea to being a wife it just seems overwhelming. She's 19 (or 20), never been out of England (I assume) and is all of a sudden in Rome with a husband who seems incapable of connecting to other human beings. I can't imagine them having any compatibility as lovers. And the contrast between her stitled conversations with Casaubon and the way the words flow between her and Will is pretty dramatic.

The other thing I've been thinking about is the plight of women in general at this time in England. Today, Dorothea could do all she wanted to on her own. Then, she could only do it through marriage.

Something I was reading also made the point that Farebrother was supporting his mother, aunt and sister. That they had no means of supporting themselves at that time.

Can't say that I like Lydgate too much at the moment. Seems very self-interested.

In my Introduction there is a short discussion of "egosim" in its new (i.e. early 1800s) "philosophical and scientific form" which I didn't entirely follow but one thing I thought was interesting was this comment: One of Eliot's favorite ways of identifying egoists among the characters of her books is to show them regarding themselves with admiration in a mirror. Altruists look through windows instead. I remember that scene much earlier of Rosamond admiring herself in the mirror with Mary Garth standing nearby.

18yolana
nov 14, 2010, 7:53 pm

I'm just checking in. I got my what Austen ate book a few days ago and got completely sidetracked. It's like reading about tribal life in ancient cultures. I finished it today and am heading back to Eliot. After reading about the exhausting smallness of their lives I hardly blame Dorothea and Lydgate for wanting something more.

19sibylline
nov 14, 2010, 7:55 pm

And doesn't Mary Garth look out the window someplace? Maybe during that same convo?

I am starting Book III and can barely read, for cringing at Fred. As Hermione says of Ron, "What an idiot!" I'll have to tough my way through it. I have to leave the room when people are being stupid on television, but it's hard to leave the room when you are reading about stupidity in a book!

20phebj
nov 14, 2010, 8:09 pm

I found the conversation between Rosamond and Mary toward the end of Chapter XII but from a quick skim didn't see anything about Mary looking out the window; just alot of Rosamond looking in the mirror.

I probably won't start Book III until Tuesday night. Too much catching up on For Whom the Bell Tolls for my class Tuesday morning.

21ronincats
nov 14, 2010, 9:07 pm

I'm the same--tomorrow will be completely taken up with prep and class, and I'll move on to book 3 on Tuesday. I did get caught up with the footnotes in the Norton edition today--almost all identifying famous people referred to (and there are a LOT of them) and a few phrases.

22labwriter
nov 15, 2010, 8:15 am

>17 phebj:. Pat, that's a great catch about Rosamond looking at herself in the mirror and what GE is telling us with that.

>18 yolana:. Yolana, I love that--"like reading about tribal life in ancient cultures." I think reading Victorian lit is a lot like reading in a new language, as well. For some people, this may be a first exposure to this period, and it really takes some getting used to. You almost have to develop an ear for the writing, and I think the only way to do that is to find some good authors and stick with it. Personally, I love Dickens. Bleak House is one of my very favorities, another book I read in one of Prof. Carrol's classes.

>19 sibylline:. "Hard to leave the room when you are reading about stupidity in a book"--hilarious.

Yesterday was a bad day for reading, so I haven't started Book III yet.

23alcottacre
nov 15, 2010, 10:53 am

I know I am behind, but I love Will's reaction in Book II, Chapter IX to the news that Joe is spending every day at the Library of the Vatican instead of tending to his new wife: "Will Ladislaw was struck mute for a few moments. He had never been fond of Mr. Casaubon. . .But the idea of this dried-up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vendor's back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and then passing his honeymoon away from her. . .-this sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided between the impulse to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse to burst into scornful invective."

24sibylline
nov 15, 2010, 11:10 am

That is a masterful bit of writing, and he is sooooo right, isn't he!

25alcottacre
Redigerat: nov 15, 2010, 11:13 am

Most definitely!

ETA: I really love the last line and wonder, if in her later years, Dorothy might not have had the same reaction to her marriage to Joe.

26alcottacre
nov 15, 2010, 11:19 am

Oh, and I learned a new word for today: dithyramb - a usually short poem in an inspired wild irregular strain

27phebj
nov 15, 2010, 11:35 am

#23 Thanks for posting that quote, Stasia. I loved that too. Finally, someone with some sense when it comes to romance!

28alcottacre
nov 15, 2010, 11:38 am

#27: Yep! Thus far in the book, Will seems to be the most level-headed about romance.

29brenzi
nov 15, 2010, 2:58 pm

I agree Stasia. I included that quote in my notes too because it said so much about the relationship between D and Casaubon. I'm still anticipation some kind of relationship between D and Will.

I started Book IV this morning and have to say I'm completely immersed in the story and absolutely loving it.

30sibylline
nov 15, 2010, 4:32 pm

I got through the embarrassment of Fred's confession - it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, although I still wanted to bean him for his 'languidness' - now I am all fired up to read again.

31alcottacre
nov 15, 2010, 5:37 pm

I will be starting Book III tomorrow - and am hoping to finish it during Darryl's Readathon.

32Matke
nov 15, 2010, 6:14 pm

Part of my problem with reading (not just Middlemarch, but reading almost anything remotely worthwhile) is that I immediately see the characters as real people and thus become terribly (one might say overly) involved with their lives. Hence my speculation on a Lydgate/D. marriage. It would have made for a different and far less compelling book, but if these were really my friends...

Anyway, I'd like to add my thanks for the Rome pictures. They help to explain D.'s growing sense of, well, emotional doom married to this awful stick. Of course I strive to remember that he is terribly disappointed as well, but he's so unlikable that it's hard to give him any sympathy at all. And to say congratulations to the poster (forgive me, I don't have enough time to look it up) who caught the William Blake dissing. That was a fantastic insight!

Personally I have a bit of a crush on Will L. because he is a sweet person and yet sees things quite clearly, an unusual trait in these characters.

33sibylline
nov 15, 2010, 8:51 pm

GE quotes Blake at the beginning of Book III -- two differing views of love..... ! I suppose simply that some love givingly and some love takingly? Any other thoughts?

I understand very well the involvement piece. With some books I let myself sink into total identification, with others I realize I have to keep my distance and concentrate on the aspects of the novel that work for me -- gorgeous descriptions or great insights or whatever if I'm going to get through it.

34LizzieD
nov 15, 2010, 9:00 pm

What a great group! I hope to get back to *MM* tomorrow when I will also be getting rid of Fred, I hope. You know, I had just always assumed that Joe and Dorothea's marriage was pretty much a celibate affair. I was also thinking (maybe mistakenly) that a gently-reared young woman would be dependent on her husband for her sexual awakening. She's not going to get a lot of help from Joe.
I missed the Blake quote, Lucy, and will have to go back. Ah well. Distractions!

35yolana
nov 16, 2010, 9:37 am

Fred is so completely exasperating. His actions reminds me of the mess of our housing market. People being lent money with no real inquiry or thought as to how it was to be repaid. And this idea of flipping a horse for profit is all too similar to house flipping. I admit that I'm now completely immersed in these people's lives as well. It's odd that of all of these new couples the most shallow one (Celia and Sir James) seems like it will be the most sucessful.

36Matke
nov 16, 2010, 12:22 pm

What's striking to me is how very little we have changed.

Here Eliot is describing not only human foolishness in the areas of love, realistic ambition, and personal faults, but also the venality of politics. On the one hand, we can be hopeful: all of this has happened before, they got through it without the world world metaphorically coming to an end, etc. On the other hand, it's pretty darned depressing: it seems that we've made no progress in the areas of public probity and political honesty (surely that's an oxymoron).

37labwriter
nov 16, 2010, 12:37 pm

So this week is Book III: "Waiting for Death."

This book starts out with Chapt. XXIII.

Fred Vincy and his debt of 160 pounds. When it first comes due, Fred (do I need to say, "of course"?) can't pay the amount, so he renews the bill with Caleb Garth's signature (158). Oh dear, this can't turn out well. What we remember of Caleb Garth is that he's a kind and decent man, working as a surveyor and land agent involved in farm management. And of course he's Mary Garth's father.

We learn more about the Vincys in this chapter, Fred's parents, Mr. Walter Vincy and Mrs. Lucy Vincy: the lived in an "easy profuse way . . . so that the children had no standard of economy, and the elder ones {that is, Rosamond and Fred} retained some of their infantine notion that their fathe rmight pay for anything if he would" (159). Fred doesn't think about renewing the bill with his father because of the storm it would cause in the family, and "Fred disliked bad weather within doors."

Fred seems like a cheerful bumblehead; it evidently doesn't occur to him that he should go without if he doesn't have the money he needs--or as GE says, the idea that he should have to "wear trousers shrunk with washing, eat cold mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to 'duck under' in any sort of way"--was an absurdity to him.

So he chooses the "poorest and kindest" friend to apply for the loan--Caleb Garth.

Mrs. Vincy, even before Mr. Garth failed in his building business, had always looked down on the Garths. She is alarmed at the thought that Fred might engage himself to the plain Mary Garth, "whose parents 'lived in such a small way'" (160).

Here's a line that shows why Fred seems to be getting a pass so much of the time from the people in Middlemarch: "tacit expectations of what should be done for him by Uncle Featherstone determined the angle at which most people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch" (161).

Interesting that Fred at least shows some concern (maybe for the first time?) about "breaking his word" to Mr. Garth (163), causing him to plan to sell his horse. And of course, disaster strikes.

Chapt. XXIV.

I love this from the narrator: "For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual elasticity under this stroke of ill fortune" (166).

I also love GE's description of Mrs. Garth (near the beginning of the chapter--second long paragraph) (167). Mrs. Garth had been a governess before her married (which is part of Mrs. Vincy's heartburn about her, since Mrs. Garth had {{horrors}} actually earned her living. Her grammar and accent were "above the town standard" even though she did her own work about the house. She thought it good for the little students that she sometimes taught that they know "a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone" (168).

Mrs. Garth teaching her little charges why grammar matters--don't miss it!

The scene between Fred and Mr. and Mrs. Garth is so painful. Finally Fred starts to see what a "pitiful rascal" he's been--and it's Mrs. Garth and her feelings for him who shows him that. Fred actually realizes that "being sorry" is of little use to the Garths.

Chapts. XXV through XXXIII remain in Book III.

38labwriter
nov 16, 2010, 12:52 pm

>36 Matke:. It's interesting that you would say that, Gail ("how very little we have changed"). If you read around in some of the essays about her work, or the biographies, or even in Middlemarch itself, it's clear that Eliot believes in the perfectability of the human race. I don't necessarily agree with her; however, I'm not depressed about it. I'm not sure what or how could fundamentally change about being human that would make us, for example, less "foolish" in the area of love, ambition, or faults.

39souloftherose
Redigerat: nov 16, 2010, 2:50 pm

I've just got to the end of chapter 25 and I feel so sorry for poor Mary and the other Garths and so like I want to shake Fred!

On the second page of chapter 25:

Mary speaking:
" 'What does it matter whether I forgive you?.....Would that make it better for my mother to lose the money she has? been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to Mr Hammer's? Should you think all that pleasant enough if I forgave you?' "

Exactly! It's very hard for me to work out how much £90 to the Garth's would mean for me today. But if I think it's 4 years savings that makes me gasp. But it also makes me wonder why on earth Mr Garth guaranteed the debt. I know his character is trusting and not good with money but still...

#23 I am behind too (permanently with this thread it feels like) but that quote is brilliant!

#35 "Fred is so completely exasperating."

Yep!

#34 "I was also thinking (maybe mistakenly) that a gently-reared young woman would be dependent on her husband for her sexual awakening."

That sounds reasonable to me Peggy.

I picked up the Daniel Pool book as part of my library extravaganza today so I will hopefully get stuck into that soon....

And I find it rather ominous that Book III is called 'Waiting for Death'.

ETA: Formatting

40labwriter
nov 16, 2010, 3:07 pm

>39 souloftherose:. Heather, if you're at the end of Chapt. XXV today, then you're not behind here in your reading. We're doing Book III this week which includes Chapts XXIII through XXXIII--so you're spot on.

I agree with you--what's up with the book heading, "Waiting for Death"?

I think your way of computing what 90 pounds was worth to Mrs. Garth is a good one--how long did it take her to put it away? She tells Fred in Chapt. XXIV (sort of in the middle--in my edition it's page 171): "I am at a low ebb with pupils {which is how she makes a little money}. But I have saved my little purse for Alfred's premium: I have ninety-two pounds." And Mary then tells Fred that it's a sum that her mother has saved over four years' time. Ouch. So it was everything she could earn and manage to put by for four years. As she says, her son cannot be apprenticed "ultimately"; he's fifteen and needs to be apprenticed now. So Mr. Garth will have to teach his son himself (173).

41-Cee-
nov 16, 2010, 3:34 pm

I'm up to Chapter XXXI and much happier with the way this book is progressing.
I guess it was Ch 2 that was no fun. :P

I could type out so many great passages that strike me that I would nearly be re-writing the book here. I find myself smiling a lot... maybe smirking is a better word but that implies superiority which I will deny.

I seem to have a little more hope for Fred than some. He really can't be blamed for his financial views as that is the way he was raised. He has a good heart, is remorseful and I think may learn from his mistakes. He was willing to sell his horse (probably his only real asset) which would have been a sacrifice to prevent what he never foresaw in his debt. He's young yet and misled by his upbringing and family habits (i.e., spending slightly more than he could afford).

The Garths are all very trusting and soft-hearted. What a blow!

I think I know what "Waiting for Death" is about... but I won't run the risk of a spoiler. I stupidly read a timeline before I started the book. Drat!

42labwriter
nov 16, 2010, 3:41 pm

Claudia, I think GE has a soft spot for Fred. And I wonder why that is, except I think you've hit it on the head--he seems like someone who can learn from his mistakes.

Whooo, Chapt. XXXI! Although I wonder if anyone else has found that this book reads "fairly" quickly--a relative term, to be sure, but I've found myself often surprised to be zipping through pages faster than I would have expected.

43souloftherose
nov 16, 2010, 5:29 pm

#40 Thanks Becky - I probably wasn't very clear and meant I get behind with the discussion threads. There's so much great stuff being discussed here!

#41 "He really can't be blamed for his financial views as that is the way he was raised."

That's a good point Claudia. But I still feel frustrated and annoyed with Fred. Maybe I will find myself softening as I read on.

44alcottacre
nov 16, 2010, 5:37 pm

I read the entirety of book III today during Darryl's Readathon, and I must say, I have enjoyed this section of the book the most thus far. I love Eliot's turns of phrase in this section: 'assets of hopefulness' is probably my favorite as it is so very descriptive of many of the characters in the book. Describing the Garths from the standpoint of Mrs. Vincy: 'but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner service.' I have a picture of Eliot with tongue firmly planted in cheek on that one!

45brenzi
nov 16, 2010, 6:50 pm

I finished Book IV this afternoon. I will say that "Waiting for Death" is a good title for Book III. I loved this part from Book III (Ch 25) re: Mary Garth's estimation of Fred when she says to him:

I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others and reckoning on what they would do for him. What will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose---just as idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlour---fat and shabby, hoping somebody will invite you to dinner---spending your morning in learning a comic song---oh no, learning a song on a flute.

Poor Mary! For someone so grounded and practical to be falling for someone so....impractical and flighty has got to be tough. We will see.

46Donna828
nov 16, 2010, 10:37 pm

I read Chapters 23-27 today in Part III and thought I'd give a few of my impressions before the story shifts once again to the return to Dorothea and Mr. C. from their honeymoon.

I love the character of Mrs. Garth in Ch. 24. She is so efficient--making pies while homeschooling her youngest children--she is certainly no "useless doll"! Her practical nature came up with a solution to the financial dilemma Fred put them in. That Fred! He showed only a cursory touch of remorse that the Garth's "small way" of living would necessarily become even smaller due to his poor choices. And then he has the temerity to ask Mary to get a loan from Mr. Featherstone. I want to throttle this spoiled "gentleman."

And then there's his sister Rosamond who "never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide." I thought the 'other people' reference was very telling; both of these children were coddled to such a degree that they have learned to use other people to rescue them from their selfish actions.

In Chapter 27, Rosamond and Lydgate are still dancing around each other..."Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond's idea (being engaged), which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's (idea of remaining unengaged) lay blind and unconcerned as a jellyfish which gets melted without knowing it." Careful there, Tertius, there is danger ahead!

47sibylline
nov 17, 2010, 9:35 am

This is the second time in 24 hours I've written a long post and lost it just at the end..... I don't know what is the matter with me, but I am heartbroken.

I think I began here -- saying that I too loved 'the tooth of remorse.' (Mrs. G. to Fred). I also liked at the end of XXIV the description of Caleb loving his work. That is a theme of the book, the importance of loving what you do, I'm realizing.

XXV 'You see, Mary.... a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had to put up with a good deal because of me. But you can't help liking the fellow.

XXVI Fred falls ill, bringing Lydgate into the Vincy orbit and before long by the end of XXVII Rosamond is thinking thus:
To Rosamund it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged. Tertius, run for your life.

Too late: Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets melted without even knowing it.

I'm going to post this and then return in a fresh comment to the Casaubon's -- I'm terrified of losing this!

48sibylline
nov 17, 2010, 9:43 am

So on to the Casaubons:
XXVIII 'the gentlewoman's oppressive liberty' -- the enforced idleness to prove wealth. GE's scorn very apparent! Contrast to Mrs. Garth's happy full life..... again that work and occupation theme.

I fell off my chair as Celia tells D. Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going on a long journey when they are married. She says they get tired to death of each other, and can't quarrel comfortably, as they would at home. I love everything about that! Quarreling comfortably..... a skill I think I need to work on even after 28 years.....

I do love Celia (to D.): "Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia, regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a neigboring body."

XXIX and XXX
I see both these chapters' main function as being to move the plot forward. We are given a glimpse into Joe's truncated soul, arousing our sympathy just enough so that we care when, after a quarrel (naturally about a letter from Will and a request to visit), Joe has some sort of episode (any guesses what that would be?). Anyhow, interestingly as we get to the end of this chapter GE brings Lydgate into the Casaubon orbit, which inevitably will draw the two story threads together, Lydgate as the agent of that. He meets D. too, which I am guessing will matter. in some way.

And that is where I stop for now.

49yolana
nov 17, 2010, 11:38 am

Donna, it's ironic isn't it that Mrs. Vincy is alway looking down on the Garths for essentially living within their means while raising her children up in a way that makes sure that they will exceed theirs to the financial cost of everyone involved with them so it would seem. I'm not looking forward to the marriage of Lydgate and Rosamund.

50-Cee-
nov 17, 2010, 11:41 am

Lucy, "heartbroken" is the perfect word for losing a long message just before posting it. It happens to me occasionally, too. I though it was my lack of skill on a laptop - I still can't figure it!

I'm guessing Casaubon's episode was a mild heart attack or a panic attack. His emotional life certainly changed after the marriage to D. and there was the argument that could have triggered either condition. Since the Dr was treating it so seriously - it kind of implies heart condition. Dunno.

51labwriter
nov 17, 2010, 12:55 pm

>47 sibylline:, 50. Lucy & Claudia,

What are you doing when you lose these posts? Surely they don't just disappear in front of your eyes? Can you reproduce what happens? Do you know why you're losing them? The one thing I can think of is that if you are writing inside the "post a message" box, as I am right now, and you have not yet clicked "Submit," and you navigate away from the page, then you will lose your post. Do you think that's what's happening? For example, if you click on a link that's on this page while you're composing a post, then what you were writing when you come back will not be there.

I'm not a technical know-it-all, but I did teach technical writing for about five years, and I understand that there are all levels of users--and lots of ways to get frustrated when using a computer. Knowing that there's a reason these things happen, that it isn't just goofy, inexplicable technology, may help you out.

52Donna828
Redigerat: nov 17, 2010, 1:00 pm

>49 yolana:: I'm with you on those thoughts, Yolana...and if that is your personal library on your profile page, I want to visit! It looks like a lovely place to sit and read or just look lovingly at your books. But I digress.

I read this quote late last night, and it totally blew me away. We've had some previous hints that Mr. Casaubon deserves some of our sympathy, but this sentence made me see him in a whole new light. It's found on Pg. 267 in my edition...several pages into Ch. 29:

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.


Oh my, the woman can write.

Edited to spell Mr. C's name correctly; at least I can do that for the unfortunate man.

53-Cee-
nov 17, 2010, 1:26 pm

Oh Becky, I know all about losing posts if I switch screens. Learned that quick - right up front! :P

I don't really know what I do to make it go away. I do remember one time a screen for yahoo (or something I don't even use) popped up and that navigated me away. All I could think of is I touched something on my laptop that did it? But there have been a few times I just have no clue.

I also have the problem of hitting "enter" to get to the next line and the stupid thing "submits"! AND... sometimes I am typing along and find that half my sentence is in one place and the other half tucked in somewhere else! Fat fingers? Poor keyboard skills? Dunno. But when I get smokin' and type a passionate long message - then lose it... drat!

54brenzi
nov 17, 2010, 7:03 pm

Losing posts is an LT problem not necessarily an individual computer user's problem. I know many LTers who've lost posts. When I lose them it almost always happens when I hit Submit and then...poof....it disappears. The thing I do now is copy it before I hit submit. Then at least you don't have to go to the bother of recreating it.

55sibylline
Redigerat: nov 17, 2010, 9:41 pm

I only do it when I'm tired and not at my best -- so that's a clue! I often do just that Bonnie-- copy my text, always, if I am going to navigate away. Sometimes with really important things I write them elsewhere and paste them in.... but I do feel that there is some key or command on the right side of my computer that will cause it to navigate away fatally -- I've noticed that often when I have carefully saved my text and gone to investigate something, it will be there just fine when I return.... so it's inconsistent. I've also taken to sometimes posting my comment incomplete -- at the place where I want to go research something -- usually with a note saying, "I'll be back." I may start doing that more in fact.... post as I go along. I'm babbling. I'll stop.

Indeed Donna that is a most affecting description, the 'shivering' is what really got to me.

56LizzieD
nov 17, 2010, 10:01 pm

Sorry for the navigational errors or the whimsy of LT or whatever it is that loses posts. I try to remember to save before I submit too, but the error there is often my own.
Can't the woman write though!?!? (First I was behind, then ahead, and now I'm a little behind again.) I'm mightily amused by a throw-away like this one at the end of chapter XXVI that absolutely nails a minor character who will likely not appear again: "...and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, ...." I know her. Mercy! I may be her!

57sibylline
Redigerat: nov 17, 2010, 10:05 pm

Ahem, I think you meant "cast off" not 'throwaway'?? (insider knit wit)

58LizzieD
nov 17, 2010, 10:08 pm

*BIG grin with a giggle thrown in*

59Matke
nov 18, 2010, 8:17 am

It seems that Eliot is at some pains to make us see Mr. C. in a more sympathetic light than we usually would if we just read along:

"One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea --- but why always Dorothea? Was her point of view the oly possible one with regard to this marriage?"

and she goes on from there to explain, quite poignantly, Mr. C.'s small frozen character, one that is too timid to take delight in anything. She makes it quite clear that Mr. C., although he has hopes, completely realizes his own inadequacy with regard to his work on mythology. A most pathetic man, do you think? This seems to me to be quite unusual in a Victorian novel. Or, I guess, in novels in general. Typically the reader is led to sympathize with one character and to see relationships through that character's eyes, either very directly (first-person narration) or more indirectly through biased third-person narration. None of this is to be construed as saying I like Mr. C. He'd be a person to avoid if possible and to treat with gentle but distant courtesy if one couldn't avoid him.

Also found the scene in Dorothea's parlor particularly affecting, (and effective) as she looks at the old miniature and begins to see Will in it...very well done.

60lauranav
nov 18, 2010, 8:54 am

I'm hopelessly behind and won't catch up before the rest of you have finished the book entirely. But I was struck by message 59. What follows is based more on what I've seen in this thread, since I haven't gotten far (they aren't quite married yet, I'm so far behind).

As I began the book I saw Dorothea as the "main character" with the desire to do something large and important with her life, even it was just to assist someone else in the actual doing. She seems to have picked someone to marry who has the same desire and struggle to find importance in his work, but is even more misguided and less equipped than Dorothea to actually make it happen.

Dorothea is constrained by the societal dictates for women and would probably have done pretty well if she had avoided the mistake of marrying Joe, but poor Joe has no excuses and no one to blame but himself for failing to achieve anything. Dorothea probably makes all of that even clearer.

61Matke
nov 18, 2010, 3:53 pm

I certainly don't want to, and won't, put up any spoilers, but I'll tell you that when I first read this book, at the beginning I thought of Dorothea has a hopeless, priggish little pain in the neck of the most "saintly" sort. But by the end of the book, I had grown to love and admire her greatly. She turns out to be an amazing woman, in my opinion. Life wasn't so easy then, for a woman of brains, spirit, and even modest ambitions to "do something worthwhile".

I don't think I've read a book quite like this one before or since. Eliot has achieved something remarkable here, at least to me.

62sibylline
nov 18, 2010, 4:44 pm

Really well put Laura. I'll be back when (if ever) I finish Book 3, but I'm inspired by all your comments and insights.

63labwriter
nov 18, 2010, 6:31 pm

"if ever"??????

64sibylline
nov 18, 2010, 9:22 pm

I will, I will. Every time, for the last couple of days that I say to myself that I am going to sit and read MM something happens..... it's driving me crazy!

65alcottacre
nov 19, 2010, 3:40 am

It seems like everyone is watching Featherstone's funeral (whether they were invited or not!) Featherstone's continued manipulations from beyond the grave are something else. Good for Mary Garth (in book 3) for refusing to go along with him.

I am finishing up book 4 tonight. On to book 5 tomorrow.

66lauranav
nov 19, 2010, 7:46 am

I finished book 1 and even read a few chapters into book 2! I might even catch up before you all finish the entire book :-)

67sibylline
Redigerat: nov 19, 2010, 7:56 am

I have finally finished Book Three -- last time I posted was up to Ch XXX.

XXXI Did anyone else find the whole Lydgate pinkie finger lifting the hankie poking out of the Rosamond's reticule a wee bit naughty????? !!!!!!

Enjoyment of the Bulstrode/Plymdale alliance -- also, the ironic fact that their interference precipitates the engagement betw. Lydgate and Rosamond.

How neatly Rosamond snares him.....

XXXII The descriptions of the various rellies hanging around Featherstone's house, eating his food, even staying the night while he is on his deathbed -- what a load of vultures! I enjoyed their conversations and interactions. In some ways this chapter is pure fun, I think, portraits of types of people Eliot found ridiculous. Like Dickens, Thackeray -- I expect she 'collected' them. They also, though, have a more serious purpose -- see below.... when the high gentry are watching the funeral.

XXXIII And so at last Peter Featherstone departs, but not without a horrible interaction with Mary. He has a surfeit of wills, and decides he wants to burn one and keep the other, however, Mary refuses to help him, and at the last, Featherstone is denied the right to do as he pleases just because he is rich. The one person in the house who has principles, is the one person he has chosen to be is helper although he is abusive. Although, yes, Mary is being principled, she would have done as he wished had they had a better rapport, or even a neutral rapport, I expect. She would have refused the money, but she might have brought him the will he wanted nevertheless.

Book Four XXXIV I love this chapter! I love Mrs. Cadwallader! When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning because I couldn't have the end without them.

She also comments on the 'rich Lowick Farmers' who are as curious as any buffalos or bisons, and I daresay you don't half see them at church. They are quite different from your uncle's tenants or Sir James's - monsters - farmers without landlords - one can't tell how to class them. This might be the most forceful sociological statement in the book, certainly it is the strongest I've encountered, that Eliot knew what she was about -- was recognizing that this new unclassifiable class was coming into being, the middle class, in fact, and it was going to eventually wreak havoc on 'the old social order' where everyone had his or her place.

The plot bumps forward with the presence of Will, invited by Mr. Brooke, being presented in such a way so that it might seem that Dorothea asked her uncle to invite him since Casaubon didn't want to see him. Supremely awkward.

And here I stop.

68labwriter
nov 19, 2010, 8:35 am

>65 alcottacre:. Featherstone's funeral? Oh dear, I am behind. Oh well.

>56 LizzieD:. Oh Peggy, that's hilarious.

Chapt. XXVII. Near the beginning, 182 in my book. Mrs. Vincy: during her son's illness, "her brightness was all bedimmed." What a great line--so small and yet such a zinger.

Rosamond: "she did not distinguish flirtation from love, either in herself or in another" (184). By this time, GE's disapproval is of Rosamond is clear. Contrasted with Dorothea, it's easy to see Rosamond's shallow nature. Which gives us a clue to something about Lydgate: there's something lacking in him; otherwise, he wouldn't be attracted to Rosamond. Or are males in GE's world just so susceptible to being "snared"?

This next is such a wonderful example of GE's irony. Others here (like sibyx, #48 and maybe others) have noted GE's approval of the character of people who know how to work for a living (Mary Garth, for example), so this comment about Rosamond is devastating:

"Think no unfair evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide" (185, still in Chapt. XXVIII). GE goes on in the same paragraph to use the word "clever" to describe Rosamond. "Clever" is one of those words I would never want used on me by GE!

I'm simply gobsmacked by GE's genius in using these small lines that say so much. Here's Mr. Plymdale: "To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed" (186).

Back later to catch up.

69sibylline
nov 19, 2010, 8:45 am

At least I've pulled ahead of you somewhere ! heh!

You're good at catching hold of those throwaways Becky -- the chin, the knitter.

Yes -- GE is in that way so ahead of her time, so aware how people who have no 'work' that they like (or that at least can give them professional satisfaction at a job well done) are..... susceptible in their idleness both to depression and to being troublesome.

I blame the Vincy parents in part for how Rosamond and Fred have turned out. Rosamond clearly, being clever, can apply herself very well, and Fred is a good soul, but requires direction. The great thing about GE is her compassion, I think.

70-Cee-
nov 19, 2010, 8:57 am

Lucy, You always have such interesting comments and insights.

Personally, I think Mary would have stayed firm on principle no matter what her relationship with Featherbedstone. She would have done his bidding if he had agreed to her requirements of propriety... but would not endanger her own reputation for him.
"...I will not let the close of your life soil the beginning of mine."
Good up-bringing!

I, too, love the quote re learning to love hubby's sermons. Ha!

The emergence of the midle class was a concept just a little out of my mind's reach. Thanks for bringing that into focus for me. I picked up on the social discomfort - but wasn't thinking big picture.

71-Cee-
nov 19, 2010, 9:07 am

>68 labwriter: Becky, you are too funny! Love the word "gobsmacked"

I think GE's "zingers" are what make this a wonderfully funny book for me and provide the interest and momentum to keep reading.

The plot is definitely thickening... and because of GE's compassion, I get the feeling all will end well ultimately. We'll see. Maybe I am just an optimist.

72labwriter
nov 19, 2010, 9:07 am

The knitter was Peggy.

73labwriter
nov 19, 2010, 9:43 am

Book III, Chapt. XXVIII.

Dorothea: "The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great beforehand, seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapour-walled landscape." Oh dear, "the stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and none asked for her aid" (189).

But if that is truly the normal, or normative, view of the gentlewoman's world, then Dorothea, hoping for more, is really quite the radical. This is one way that Eliot and Austen are so different: Austen is quite approving of that "gentlewoman's world" where Eliot finds it stifling. I think it's interesting to note also that Austen's novels end where Eliot's begin--with marriage. Yes, the world was changing, and Eliot reflected that brilliantly.

Dodo and Celia are together again, after the 3-months' marriage trip. Celia is the perfect Austen-like character, the conventional young woman doing the "right things" that woman of her class would do. Eliot is using her character, approvingly, but it's notable as well that she's a minor rather than a major player.

It's interesting that Dorothea will never tell anyone--not even her sister--"what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome" (191).

74labwriter
nov 19, 2010, 10:34 am

Book III (still "Waiting for Death"--anyone else a little concerned about Casaubon's "palpitations" {189}?), Chapt. XXIX

"Dorothea has learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and she saw that the morning had become more foggy there during the last hour" (194).

I still seem to be on my Austen kick this morning. If you've read Pride and Prejudice (and if you haven't, put down MM and read it right now--ha), you'll probably remember Mr. Collins, also a clergyman like Casaubon, also self-important. In P&P we laugh at him--he's a hilarious, foolish character. But while Casaubon might be foolish, he's certainly not hilarious, and we can't just laugh him away like we do Collins. Elizabeth turns down Mr. Collins' marriage proposal; Dorothea accepts Mr. Casaubon's. So I guess we have to take Mr. Casaubon seriously because Dorothea does--even as we say with Celia, "Oh Dodo!"

The interaction between Casaubon and Dorothea in this chapter (195 in my edition) is simply priceless!: "There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room. . . ."

75labwriter
nov 19, 2010, 11:09 am

Book III, Chapt. XXX.

Oh God, Eliot is so funny! OK, so this is deep-in-the-weeds "stuff" for people who have suffered through Smollet--and Lord, did I suffer! (Apologies to those who like Tobias Smollet--no dig intended here; perhaps it was the insufferable professor! The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker is an epistolary novel, and is supposed to be very funny, but no one was laughing in the class where we read this book.)

Eliot has Mr. Brooke, the character we are allowed to laugh at the way we laugh at Mr. Collins in P&P, say this to Casaubon, when Dr. Ladislaw is encouraging Casaubon to be "mildly bored" rather than go on working: "Get Dorothea to read you light things, Smollet--'Roderick Random,' 'Humphrey Clinker': they are a little broad, but she may read anything now she's married, you know" (198).

76brenzi
nov 19, 2010, 11:41 am

I don't think we can laugh at Casaubon the way we do at Mr. Collins because Collins is so full of himself and such a buffoon and Austen created a comic character. Casaubon, on the other hand, is a dreadfully serious character, although the work he's doing is well...worthless, something Dorothea comes to realize now that the stars are out of her eyes. And really, what in the world did she ever see in him? He hasn't changed; he's the same stuffy, pretentious character but D. is just figuring that out. I have to wonder why Eliot created this extremely intelligent, independent woman and had her fall for this guy.

Is anyone else intrigued by the plethora of semi-colons that Eliot uses? Maybe that's an old Victorian writing style thing.

77labwriter
nov 20, 2010, 8:19 am

OK, so the Alexander Hamilton mini group read (that means Lucy and me--I think we scared the others away, or maybe Hamilton did that for us--ha) has me behind in Middlemarch, although I guess we did agree to one book a week, and by my count this is still week three, at least for the next day. So I'm behind most of you, but not "hopelessly," a word that seems to get attached to "behind" a lot on this thread.

Anywho, Book Three (we are a bit concerned while we are) "Waiting for Death."

Chapter XXXI.

>67 sibylline:. From Lucy. XXXI Did anyone else find the whole Lydgate pinkie finger lifting the hankie poking out of the Rosamond's reticule a wee bit naughty????? !!!!!!

Yeah, I see what you mean, Sib. Lydgate was certainly wading into dangerous waters here. I love GE here, the next paragraph: "But this agreeable holiday freedom with which Lydgate hovered about the flower of Middlemarch, could not continue indefinitely" (203).

There's a scene between Mrs. Bulstrode and Mrs. Plymdale, "well-meaning women, both, knowing very little of their own motives" (203). Mrs. Plymdale's son Ned had set his eye on marrying Rosamond, and she tells an apparently shocked Mrs. Bulstrode that Lydgate has won that prize. Rosamond has allowed herself through rather "loose" behavior to become "the talk of the town" without really being engaged--this would have been shocking--and an unhappy Mrs. Bulstrode sits down to have a talk with her niece (204).

"I see how it is, my dear," said Mrs. Bulstrode, in a melancholy voice, rising to go. "You have allowed your affections to be engaged without return" (205). At this point, Rosamond is reminding me a lot of Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, the headstrong, silly young woman who eloped without her parents knowledge. Although Rosamond is a little better in that she at least had the grace to feel "mortified" when pressed by her aunt to tell her the truth about her situation (205). She has also chosen a man of better character than Austen's Lydia, and that's pretty much the only thing that will save her at this point. She also has an aunt who will set Lydgate straight.

"'I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, to interfere with the prospects of any girl.' Here Mrs. Bulstrode fixed her eyes on him, with an unmistakable purpose of warning, if not rebuke" (206).

GE shows our friend Lydgate to be seriously deluded (arrogantly deluded?) about Rosamond and her "designs" (an old Victorian word I just love) on him: "She had an exquisite tact and insight in relation to all points of manners; but the people she lived among were blunderers and busybodies" (207).

78labwriter
nov 20, 2010, 8:51 am

Book III, Chapt. XXXII

>67 sibylline:. Lucy's post. The descriptions of the various rellies hanging around Featherstone's house, eating his food, even staying the night while he is on his deathbed -- what a load of vultures! I enjoyed their conversations and interactions. In some ways this chapter is pure fun, I think, portraits of types of people Eliot found ridiculous. Like Dickens, Thackeray -- I expect she 'collected' them. They also, though, have a more serious purpose -- see below.... when the high gentry are watching the funeral.

GE makes me laugh: "The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots" (211).

I love the way GE gives us a glimpse of this family through Mary Garth's eyes as she busily manages Mr. Featherstone's household.

79labwriter
nov 20, 2010, 9:43 am

Book III, Chapt. XXXIII (the last)

>67 sibylline:. Lucy's summary and assessment: And so at last Peter Featherstone departs, but not without a horrible interaction with Mary. He has a surfeit of wills, and decides he wants to burn one and keep the other, however, Mary refuses to help him, and at the last, Featherstone is denied the right to do as he pleases just because he is rich. The one person in the house who has principles, is the one person he has chosen to be is helper although he is abusive. Although, yes, Mary is being principled, she would have done as he wished had they had a better rapport, or even a neutral rapport, I expect. She would have refused the money, but she might have brought him the will he wanted nevertheless.

Mary Garth, the sensible one. She sits musing during the night as she watches at Mr. Featherstone's beside: "people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque whle everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy" (217, 218).

And this: "To be anxious about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left to the saints of the earth; and Mary was not one of them" (218). Mary strikes me as the most morally intelligent character in this book.

80labwriter
Redigerat: nov 20, 2010, 10:09 am

In my Norton edition, there are 62 pages in Book III and 75 pages in Book IV, which is just to say, mainly for my own information, that IV is going to take me more time to read than III. Of course next week is Thanksgiving. For some people that means less time for reading; I can also imagine that for some it will actually mean more time, if they have time off from work or something.

I propose that we continue on with our "one chapter a week" even through the holiday week. Happy reading, everyone. Safe travels, if you're traveling. If you're flying on Wednesday, God bless and good luck!

81phebj
nov 20, 2010, 12:38 pm

I was just over on the "What are you reading for the week of November 20th" thread where they post birthdays of famous authors during the upcoming week. GE's is Monday (November 22, 1819). The little bio they included said Her works are known for their realism and psychological insight. (Just thought I'd repost it here.)

82sibylline
Redigerat: nov 20, 2010, 6:17 pm

Well how cool is that! I will raise a toast to GE on Monday at some point.
I spent all day in airports and on planes and I read close to 100 pages and so am now indecently ahead of you all -- I will wait, however, to post until I feel I have a quorum caught up with me. In fact, I hope to take the opportunity to indulge in 'holiday' fare, some mysteries and fantasy and sf........ while I wait. And I have to confess I may have been wrong that Mary would have brought him the other will ..... but really speculation is silly because the whole point is that Featherstone was a mean old sob. If he was nicer he wouldn't have had all these wills.

Wills. That is a whole Victorian thing -- oh gosh -- which is the Dickens all about the orphans and the huge fortune tied up in court? There are so many 19th century novels featuring wills as a big part of the plot. Doesn't really happen so much now, perhaps because people are less dependent on each other? Or?

83labwriter
Redigerat: nov 20, 2010, 6:47 pm

I think you're thinking of my favorite Dickens, Bleak House, the Court of Chancery, and "Jarndyce and Jarndyce."

And assuming you made it to your destination safe and sound?

84LizzieD
nov 20, 2010, 8:12 pm

Ah Becky, two hearts that beat best with Bleak House. Just typing the title makes me want to reread it right now!
Instead, I'm going to persevere with *MM*. I'm almost behind and ought to be scurrying.

85labwriter
nov 20, 2010, 8:17 pm

Oh, Peggy! That is very cool. I had the same feeling the other day when I pulled the book off the shelf for something. I wanted to put everything else away and read BH.

86alcottacre
nov 21, 2010, 12:25 am

Just re-read Bleak House last year. It is not my favorite Dickens, but it comes awfully close.

87sibylline
Redigerat: nov 21, 2010, 8:51 am

Yes, yes, that's the one, what a great book!

Yep I'm in Florida!

And I am finally going to remember to say -- don't you love the little row of children lined up against the house for whoever is taking the picture of GE's birthplace?

88labwriter
nov 21, 2010, 9:04 am

Oh yes. I wish I knew when it was taken or who those "row children" might be.

89Matke
nov 21, 2010, 8:12 pm

Did anyone besides myself note that two really, really funny chapters surround that awful and (on Featherstone's part) disgusting chapter in which Featherstone passes on to the great beyond to torment the shades?

Poor Mary. What a great girl she is, even if she's a bit sharp-tongued.

90LizzieD
nov 21, 2010, 10:23 pm

I wanted to go back there a minute too, Gail. I was amused and interested in a couple of comments about the power of words for common, that is non-literary, folk. To wit: Mrs. Bulstrode's use of the word "militate" in warning Lydgate away from Rosamond. She reflects, " She felt that she had spoken as impressively as it was necessary to do and that in using the superior word, "militate" she had thrown a noble drapery over a mass of particulars that were still evident enough." Similarly, Mr. Vincy is well-satisfied with characterizing Featherstone's death as a "demise." "The right word is always a power and communicates its definiteness to our action. Considered as a demise, old Featherstone's death assumed a merely legal aspect so that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuff-box over it and be jovial,...." What a very little it takes to keep our self-satisfaction well-fed! (i.e. I think this is yet another keen observation of the human animal as it continues to live even to this very day.) (Can anybody tell that I read a fair amount of *MM* today? It seems to have gotten into my syntax.)

91alcottacre
nov 22, 2010, 2:37 am

Happy Birthday, George Eliot! November 22, 1819

92labwriter
Redigerat: nov 22, 2010, 8:51 am



93sibylline
nov 22, 2010, 7:46 am

One hundred and ninety-one (is that about right) and still going strong! I am confident there will be several hundred more!

And yes, those are very funny chapters indeed -- esp the toffs watching the funeral and commenting on it. Although, was anyone else aware at that point that the church was so close to Lowick Manor that you could do that, watch from a window? I didn't go back to poke around in the text, but did anyone else? I had to make an adjustment - I'd sort of seen the house being more off by itself, more isolated, up to that point.

Lovely observations -- and she is poking fun at them too -- but it's a good kind of fun, an approving kind of fun, that as this class comes along, they are learning to respect and enjoy the power of words -- it is a sign of their 'rising' that they no longer think it 'above themselves' to want to use less common words. What a supremely clever and observant woman is our GE.

94labwriter
nov 22, 2010, 8:50 am

>82 sibylline:. So how will you know when you have a quorum?

95Matke
nov 22, 2010, 9:15 am

Yes, I did note that one could watch it from the windows, too. Perhaps that was because the Manor was the house of the official cleric, Mr. C., and thus would have been close to the church.

I love how Eliot gently but persistently skewers the pretensions of all levels of society (the absolute foolishness of Mr. Brooke is contrasted nicely with the drunken ramblings of one of his tenants a bit further on). And as was said, her comments about human foibles are as on point and feel as fresh today as I'm sure they did when her books first came out.

She presents quite a nice blending of the social concerns of Dickens, the wit of Austen, and the puncturing of individual pride in Trollope, all while writing a fascinating tale of "provincial life".

Happy birthday, Ms. E. !

96alcottacre
nov 22, 2010, 9:37 am

#95: She presents quite a nice blending of the social concerns of Dickens, the wit of Austen, and the puncturing of individual pride in Trollope, all while writing a fascinating tale of "provincial life".

That is a great take on Eliot, Gail!

97labwriter
Redigerat: nov 22, 2010, 12:58 pm

Book IV has nine chapters, if I'm counting it correctly--maybe 8, since I'm challenged by Roman Numerals. It's already Monday. Thursday is nixed as a reading day, and who knows what the rest of the week will bring. Therefore, I'm thinking I'd better be doing two chapters a day if I'm gonna finish Book IV on time. That's sort of what I'm looking towards this week, if anyone wants to know.

Chapt. XXXIV.

Lucy covers this chapter really well in her post #67.

haha--""not a blood relation, but of that generally objectionable class called wife's kin" (222 in my book).

Mrs. Cadwallader's running commentary from the window on the funeral attendees is hilarious.

Dorothea continues to be challenged in her negotiations with herself her relationship with Casaubon, who comes into the room, and we find that she's wanting to say more but stops: "The difference his presence made to her was not always a happy one; she felt that he often inwardly objected to her speech" (224).

98BookAngel_a
nov 22, 2010, 12:55 pm

I'm deep into Book 4 at present, and I'm just loving this book more and more...books 3 and 4 have made all the difference for me.

I simply love the Garths. I'm also really enjoying Dorothea's...evolution? as a character.

99BookAngel_a
nov 22, 2010, 1:48 pm

I've also found myself thinking, "So many of these problems would be solved if people only TALKED to each other!"

There's a real lack of communication between Dorothea and her husband.

Not to mention the lack of talk about money matters between Lydgate and Rosamond and her family.

There's a lot of talking, but apparently not about the most important things. Some of that was probably the time period. Certain things were not to be discussed in polite society - or a woman wasn't supposed to speak her mind - argh.

But if everyone communicated well all the time, there would be less drama - and no book! ;)

100sibylline
nov 22, 2010, 3:39 pm

Indeed! Could cell phones do away with plot? NOT talking when they could just dial up, "Hey there, just checking in. Everything OK with you?" Of course, the callee can just lie and say, "Oh yeah, everything's cool," when it isn't..... no, I think it is weirdly human nature to sit on important information for obscure and often really terrible reasons......every generation seems to have a new blind spot, too.

101phebj
nov 22, 2010, 5:34 pm

I'll be starting Book IV today. (Becky, I'm also challenged by Roman numerals!)

102alcottacre
nov 23, 2010, 1:01 am

I have started Book V, but will hold off until next week so others can catch up. I do not want to get so far ahead that I lose the discussions.

103elkiedee
nov 23, 2010, 7:11 am

I was left off the list of readers - I haven't posted very much but I did post a few times. My real name's Luci.

I think I'm a bit ahead but keep forgetting to look at the chapter headings - I've been reading Middlemarch in the middle of the night. Maybe I'll have to reread it when I'm awake next year.

104labwriter
nov 23, 2010, 8:04 am

Hi Luci. I didn't mean to leave you off the list. Thanks for reading with us and thanks for your post!

105souloftherose
nov 23, 2010, 1:24 pm

I got behind on this thread again but really enjoyed the comments about Book III but it's been a few days since I picked MM up and even with my notes I can't think of anything to contribute!

I'm going to start Book IV this week and will try and comment as I read... It's a bit tricky atm as work is really, really busy so although I'm reading I just don't feel like logging on to the computer when I get home. But I will be (at least) an appreciative reader of other's comments and will try and post to cheer everyone on more.

106lauranav
nov 23, 2010, 1:51 pm

I finished book II!!

I did laugh at this line from Will and Dorothea's last meeting in Rome (p154 in my copy)

Will did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her ; it was clear that she required nothing of the sort ;

And I am now noticing the number of semicolons in this book :-)
I am so enjoying reading this book with all of you!

107brenzi
nov 23, 2010, 7:23 pm

I finished the book and absolutely loved it. I have plenty of notes so that I can contribute to the conversation but there was no way I could keep at this pace. I just couldn't stop reading.

108labwriter
nov 23, 2010, 10:57 pm

I'm a little bit behind this week, but I'll be back when I can, and hopefully this will be the last week I'll be behind. It's so great to hear people are enjoying this.

>107 brenzi:. Hi Bonnie, Wow, you finished, that's great! You don't have to wait to post something--if you'd like to start off the conversation, please feel free.

>106 lauranav:. Hi Laura, so glad to hear you're enjoying the book.

>105 souloftherose:. Hi Heather, great to hear that you're out there! "appreciative readers" always appreciated.

>102 alcottacre:. Hi Stasia. Feel free to post--love to hear from you!

>101 phebj:. Hi Pat. Happy reading!

>98 BookAngel_a:. Hi Angela. >95 Matke:. And gail!

>90 LizzieD:. Hi Peggy! And Lucy.

I hope I didn't miss anyone.

109labwriter
nov 25, 2010, 5:30 pm

Book IV, Three Love Problems, cont.

Chapt XXXV.

Joshua Rigg, a "strange mourner," appears. Featherstone's will is read; Joshua Rigg is named the sole executor and would "take thenceforth the name of Featherstone" (231, my edition): Mr. Rigg Featherstone.

Chapt. XXXVI.

Wherein we find Fred Vincy "utterly depressed" (235) and Mr. Vincy unhappy with his daughter Rosamond linking her future to Lydgate, a man he didn't believe had a "farthing" (236).

"The certainty that Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the aid of formal announcement" (238). "Aunt Bulstrode" was again upset, and this time went to see her brother, Mr. Vincy.

There's a line in this chapter that indicates Lydgate had no clue what he was getting into with his marriage to Rosamond, when he says to the Vicar: "I feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work steadily. He has everything at home then--no teasing with personal speculations--he can get calmness and freedom" (240). This was a man who was in big trouble, and he didn't even know it.

110LizzieD
nov 25, 2010, 9:28 pm

I was going to quote that last sentence too, Becky. Poor Lydgate. Poor Rosamond who is equally unrealistic. I'm reminded of the mother a divorcing friend who said something like, "He didn't know how to be married. He didn't know a thing in the world except how to play football!"

111sibylline
nov 26, 2010, 9:33 am

That was a striking line -- I've got a post-it adorning it too!

Hello everyone! I am reading comments while I wait for you all to catch up to me.

112LizzieD
nov 26, 2010, 11:21 am

Well, I'm just checking in to say that I've finished book 4 and have nothing to say. GE continues to be wise and witty with a stunning way with words. ---- and I actually didn't plan that embarrassing alliteration, but I'm in too much hurry to fix it. Sorry.

113labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 8:22 am

So it's the end of the week, which means the turn from Chapt. IV to Chapt. V, whenever you consider the new week to begin. I'm assuming those who were able to do it have finished Chapt. IV; many have gone on already, and of course some may still be not quite so far. But in the interest of getting the book finished at some point, it seems like a good idea to go on.

I was ready for Book IV, "Three Love Problems," Chapt. XXXVII. See #109 for my earlier posts on this chapter. I'm not seeing much here from anyone else, which is fine.

OK, back later, it seems that my dog has "issues."

114labwriter
Redigerat: nov 27, 2010, 9:22 am

My older Lab is having a hard time getting around, and my office is on the second floor of my house. He won't come upstairs anymore, except at night, but he gets lonely and cries when I'm upstairs. So I take my laptop down to the dining room table where he sits in his "cave" under the table, either beside or on my feet--in bliss. You gotta love old dogs.

Anywho, where was I--Chapt. 37 of Book 4.

I am having a huge issue with my Norton edition falling apart. It was bad when I started, held together with mailing tape, but now it's almost ridiculous. However, using this book makes me happy because it has all the underlining in it (I don't underline my books anymore) that I did in Prof. Carrol's class. I figure it has good Karma surrounding it, but it is a pain to try to read.

Wherein we find it confirmed that Mr. Brooke is "a damned bad landlord" (247). He had "secretly" bought one of the area's newspapers, the Pioneer, and he is evidently trying to get our young friend Ladislaw to edit his newspaper: "He means to take a very high ground on Reform," which is a bit ironic, since, as we overhear from Mr. Hawley, Brooke is "a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack" (247).

If the politics in MM makes your eyes cross, there's a website that I found that is quite helpful without being tedious about it--a reader's blog, actually: The Political Backdrop of Middlemarch

I think it helps and makes the book more understandable to remember this much: it's all about the rise of the new middle class.

115alcottacre
nov 27, 2010, 9:29 am

#113: I will be starting Book V this next week, Becky. I was waiting for others to catch up.

#114: Thanks for the link. I will check out the website.

116labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 10:30 am

Continuing with Chapt. XXXVII (I guess it's going to be that kind of a day--interruptions galore).

Our friend "Joe" Casaubon is quite unamused to have his cousin in the neighborhood: "He had disliked Will while he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will had declined his help" (248).

Will Ladislaw feels his dislike for Casaubon "flourishing": "Casaubon had done wrong to Dorothea in marrying her. A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow grey crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship" (249).

Oh, what a great line!

And Will decides to dedicate his life to watching over Dorothea.

Is anyone else counting the number of times the narrator refers to her as "poor Dorothea"?

The contrast between Ladislaw and Casaubon from Dorothea's point of view: Casaubon tells Dorothea that her ideas are either things that he had thought of already in his "tender years," thus trivializing what she has to say, or else her ideas are simply "mistaken." Ladislaw, on the other hand "always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw" (249).

A chance meeting, without Casaubon, of Will and Dorothea at Lowick. Dorothea greets will "with the simple sincerity of an unhappy child, visited at school" (250).

Will zeroes in on one of Casaubon's big issues about his work: "He is too doubtful--too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but he dislikes me because I disagree with him" (252).

Here's an interesting statement from Dorothea that comes up during this conversation: "I have always had too much of everything" (252).

Dorothea "instructs" Ladislaw how to think about Casaubon: "It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial" (253).

Oh dear, our Dodo just can't keep her mouth shut. After Ladislaw leaves and Casuabon returns home, she feels the need to let her husband know that Ladislaw will be staying in the neighborhood: "Even with her ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the position offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and certainly Mr. Casaubon had a claim to be consulted" (255).

Casaubon writes a letter to will, filled with (hilarious) "Casaubon-speak" but it essentially says that Will's acceptance of the position with Mr. Brooke would be "highly offensive" to him (256).

Dorothea, on the other hand, has an epiphany: Casaubon's will ought to be changed ("no time ought to be lost") to reflect Casaubon's debt to the Ladislaws, who had been wronged when Will's grandmother married a poor foreigner. Dorothea wanted will put "in possession of a rightful income which should be paid by her husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will, should be secured at his death" (257). Oh good grief, good luck with that idea, Dorothea! But she believed Casaubon would agree to it because of the "great strength of his character." I guess the goodness of her own heart will not let her see Casaubon's real character, and at this point, despite what she's observed first hand, she's still deluded about him.

Oh dear, Dorothea talks to Casaubon, and here's his reply: "Dorothea, my love {we know she's in trouble when he calls her "my love}, this is not the first occasion, but it were well that it should be the last, on which you have assumed a judgment on subjects beyond your scope" (258, 259).

At the end of this chapter (260 in my edition), GE gives us a window on Casaubon's soul.

117labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 12:35 pm

I've been messing around this morning trying to make a mind map of the characters and their relationships in MM. It's really an excuse to learn how to use the tool, FreeMind. This is freeware and I just downloaded it to my PC. FreeMind is a good tool, but it's not able to do exactly what I want, so I'm going to keep trying. I may end up just making this up on a white board and taking a picture.

118tloeffler
nov 27, 2010, 1:40 pm

I'm still keeping up, but barely! Just finished Book IV and will start on Book V tomorrow. Thank you for the above link to the political background, Becky--it made some things much clearer! I haven't much to say that hasn't already been said. However, I think reading this one book at a time, and having all your insights, has made a world of difference in my reading! Thanks so much!

119Matke
nov 27, 2010, 2:41 pm

Becky, that quote ("Dorothea, my love...beyond your scope.") perfectly expresses, I think, Mr. C.'s attitude toward D. While Eliot tries hard to make him more sympathetic, unfortunately my feelings distinctly lack the "sym" part of that word.

I've nearly finished the book; just couldn't hold back. Reading along here has been a tremendous help in both understanding and enjoying this fantastic book. Can hardly wait to see what everyone's take is on later plot developments.

120labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 6:17 pm

>119 Matke:. Hi gail. Clearly, I agree with you about Casaubon. I've also been thinking about Dorothea--how do I feel about her? Honestly, I have to say that I don't like her much. My problem with her is her cluelessness, the fact that she doesn't know herself very well, that even after months with Casaubon, she still isn't willing to look at things realistically and say, "I think I made a mistake." Although I guess I shouldn't be too hard on her, considering the role of most women at that time.

>110 LizzieD:. Peggy, your quote about the young man who "didn't know how to be married"--Oh, my. You know, I guess that's one reason we read, isn't it?--to feel "less alone" in the world, to know that others share our pain or joy or whatever. I feel for your friend, the mother, since I can most closely relate to her. Well, maybe the second time around the young man will have learned something. I hope they both get a second (better) chance.

121labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 6:49 pm

Book IV, "Three Love Problems," Chapt XXXVIII

Oh, I'm so happy, Mrs. Cadwallader returns to open this chapter. I think she's my favorite character. Someone said on one of the blogs (not on this thread) that she's the kind of character you love to hate. I don't hate her one bit--I think she makes a great deal of sense. She blames Casaubon for not using his influence to get Ladislaw made an attache or sent to India--"That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs" (263).

Sir James says that he and Celia can hardly get Dorothea to dine with them since Casaubon had his "fit."

Lots of talk about landlords and differing views about managing the land.

122labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 7:15 pm

Book IV, Chapt. XXXIX

A little deception is afoot, to get Dorothea to the Hall without Casaubon by pleading Cecilia's indisposition, and then to leave her off at the Grange in order to make her aware of her uncle's management of his estate.

Condescending talk from Mr. Brooke to Dorothea about her plans and drawings for the estate. Dorothea is pleased about the plans she has heard her uncle is making for his estate--to have the farms valued, repairs made, and cottages improved, and she asks him if he's going to engage Caleb Garth (268).

You have to like Dorothea here: "I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands" (269).

Back later. . .

123labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 9:23 pm

Book IV, Chapt. XXXIX (cont.)

Wherein we meet Mr. Dagley, one of Mr. Brooke's impoverished tenants. Dagley's son Jacob has been caught poaching a leveret (a young hare); Mr. Brooke wants him punished, but Dagley refuses.

Mrs. Dagley: "Overworked . . . a thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure had so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday clothes which could give her satisfaction in preparing for church" (273).

Mr. Brooke, after being taken to task by Dagley: "He had never been insulted on his own land before, and had been incluned to regard himself as a general favorite" (274). This is one of GE's recurrent themes throughout the book: that people deceive themselves.

124Matke
nov 27, 2010, 9:29 pm

#123: Note that Mr. Brooke and Mr. Dagley both look like fools and Mrs. Dagley is the only oneon the scene with any sense at all. Hmmm....

125labwriter
nov 27, 2010, 9:50 pm

Book IV, Chapt. XL.

The chapter opens at the Caleb Garth's breakfast table. Mary has returned to the family, waiting for a new position, and while she waits she sews wedding clothes for Rosamond Vincy, who is to be married the next week. I love Mary's sarcasm--that she has to continue sewing because Rosamond can't be married without the handkerchief she's sewing for her. Why not, the little brother asks? "Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven," said Mary with a grave air of explanation . . . ." (276).

Caleb Garth is asked to return to managing Mr. Brooke's Tipton property as well as Sir James Chettam's family estates--work that will bring in enough money for the family that Mary can turn down a detestable teaching job and stay home to help her mother. Garth is more than happy to have the work, calling it "a great gift from God" (278). The value of work; the value of the ordinary in daily life: two more of GE's themes.

The Vicar Mr. Fairbrother visits the Garths to bring them a message from Fred Vincy: he is going away, hoping to try again for his degree, to show that he has "energy and a will" (279).

Caleb Garth gets the idea to take on Fred Vincy as a helper in his new job, who feels he is sure to have plenty of work for two. Caleb tells his wife he's been hired to "value" the land now owned by Rigg Featherstone, and he speculates that perhaps Mr. Bulstrode is looking to mortgage or purchase the land (283). It would be "curious," Garth says, if the land were to get into Bultrode's hands, considering how much old Featherstone hated him (284).

126sibylline
nov 28, 2010, 11:08 am

I am so happy to be entirely done with the Very Long Bio I've been reading and that everyone is catching up! I will be posting later today, I hope with my thoughts on Book IV and maybe a chapter or two in to Book V.

Great insights and comments as always Becky. I too adore Mrs. Cadwallader. A woman after my own heart, for sure. And Dorothea's naivete is grinding. I couldn't believe it when she broached the idea of changing the will. There's guileless and then there is just plain oblivious.

127labwriter
nov 28, 2010, 12:37 pm

>126 sibylline:. grinding and guileless--love those words.

128souloftherose
nov 28, 2010, 2:30 pm

Slightly behind as I just came to the end of chapter 36 in book IV but I wanted to post a few comments.

#109 There's a line in this chapter that indicates Lydgate had no clue what he was getting into with his marriage to Rosamond, when he says to the Vicar: "I feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work steadily. He has everything at home then--no teasing with personal speculations--he can get calmness and freedom"

Poor Rosamund and Lydgate! It was almost embarrassing to read this chapter.

I finished Daniel Pool's What Jane Austen Ate a few days ago (I think recommended by Becky?) and on the subject of marriage Pool says:

'There was little false delicacy about this sort of economic maneuvering. Indeed the financial aspects of an impending marriage were considered quite openly. A contemporary courtship etiquette manual says very straightforwardly that once you propose, "your course is to acquaint the parents or guardians of the lady with your intentions, at the same time stating your circumstances and what settlement you would make upon your future wife; and, on their side, they must state what will be her fortune as near as they can estimate to the best of their knowledge at the time you make the enquiry." '

But so far in Ch 36 there's been no communication between Lydgate and Rosamund's parents. Mr Vincy has told Rosamund not to expect anything and she doesn't seem to believe him and Lydgate assumes there will be something from Mr Vincy but is too proud to ask.

From MM:

'He was too proud to act as if he presupposed that Mr Vincy would advance money to provide furniture, and though, since it would not be necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his father-in-law would give in the form of dowry, to make payment easy.'

Oh dear.

And I'm off to read Ch 37 & onwards. I haven't read beyond msg #113 to avoid spoilers. I will be back!

129sibylline
Redigerat: nov 28, 2010, 6:17 pm

I'm going to try to compress my comments about IV into one comment, but it may have to stretch over two. An overall comment is that I found myself reading more avidly in this 'book' -- I think the pace has picked up, people are in place, characters have mostly been introduced and delineated and now things have begun to happen -- not only the 'three love problems' but also with Mr Brooks' political ambitions.

A couple of pages into XXXV is a marvelous moment at the will reading (which was itself a marvel of humor and pathos) when Mrs. Cranch (what a name!) declares: "I never was covetious....." I noticed it because of our earlier discussion about Eliot making clear the social aspirations of this class of people to 'better' themselves. This could easily come off as pure snobbery, but I think Eliot manages not to make it so, while it is still very humorous.

Over the next couple of chapters Becky has mentioned everything I noted. In XXXIX we learn that Chettam is not such a fool at all, as he sends Dorothea to her uncle's house all enthusiastic about the idea of improving his own cottages, that she shames him into (at least the appearance) of acquiescence at the idea. She talks about how she came to dislike the frivolous pictures in his drawing room as they contrasted so with his cottagers circumstances. After what she says Brooke can no longer fool himself that his cottagers are better off under his management. It's a great moment!

A couple of pages later this statement from Dorothea: "But I have a belief of my own which comforts me." "What is that?" said Will, rather jealous of the belief. "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't know quite what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil-widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."

When Will responds that it is a 'beautiful mysticism' she is cross with him and tells him to stuff it in a way that made me like her and even her idea better. It is also an example of the way she and Will really talk to each other -- not afraid to engage.

And suddenly the Garths, in XL are to get a break, not only is Caleb appointed to be Chettam's estate manager, but Brooke has offered, through Chettam to take him on again also Brooke! More importantly, Caleb has the notion of taking on Fred and Mary will stay home.

Refreshing my memory on Book IV I see that it is the final chapter that I'd like to write more about, so I will leave that for another day or later.

130LizzieD
nov 28, 2010, 6:34 pm

I had a double-take, laugh-out-loud moment in chapter XLV when I read, "--- the trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate---"
Talking trash?!!! Well, Mary Ann! You go, girl!

131-Cee-
Redigerat: nov 28, 2010, 8:42 pm

I love all the comments and agree with most. It takes this reading to another level... fun! I am finished with Book 4 and eager to start 5. I still feel this story has a long way to go...

I'm noticing some negative opinions of Dorothea. Ach! You guys are so hard on her! I know, she seems very naive and too good for her own good. Still, I think of her as one who believes the best of everyone and having lived a very sheltered life is slow to see anyone's dark side.

Let's not forget, she's our Saint Theresa (prelude). Being a mere woman of her time, there's a wide gap between what D could do and her opportunities. Dorothea is beginning to realize her unhappiness and is trying to make the best of it - as (I think) was more common in past generations than now. Eliot gives us free access to D's thinking, but only hints at her deeper emotions. Woud like to look into her heart a bit more.

ETAsk: Am I being too naive myself and missing the point? Is Eliot actually making fun of her? :P

132phebj
nov 28, 2010, 9:32 pm

I think Eliot's genius is that I feel all the characters are sympathetic. With Dorothea, I think she's mainly young and still gaining experience (having lived a sheltered life like Claudia said). She's obviously made a mistake with Casaubon and seems like she can't ignore it anymore at the end of Book IV. I really loved that last chapter (XLII) of Book IV about the Dorothea-Casaubon-Ladislaw conflict.

I watched Episode 2 of the BBC DVD this afternoon and just love watching it along with reading this book. It's really well done and the acting is superb.

I'm sorry I haven't been able to participate more in this GR but I'm still plugging along with "For Whom the Bell Tolls" for my Hemingway course. The course is great, the book just so so most of the time. Anyway, just wanted to say I'm getting alot out of the comments on this thread and wouldn't have even attempted Middlemarch without all this support.

133sibylline
nov 28, 2010, 9:36 pm

I like the way you think and what you wrote, Claudia -- all of it -- great stuff! I know several folks have said they like D. better the second time around. I certainly have a kind of sympathy/empathy for her I didn't thirty years ago.

Hi Pat -- you've got a lot on your plate with Hemingway and Eliot! I also loved that final chapter in IV and hope to write more about it, but not tonight as my eyes are hurting for some reason (too much reading, mayhap?)

134alcottacre
Redigerat: nov 29, 2010, 2:17 am

I am just starting book 5 and already Eliot is beginning with "Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores of patience" which leads me to believe that D. is in for it.

ETA: I found a quote I just love: "prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle - solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths which one scented the darkness." What a great picture Eliot paints!

135labwriter
nov 29, 2010, 8:22 am

>131 -Cee-:. ETAsk: Am I being too naive myself and missing the point? Is Eliot actually making fun of her? :P

Hi Claudia, No, I think you make the point really well. I probably am too hard on Dorothea, and even though I don't like her much, I think GE likes her very much--or at least is quite sympathetic towards her. She shows Dorothea as sentimental and idealistic, particularly in her view of what makes a "great mind." Sometimes Eliot is gently mocking of her ("Poor Dorothea"), but never harshly critical. She is self-deluded and has rather poor judgment about people, particularly Mr. Casaubon, but on the other hand she has sympathetic concerns about the wider community, which makes her world larger than, for example, her sister Celia's. We sympathize because she's trapped in a maze of social convention, and we cheer her on because she's trying to find her way out of that maze. She has compassion and a strong moral center. She also has passion--she just hasn't found a worthy target for that yet.

136-Cee-
nov 29, 2010, 8:39 am

Ah.... "yet" ;)

137labwriter
nov 29, 2010, 9:10 am

So anyway, if we're keeping to the schedule of one book a week (and I know there are some who have gone on), then this week is

Book Five: "The Dead Hand"

This week we make the turn past the halfway mark. Happy reading!

138sibylline
nov 29, 2010, 9:25 am

XLII I can't call this a pivotal chapter exactly, but something about it really drew me, as it did Pat. The pathos of Casaubon facing mortality, facing "a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not demonstrably merited - a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his advantage - a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement..."

For some realization of mortality is strangely freeing and for others, it binds whatever fetters are there, tightening and embittering. The latter, apparently, will be the case for Casaubon. Her portrait of this man fascinates me for many reasons -- one, he is not a 'bad' person, merely a 'weak' one which is not something he can help. His constitution is weak, his intellect while fine is not robust, lacks the emotional piece, passion, that makes for great work. He now has to face that he might die sooner than he might have expected. Is such a person an unworthy object for love and compassion? It's a big question, a very 'spiritual one' and important. When we read fiction we 'like' or 'dislike' people according to whether they meet our conditions of what a person should be like, and yet, Eliot, in this chapter chides a little bit, I think.

He is so small that he can't even see what he has in Dorothea, someone who WILL be faithful to him as long as he lives, someone who has a generosity of spirit so beyond his that he can't even imagine it being real. Of all the women he could have married he has, in fact, chosen one who would, if he could come but a small distance her way, would dedicate herself to him. Not only does he not realize this but he is jealous of Will's youth and their obvious pleasure in each other -- some of which is just the appropriateness of their both being young, thoughtful people. That feels unforgiveable, and yet. It's the way people are, Eliot reminds us. Not unmixedly adorable.

Will, btw, is NOT innocent -- only Dorothea.

Lightening up a bit, I LOVED the expression 'he was not unmixedly adorable.'

"When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself into the acute consciousness 'I must die - and soon', then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel..." I stop the quote briefly, before the sentence continues importantly in a forgiving and deeply spiritual vein "afterwards, he may come to fold us in his armsas our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first." That actually made me teary, folks. She's very very good. Lovely.

The scene of the two together, both of them aware in a different way of each other, and the last sentence, also just stopped me in my tracks. "She put her hand into her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together."

She's keeping the story firmly grounded here, no entirely good or bad guys, real people. The Vincy-Lydgate plot is one degree removed from this kind of 'reality' and Mary and Fred are the stuff of romantic fiction. It's amazing really how it all fits together. Maybe the reason the chapter arrests me so is the way Eliot shows her incredible range as a writer, her ability to shift perspective and shift mood and go light or deep without jarring us, but in fact, giving the reader pleasure with real content.

139LizzieD
nov 29, 2010, 9:33 am

Just great and just right, Lucy! I think that to be human is to be broken in some way. Poor Joe's (and does GE ever say, "Poor Joe"?) way is particularly unattractive to most of us. How we wish that he were able to "come but a small distance her way"!

140Donna828
nov 29, 2010, 9:59 am

I skimmed through the posts to say that I'm behind here, but I will catch up at some point in time. Thanksgiving was wonderful but it put a huge dent in my reading time. Carry on, People. I'll be back...probably next week!

141phebj
nov 29, 2010, 11:16 am

Lucy, I absolutely loved your description of Chapter XLII and the quotes you cited. I'll come back and say some more later but so far this is my absolute favorite chapter in the book. And for some reason I really feel for Casaubon. He seems so fragile and sensitive. Partly this is because I'm watching the BBC version and the actor who portrays him and his angst does such a great job. The episode I saw yesterday had the scene where Dorothea gently suggests that it's time to stop researching and start writing and the look on his face when you realize he's taking this as criticism and judgment was priceless.

142labwriter
nov 29, 2010, 11:53 am

Pat, I'm intrigued that you're watching the dvd as you read. I don't mean this as a criticism AT ALL, but I don't particularly undertstand the attraction to "fragile and sensitive" men. Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino" is my kind of guy. I live next door to a fragile and sensitive type who has two daughters. He's a "house husband," although he has a PhD and does take on the occasional class as an adjunct professor. His wife told me years ago that all she wanted was for her husband to stay home and take care of the kids while she works--which is FINE--and she got what she wanted, which I was sure she would. My office is right above their driveway, so even with the windows closed, I can still hear their conversations when they are outside, getting into the car. I just heard him tell his daughter with much enthusiasm, "You're going to be a flower girl" and then went on to explain the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of this as such a "special" honor. I'm trying to imagine in what alternate universe my DH would have to live in order to be having that same conversation. So I guess you can see my take on fragile and sensitive men and how much I really don't like "Joe" Casaubon. Sorry if this offends anyone.

Lucy, I love your take on XLII, however, I must admit that I haven't yet become teary over anything in this book. I would quibble with you a bit: I do believe that Eliot certainly does have "good guys and bad guys." But maybe I'm taking your comment too literally? She has some stock figures in the book, which is to say she has some characters that she means not to be particularly rounded and that do seem to me to be pretty much entirely good or bad. I guess what your comment refers to is her major characters? Although I would see Rosamond as at least semi-major, and for the life of me I can't see that Eliot sees anything in her as particularly good or approving. Just as an example.

143labwriter
nov 29, 2010, 1:13 pm

>139 LizzieD:. Well, Peggy, near the beginning of Chapt. XLII I found a "Poor Mr. Casaubon!" on page 289 in my book. It seems to have more of an edge to it though than Eliot's "Poor Dorotheas."

144phebj
nov 29, 2010, 5:27 pm

#142 Hi Becky. It's hard for me to know how I would have reacted to Casaubon if I hadn't been watching the DVD at the same time. I watched the first episode after the first book so I've had the actors pretty much in my head the whole time as to who the characters are.

I think what I like or am somewhat attacted to in Casaubon is his apparent intelligence and bookish-ness but not in a sexual way just in a person way. And I just feel so sorry for him; he seems so lost. (My husband can be sensitive and he is smart but he's also a very assertive and blunt person; definitely more like a Clint Eastwood than a Casaubon. In my youth, I would have wanted to rescue Casaubon but I've learned my lesson on that score.)

Have you seen the BBC production? I really think it's excellent and is helping me to appreciate the book more. I also don't think I'd be getting as much out of the DVD if I wasn't reading the book. There would be too many inferences that I'd miss.

Again, it may be because of the DVD, but all the characters that I can think of at the moment seem like real people to me.

145labwriter
nov 29, 2010, 6:09 pm

Hi Pat, I'm really interested in what you have to say about the DVD, and I'll probably wait to watch it until I'm finished reading--although I might change my mind on that. I need to check it out of the library. It's raining here so there's no chance of working outside. It would be fun to watch now that the house is a "little" quieter after the holiday. I would be interested to see the Casaubon character portrayed on the screen instead of only in my mind.

I think it's pretty common for young women to have the idea of "rescuing" someone, and as you say, they either learn their lesson and/or they mature. Or who knows, maybe they actually do end up with a successful rescue. Nah.

146labwriter
nov 30, 2010, 7:56 am

I can't see where anyone took on Chapt. XLI in Book IV. It's a short chapter, but it introduces an important character and also an unknowingly purloined letter.

Wherein we meet John Raffles, the hated "stepfather" of Joshua Rigg Featherstone. Raffles has evidently come to Stone Court to try a little shakedown of his "wife's" (indications are they aren't really married) son, Joshua Rigg, now that Rigg has his inheritance from Mr. Featherstone. Raffles, we are told, is "a man on his way towards sixty, florid and hairy, the air of a swaggerer" (285). Joshua Rigg turns him down flat and tells him if he ever sees him come around again, he will cut off his mother's weekly allowance.

Raffles leaves with apparent amiability and no hard feelings. But don't miss the business of the paper stuffed in the flask. We learn at the end of the chapter that the paper was actually a letter signed Nicholas Bulstrode.

This chapter with Raffles and the letter has the feel of Dickens.

Lucy did a beautiful job of Chapt. XLII, so it's finally on to Book V, for sure.

147labwriter
nov 30, 2010, 9:02 am

Well, OK, so I can't move off of XLII without a few words of my own about Mr. Casaubon.

I guess I see Mr. Casaubon differently than most people here. One of the big themes of MM is self-delusion, something Eliot is quite critical of—for her it seems more of a moral failing than merely a weakness--and I really think that in Eliot’s hands the character of Mr. Casaubon, one of the most self-deluded characters in the book, is meant to be an object of ridicule and satire. Example: “The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we know, had a sense of rectitude and honorable pride in satisfying the requirements of honour, which compelled him to find other reasons for his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness” (290, 291). His treatment of Dorothea was certainly not honorable, and yet he managed to convince himself (delude himself) that it was. He even seems to have convinced himself that his behavior towards Dorothea is somehow noble.

Eliot lets us directly into Casaubon’s head (for the first time?—I’m not sure); don’t miss the quotation marks around the long paragraph in which he “presents the case” of his honorable behavior towards Dorothea (in my book it’s four pages into the chapter, pg 291). All of the “I’s” in this paragraph come straight out of Casaubon’s brain.

Her affectionate ardor, her "Quixotic" enthusiasm—make her “ready prey” to any man (Ladislaw is the one who Casaubon is obsessed with) who knows how to play her. If I die, he will persuade her to marry him, a “calamity” for her. He can make her believe anything. Her tendency towards “immoderate” attachments. Casaubon distrusts Ladislaw’s morals, and thus feels it is “my duty to hinder to the utmost the fulfillment of his designs” (291).

I can see where Eliot uses the charmless character of Casaubon to make us feel more sympathy for Dorothea; however, I can’t see where Eliot is inviting us to feel sympathy for Casaubon—pity, perhaps, but not sympathetic understanding. If I’m missing it, I certainly invite you to point it out.

148phebj
nov 30, 2010, 9:24 am

Becky, I will be out all day (and in fact, need to get going pretty soon) but I'll come back to your comment above and see if I can "defend" my friend Casaubon a little more. I agree with you that he is self-deluded and a subject of ridicule because of it but I think everyone in this book is to some degree. In fact, I think self-delusion is part of being human. What I do dislike in him is his mistreatment of Dorothea (lashing out at her; rebuffing her efforts of help; trying to keep her away from Will) because of it.

149BookAngel_a
Redigerat: nov 30, 2010, 1:21 pm

146- I was just thinking that certain parts of Middlemarch are starting to remind me of Bleak House - especially the Raffles storyline. Glad to know it's not just me. :)

150Matke
nov 30, 2010, 7:43 pm

Re: The Bleak House connection: the first time I read MM, I also read BH and Doctor Thorne by Trollope, all within a few months of each other. By the time I got to Trollope, I was saying to myself, "Wait; haven't I read this same/extremely similar plot line just recently?" It was a weird feeling. I believe that GE writes a much better book than either of the others; much more mature, I'd say. Which isn't to say that I didn't like the other two; I did. But MM is a masterpiece.

>142 labwriter:: I really had to laugh, Becky, at your entry. I try to find the appeal in the fragile sort of man--think Leslie Howard in "Gone with the Wind"-- but I usually find myself right back at the more assertive, blunt type of guy. Perhaps I lose patience too easily. However, I don't think, really, that Mr. C. is fragile; I think he's completely self-centered, self-serving, and enormously controlling. Note that he manages to bully and control D. without too much difficulty, making her life one long vista of misery. Just the type we love to hate. Nevertheless, until this section of the book, I did feel very, very sorry for him because of his realization of his own failed hopes and aims. But what a mean streak!

151BookAngel_a
nov 30, 2010, 9:36 pm

Speaking as someone who has been attracted to the 'fragile, sensitive' man in the past...

(**Disclaimer! I'm referring to 'fragile and sensitive' in a negative sense, like Casaubon is portrayed. But it doesn't have to be a negative quality - I love a little sensitivity in a man! :)

Some women are afraid of men who come on too strong...and the sensitive man seems less intimidating. Some want to "help" him, to "save" him, etc. Or some want to have control in the relationship, and a fragile man seems easier to manipulate. Just a few of the possibilities.

I think Dorothea fell into the 'wanting to help or save him' category. That was my weakness as well, at one time. Fortunately as I matured I grew out of that (mostly) and hopefully Dorothea has as well!

152labwriter
nov 30, 2010, 11:34 pm

I love these posts.

One of my brothers is a very sweet guy, wears his heart on his sleeve. I joke that he's the daughter my mother never had--haha. I love him dearly. I would do anything for him. But I would not want him (well, let's say, his type) for a husband, boyfriend, life partner, you name it. It's just a personal preference as to type.

And yes, I agree, Casaubon has it in him to be controlling and mean.

153labwriter
dec 1, 2010, 7:41 am

Well, it's Wednesday, so this must be

Book V "The Dead Hand"

Chapt. XLIII

This is the Chapt. with the line that Stasia pointed out: "Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores of patience."

Wherein Dorothea goes to find Dr. Lydgate at his home to discuss her husband's medical condition, only to find Ladislaw in a somewhat compromising position, visiting Mrs. Rosamond Lydgate at her home when her husband is out. Seeing Ladislaw with Rosamond has the effect on Dorothea of acting as a mirror for her own behavior: "she found herself thinking with some wonder that Will Ladislaw was passing his time with Mrs. Lydgate in her husband's absence" (299). And "poor Dorothea" says to herself, "Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things." Will has something of the same reaction, finding himself "mortified" that she had seen him at a disadvantage. Rosamond, on the other hand, true to form, continues to flirt with her guest, and Ladislaw beats a hasty retreat (300).

The chapter ends with Lydgate and Rosamond talking together, Rosamond chiding Lydgate for liking his work better than he does her, and Lydgate saying: "Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be something better than a Middlemarch doctor?" (301). And clueless Rosamond indicates that certainly she would like her husband to make great discoveries--for the sake of attaining a position in some "higher place" than Middlemarch (302).

We leave Lydgate still under the illusion that all is well, thinking he can have both Rosamond and his work.

154labwriter
dec 1, 2010, 7:58 am

Book V, Chapt XLIV

At the end of their conversation about Mr. Casaubon's health, Lydgate discusses his idea of the Middlemarch fever hospital with Dorothea. He tells her that Mr. Bulstrode has supported the idea to a "great degree" with his money, but one man can't do everything (303). He also tells her that half the town of Middlemarch would be happy to see the plan fail, mainly due to Bulstrode's unpopularity. People in the town are opposed to Bulstrode for several reasons, but mainly because he put the medical direction of the hospital into Lydgate's hands. Now there are those who are trying to hinder subscriptions.

Dorothea, having some money she doesn't know what to do with, as she puts it, pledges to give 200 pounds of her own 700 pounds a year (settled on her when she was married) to the new hospital. Dorothea tells Casaubon about her conversation with Lydgate and the money pledge; Mr. C. decides that if she talked with him, then "she knows what I know" about his health: "He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?" (304).

155BookAngel_a
dec 1, 2010, 8:39 am

I'm beginning to agree that Dorothea and Lydgate would have made a pretty good match.

156labwriter
dec 1, 2010, 9:05 am

Book V, Chapt XLV

The chapter opens with Mrs. Dollop, part of the comic chorus of Middlemarch people who are set against the scientific progress (read "Reform") represented by Lydgate's new fever hospital. In the chapter before, Lydgate had said to Dorothea, "The ignorance of people about here is stupendous" (305).

We are treated to the gossip around the town about the new doctor: that he wanted to cut people up after they died (any doctor good for anything should know what was wrong with you before you died); that he did not dispense drugs: "Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?" asks one Middlemarcher (307).

The other medical men in Middlemarch think no better of the new man than their patients: "I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with innovations which are a libel on their time-honoured procedure" (309).

One thing to keep in mind in this chapter is differences in the social standing of medical men: physicians, surgeons, apothecaries--there's a section about the differences in Daniel Pool's book, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. Basically, the rich got the physicians and the poor got the apothecaries. Surgeons, Pool says, dealt with anything for which a physician could not simply give a prescription--fractures, eye problems, VD, whatever. From a social point of view, the problem with being a surgeon was that "actual work was involved"--like manual labor. Pool says that as the century wore on, the boundaries between physicians and surgeons began to blur, although in MM we still see the physician referred to as "Doctor," the surgeon as "Mister."

A discussion about the proposed hospital, backed by Mr. Bulstrode: it was to be reserved for fever of all forms; Lydgate would be the chief medical superintendent; the general management would be in the hands of the board, including Mr. Bulstrode. Every other medical man in town refused to use the hospital (313), and Lydgate makes plans to do without them: "Things can't last as they are: there must be all sorts of reform soon, and then young fellows may be glad to come and study here" (313).

The Vicar Mr. Farebrother encourages Lydgate in two things: one, he should keep himself as separate from Bulstrode as he can; and two, take care not to get "hampered about money matters" (315).

The end of the chapter finds Lydgate and Rosamond spending an evening together, and we find Rosamond a bit behind the curve, telling her husband that being a medical man is not a "nice profession" (316). Perhaps it's beginning to dawn on Lydgate what he's gotten himself into with dear Rosamond, as we leave him petting her "resignedly."

Happy reading.

157sibylline
dec 1, 2010, 9:14 am

I've just caught up, avidly reading about ten posts (internet issues slowed me down considerably yesterday). It seems as though the question, ultimately, is what Eliot's stance is vis a vis her characters. My feeling is that she doesn't judge the three characters, Casaubon, Dorothea, and Will by the same rules as the rest of the characters in the novel -- sort of like Hamlet and Ophelia say -- (which is maybe going a little too far, but you catch my drift). The rest of the novel is a vehicle, comic and traditional, for this deeper exploration of character and destiny. (oh, there's some bombazine prose for you!). OK bombazine is one of those words from the 19th century that puts me into a sort of trance state, just say it ten times fast...........

158LizzieD
dec 1, 2010, 10:49 am

I'm a great one for stating the obvious. One thing going on in the two marriages is that both Casaubon and Lydgate trust the appearance and their own ideas of what a woman should be over discovering the reality of what their particular woman is before the marriage. The women (and I use the term loosely) both do the same. I'm reminded of Charlotte Lucas's notion in *P&P* that engaged couples should know as little of each other as possible before the wedding. Not working in these two marriages! And our own divorce rate suggests that this may still be a problem. *removing tongue from cheek*

159phebj
Redigerat: dec 1, 2010, 4:10 pm

Hi, I’m back. Long day yesterday and then about 10 inches of snow to dig out of this morning.

What I primarily remember GE saying about her feelings about Casaubon is in Book II, Chapter XXIX:
For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.

I take this literally to mean she’s sorry for him rather than pitying him and didn’t think it was just ridicule. I’ve also spent time over on Patrick Malahide’s website (he’s the actor who plays Casaubon) and remember reading this quote from the director of the BBC series :
George Eliot said she was like Casaubon because she was very lonely and she translated very heavy books from German. She understood this thing of being smothered by research and books, and not being able to live.

I read this before I even started watching the DVD so I’ve had it in my head for most of the book that she personally identified with Casaubon.

I also liked this passage from a “review” of Middlemarch that I found on the Globe and Mail website (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/article675721.ece):
Casaubon is one of the great characters of the European novel. Indeed, all the principal characters of Middlemarch have a depth that is scarcely approached by English novelists before George Eliot.

In his literary interest and the insight he affords into the human condition, Casaubon stands alongside Emma Bovary and Rodion Raskolnikov. If you know someone who shrinks from being known and instead struggles over some intricately unending task, read about Casaubon. If, in a conversation, you hear yourself sounding pompous, or if you ever wonder whether you are irritably muddling around in a matter you won't be able to understand, read the character of Casaubon.

I’m very drawn to the subject of self-delusion lately because I see it more the older I get and I love reading about it in books. One of my favorite books this year was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and his portrayal of a traditional English butler who comes to terms with some, but not all, of his self-delusions over the course of the story. One of the scenes I liked in the DVD, which I’m not sure is even in the book, is of Casaubon doing his research in the Vatican Library and glancing around the room at several other men older than he is doing their research. I loved the look on his face when he’s sees himself in these men and what his future holds if he can’t finish his work.

(Let me know if you want me to shut up about the DVD. I’m starting to feel like I’m talking about it too much and it may be skewing my experience of the book compared to everyone else’s.)

160labwriter
dec 1, 2010, 4:41 pm

Hi Pat. I loved your post here about Casaubon. No, please don't shut up about the DVD; I think bringing that in certainly adds another dimension to the book.

I really want to think about what you've said here about Eliot/Casaubon before I post a reply. You've given us a lot of food for thought, and I appreciate the way you've brought in other sources like the review and the actor's website to back up your impression of "poor Joe." I'll be back later--maybe tonight, maybe not until tomorrow. Please, anyone else in this group, jump in at will!

161sibylline
dec 1, 2010, 9:09 pm

I too am so appreciative that you took the time and effort to write out your thoughts. I've been hesitating to plunge in, but Eliot's comparison of herself to Casaubon gives me the courage. I've been writing fiction for decades and here I am in my mid fifties, having discovered that writing a good novel is a million times harder than I ever imagined. I struggle constantly with the question of whether I should have stuck to being in the library profession where I was very successful and quite happy, except for longing to write. So I'm confessing that I've had some very Casaubonish anxieties about having 'wasted my life' on something that is beyond me to do well -- and I'm smart enough to see the difference between adequate and good. That's part of Casaubon's torment, that he is intelligent, he is sensitive, just not enough. Now, before anybody starts pitying me, I don't really feel that way, just sometimes so that I do feel a kind of tug towards him.

Peggy, I loved your thoughts and follow-up on marriage. My spouse and I corresponded intensely for six months before we really got together (and a good deal of phone time) and I think we are still coasting on the intensity of that written exchange. I knew a lot about him after getting two or three letters a week....

BTW once we were living together he has almost never written my ever again. Once when I was going to be away for three weeks I said, So write me? And he just raised his eyebrows.

162phebj
dec 1, 2010, 10:45 pm

Lucy, you're an excellent writer and you definitely did the right thing in dedicating yourself to it. I just went to your profile page and started reading your experimental journal on a day in the life of Hepzibah Starkweather. I'm loving it and will be back for more!

Your comments about Casaubon and his efforts reminded me of my short-lived interest in writing publications for a professional organization that I used to belong to. Initially, I thought it would be easy but it wasn't and I quickly became mired in details and found it very difficult to write on a deadline. By nature, I often get lost in details and I think I see that in Casaubon and relate to it.

I just finished Chapter XLIV so I've fallen a little behind the rest of you and probably won't catch up until this weekend. I've got to get off the computer to read a book for a RL book group this Saturday.

163labwriter
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 12:06 am

>159 phebj:. Pat, I would ask you this: If you feel “very sorry” for Casaubon, even as far into the book as Book IV or V, then how do you feel about Dorothea? Does Casaubon have a point in the way that he views Dorothea—his belittling of her ideas about finding some grand passion to care about, his suspicion of her motives, and his jealousy in their relationship? If we feel more for Casaubon, then don’t we necessarily feel less for Dorothea?

My thesis is that Dorothea is the character whom Eliot identifies with most: her theoretical mind, her moral passion to do something “big” in her world and to make a difference, her noble calling to make life better in some way. Dorothea is deluded about Casaubon (and other things as well), but she’s willing to give up her delusion—and to take responsibility for it. She sees it as her duty to stay with Casaubon, even though she realizes she’s made a mistake when she married him, thinking he had a “great mind,” and she’s determined to make the best of it and see her duty through, and on a parallel track she will also go on and find another cause to throw herself into—like the reform medical movement and Lydgate’s Fever Hospital.

Maybe the actor Patrick Malahide wants us to feel sorry for Casaubon? Maybe he sees him as a more sympathetic figure than Eliot did? Maybe he's the one who wanted to play him as a more sympathetic figure. I don’t know, because I haven’t watched the DVD. I’m just throwing that out as a possibility.

And Lucy, all I can say is that the process of what you're doing has got to be worth something--hardly a waste, no matter what comes of it, yes? I can remember when I was getting my English degrees, people used to ask me, in the way they have of asking that question, "What are you going to do with your degree? And if it was someone who was not really asking a question but instead making a statement--you know what I mean?--then I would give them some BS answer. The truth is, getting my BA & then my MA in literature means more to me than anything I ever "did" with the degrees. The process of getting those degrees changed me as a person, just as the process of working hard on a long project--certainly with no "guarantee" of the outcome--changes a person for the better as well. I think we're too darned product oriented in this culture--that's my two cents, anyway.

164sibylline
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 5:50 pm

You are both darlings and very kind. Well Pat, you can join my other handful of fans bugging me about getting back to work on Hepzibah when you get to the end of what I've done. I had to stop in June when we moved and since then I have not gotten back to it, though lately I have felt a stirring of interest.

I had a lightbulb moment reading your post Becky.
Does Casaubon have a point in the way that he views Dorothea—his belittling of her ideas about finding some grand passion to care about, his suspicion of her motives, and his jealousy in their relationship? If we feel more for Casaubon, then don’t we necessarily feel less for Dorothea?


What a great question! For me, the answer is no, I don't have less for Dorothea as I spare some compassion for Casaubon. In fact I feel more for more of them the way Eliot has set them up. My compassion for Casaubon detracts nothing from my admiration and affection for Dorothea -- possibly even increases it as I see them both trapped in this ghastly mistake. All of Casaubon's pettiness and jealousy, is seen through this screed of his fears and disappointments, it is not excused not by any means, but it is explained . Dorothea is by every stretch of the imagination the infinitely 'superior' person - but her superiority doesn't make Casaubon's failure all the worse. They run parallel, without touching, truly there is almost no place where they can connect except at the most basic level of human need for companionship -- which is why, for me, that tiny moment of mutual feeling was so moving at the end of Book IV.

Maybe this sounds silly, but I'm thinking of my mother who had a gift for warmth and love. She had seven children and brought up three more. At her funeral we were all talking and marveling that she never had a 'favorite' and one sibling said: but that wasn't it, we were all her favorites. And we realized it was true. We all felt understood and appreciated, different as we all were so there was/is no jealousy between any of us. I know that sounds absurdly utopian, but it's the truth. (And she had other flaws, so don't think I'm idealizing her.) Eliot's depth of understanding is even more powerful since she could actually write it down in a story, capture it as it were -- her warmth and light and understanding is imparted to everyone, not equally, but specially . And I bet she was a fabulous mother.

Moving along, I am glad to get back to reporting in as I read along, the hiatus when I got so far ahead made it hard to keep my thoughts and reactions fresh.
XLV: The names of people in this chapter did me in: Mrs. Dollop, Dr. Gambit, Mr. Hackbutt and so on..... The main drift is that opinion, while not coalesced into something like a hard opposition, is not very positive about either the hospital or Lydgate, although he does get a lucky break with a domestic, Nancy Nash and then when he cures Bothrop Trumbull.....But on the whole the opinion is that the fever hospital is a death sentence. The chapter ends with a picture of Lydgate and 'Rosy' together in their drawing room-- fortunately the honeymoon has not yet ended, and one area they can share is music (even if Eliot is catty about it).
XLVI I love Brooke sometimes, he is so sublimely fatuous:
On Burke's speeches. "That avalanche and thunder, now, was really a little like Burke. I want that sort of thing-not ideas, you know, but a way of putting them." We get a sense of Will's character -- he is a genuine bohemian -- 'a gypsy' a person who doesn't want to be pinned into any one category. Eliot is neither approving or disapproving, he simply is what he is -- but there is a sense that perhaps in this work which he greatly enjoys he is finding a sense of purpose. His enjoyment of the children is another clue about him -- of an essentially joyful nature. Another great descriptive moment is Lydgate, relaxing at home: seated sideways on an easy chair by the fire with one leg over the elbow...." Will is lying on the floor and Rosamond is serving tea -- there is something in this portrait that is so vivid and 'real' took my breath away! I liked the interaction betw Lydgate and Will -- their two natures clashing in a good way, Lydgate really making Will think.

165phebj
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 10:06 am

Hi Becky, I don't feel any less sympathetic to Dorothea in feeling sorry for Casaubon. But after reading Chapter XLII, I'm not as happy with Casaubon because of his mistreatment of her. I'm only up to Chapter XLIV in Book IV so my opinion may further harden against him. But your comment reminded me of an opinion piece in the Independent that I saw when I was poking around the Internet the other day. It's entitled "The Truth About Casaubon: A Great Intellect Destroyed by a Silly Woman" (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/the-truth-about-casaubon-a-great-intellect-destroyed-by-a-silly-woman-1395385.html). Here's an excerpt:
Casaubon, I suggest, was on his way to become one of the towering, universal geniuses of the 19th century - a giant to be ranked with Darwin and Marx - when he became entangled with Dorothea. Her silliness and interference, her pestering for attention, diverted his tremendous project into the sands. Casaubon, a loner who found all relationships difficult, could not keep his mind on his work. He lost intellectual confidence and then developed a pitiful case of scholar's block. His fatal heart attack was obviously caused by stress. She was his mistake - not the other way round.

I don't agree with this but thought it was funny and interesting. Also, I know I'm influenced by Patrick Malahide's portrayal of Casaubon. Here's a quote from him about the role:
Casaubon's a fearful man. He has great ideas of his own destiny, but when he comes face to face with it, he's overcome by fear. The fear leads to suspicion and then the suspicion leads to bitterness. And he dies an embittered man. What I found so interesting was that George Eliot never condemns him, never pillories him even though he behaves so appallingly.

It's entirely possible that he sees him more sympathetically than Eliot did. But I think we all read our own "inner books" and to some extent there is no one correct interpretation and that's what makes this book, and us, all so interesting.

166phebj
dec 2, 2010, 10:14 am

Lucy, we must have cross-posted because I just saw your post. I love your image of GE as a mother to all her characters and I loved your description of your mother. It actually reminded me of Catherine Drinker Bowen's mother in A Family Portrait. She seemed to feel just as loved and valued as her older siblings with all their myriad accomplishments. What a wonderful memory of your mother.

I didn't read your comments about the next chapter of Middlemarch. I'll wait to come back to them after I get there.

But I am probably going to start bugging you about getting back to Hepzibah's story. It's a little unnerving to think it just drops off (although I'm only up to the third installment). I remember reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and then finding out it was never finished!

167labwriter
dec 2, 2010, 10:52 am

>165 phebj:. to some extent there is no one correct interpretation

Aye, there's the rub--to what extent? You've given us an example of a perfectly goofy and "wrong" reading, to my way of thinking, of Casaubon and Dorothea in the Neal Ascherson essay. Although my reading of his piece is that he's being more provocative than serious. Or is my interpretation incorrect?--haha.

So Pat, are you saying there's no such thing as a "misreading" of a character or book? Then that gets very close to saying that there's no such thing as authorial intention (or, that if it does exist, it can/should be ignored by the reader), and if you want to go there, then that's where I have to part ways with you. You would have to then agree that all interpretations of a work are valid, whether the author would agree with them or not. In such a case, it makes no sense then to even ask the question, "What was Eliot trying to do here?" much less to ask the further question, "And did she succeed?"

The "truth" of this, I believe, exists in some middle ground--it's not black or white, either "the author's intent above all" or else "any goofy interpretation is just as good as another." Of course all readers will have their own particular and unique response to the book; however, if we ignore what the author is doing, then why read George Eliot?

>164 sibylline:. Lucy, I'm confused. When you say you bet "she" was a fabulous mother, were you referring to Eliot?

168labwriter
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 11:27 am

Apropos to what I said in 163 about process/product in regards to my schooling. I just happened to run across this quotation this morning from Edith Hamilton. (Aside--Hamilton is one of my all-time favorite people and role models. Did you know that she wrote all of her books, like The Greek Way and her mythology book after she retired--after she was 60?) Anywho, here's the quotation. She was speaking of the hard work required by girls at the Bryn Mawr School (where she was Head) to pass the entrance exams for Bryn Mawr College:
It is not hard work which is dreary; it is superficial work. That is always boring in the long run, and it has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is ever laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life.
Ed. for speling.

169LizzieD
dec 2, 2010, 11:42 am

Now this is fun! Lucy, thanks for your reaction: "My compassion for Casaubon detracts nothing from my admiration and affection for Dorothea -- possibly even increases it as I see them both trapped in this ghastly mistake." I was thinking in precisely those terms which you have laid out more thoroughly and cogently than I would have. I think you (or somebody) alluded earlier to Joe's inability to recognize that he has thrown away his life on a non-viable project. Who of us could? Seems to me such an acknowledgment would take a hero of sterner stuff than our Joe. (Pat, the quotation from the Independent is hilarious!)
As to the admissibility of any and all interpretations, I think I can offer one that nobody would accept. Any number of my former students would have said that Joe failed as a husband because he was a repressed homosexual who could not face his fascination with Will. Really. That would, I think, ignore what the author intended and leave me asking with Becky, "Why bother to read GE?"
Meanwhile, I have finished book 5 with nothing to add except that I had to push and shove myself through the political chapter, which I'm sure GE's contemporaries found vastly entertaining. I am off and away into VI because I can't remember at all the story of Will's mother!

170phebj
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 12:00 pm

The "truth" of this, I believe, exists in some middle ground--it's not black or white, either "the author's intent above all" or else "any goofy interpretation is just as good as another." Of course all readers will have their own particular and unique response to the book; however, if we ignore what the author is doing, then why read George Eliot?

Becky, I agree with both your statements that each reader will have their own unique response to the book and that it is valuable to know what George Eliot intended. I'm not trying to take the extreme position that any interpretation, however out there, is just as valuable as another. I also read the Neal Ascherson essay as provocative rather than serious and I got a kick out of it.

I don't know if you ever read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. It drives some people nuts but I thought it was funny. His position is that you don't even need to read books to talk about them because in fact no one ever talks about the same book because they bring their own experiences and prejudices to the experience of reading it. He even has some examples of authors who dread talking to their readers because they often discover that the reader's idea of the book has nothing to do with what the author intended. Anyway, this is just a particular interest of mine (how people see things differently) and I don't want you to think I don't value what GE actually intended because I very much do.

171lauranav
dec 2, 2010, 12:26 pm

I agree there needs to be an acknowledgement and some intention to understand the author's intent. But I also know that when I read a book one day, distractions or my mood affect what I actually read and the emphasis I put on different parts of what I read.

If I read it again in a few days or a few years something else gets my attention.

One person may read GEs comments about Joe and see sympathy, while another sees a sharper criticism. That's why I love group reads like this to have someone else point out things I may have missed or glossed over.

I also know that I have more patience and sympathy toward some types of people as opposed to others. If a character is one of those I have little patience with, even if the author is trying to express pity or sympathy I may not pick it up.

172phebj
dec 2, 2010, 12:35 pm

Thank you, Laura. You put that so much more succinctly than I did. And I liked your comment about experiencing a book differently based on when and under what circumstances you read it.

173sibylline
dec 2, 2010, 6:15 pm

What a great discussion! 'She' does refer to Eliot, Becky. Authorial intent, that's another biggie. I've read bits and pieces of the letters and stuff in the back of my book but I couldn't possibly say what Eliot's intent is. I can only speculate based on various clues in the text. But it does seem like she is very generously inclined.

174labwriter
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 8:25 pm

>173 sibylline:. Well, she was never a mother.

I couldn't possibly say what Eliot's intent is.

So in other words, you can't possibly say that there's any difference between, let's say, Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Casaubon of Middlemarch, because you can't discern that Austen's intent is for us to laugh at Collins and Eliot's is for us to take Mr. Casaubon seriously--you can't "know" any of that, based on the clues you pick up in the text.

Lucy, I think you are jerking my chain. Of course we can only speculate on what Eliot is doing. I don't have a crystal ball hooked up to a time machine, and neither do you. But if you're not even going to speculate on what Eliot's doing, then, I will say again, why bother reading Eliot? Of course, you can speculate and come up with X; I can speculate and come up with Y. We may not agree on our conclusions, but neither one of us is necessarily right or wrong. Although, the other thing we can do is go to the text and say, "Well, Lucy, here is where I find Eliot doing such-and-such, and that's why I conclude what I do. But you know this--and so do I. Having a little bit of fun with me tonight, aren't you sibyx?.

175sibylline
Redigerat: dec 2, 2010, 9:12 pm

Well I'll be darned. For some reason I thought she had some children. But perhaps I was vaguely aware that George Lewes had a bunch of them.....

Of course, of course, and speculating is all we can do and should do! I didn't mean anything complicated, only that ultimately, we can only know what we find in the text and sometimes what the author tells us directly and I haven't read her journals (if there are any) or letters which is where you often find that information. I am so sorry if you think I was having you on in any way. I was responding to the thought that we bring so much of ourselves into our interpretations -- I was thinking that that is what makes interpretation/speculation so .... I'm not sure what the right word is.... I put 'dangerous' first, but that's too strong a word..... it is so easy to see what we want to see, to filter out anything we don't 'like' or doesn't fit our view of things. Does that make more sense?

176sibylline
dec 2, 2010, 9:15 pm

Well, I'm trying to edit my post and I can't, things are funky on LT tonight I guess. I have read the next chapter too, but am unsure about plunging on ahead writing about it..... plus when LT is off one can lose posts, so I think I will sign out!

177labwriter
dec 3, 2010, 12:02 am

Yeah, I see what you mean, Lucy, about bringing ourselves into the interpretation and the danger of that. And as much as I enjoy biography and authors' journals and correspondence, I'll just say here, to be clear, that I don't believe in order to understand a text you should have to--or even should--go to an author's journals or letters or anything else. You can/should--heck, whatever word you want to use--understand the text by reading what's on the page. And sure, people are going to have different interpretations. I love the back-and-forth in a group--it brings another dimension to the work to hear what others have to say. Plus, as Laura said in #171, people just plain see things differently. And Pat, (#170), I think you said it really well, about readers bringing their own experiences/prejudices to a text.

I'll just end tonight by saying that what I try to do, especially when doing a "serious" read--something like Eliot--is to constantly ask myself, "What is the author trying to do--what is she trying to say through these characters and these situations in which we find them? I try to ground my reading in that--that's all. Others will have a different approach.

178-Cee-
dec 3, 2010, 9:44 am

I love all the comments on this thread and it certainly does add new dimension to my own reading of this novel.

Shocking Revelation (if anyone cares):
My approach is entirely different. I read this as a delightful story. It's as if Eliot is talking to me and I guess it seems something like gossiping... but no one is getting hurt by it. I just listen to whatever she has to say and join her in "mental venting" over things that will probably never change. I often smile with chagrin and mutter "so true, so true". :P

The characters are so interesting (often funny) - as if they lived in my small town and I knew them. Eliot has so much insight into the human condition, it satisfies my need to analyze personalities and try to figure out what makes people "tick". Character self-examinations, ironic twists and mental adjustments are enlightening and makes her writing timeless and engaging.

Eliot also, I think, uses wit and sympathy in her assessment of most behavior. She is not wickedly demeaning, nasty or biting. I think she is exasperated with weak behavior, poor upbringing, false values - and many times uses pity instead of scorn. (my humble interpretation, of course... I have no idea) Of course, I can see Eliot certainly holds strong opinions on the poor treatment of the downtrodden... a rousing cheer from me for her truthfulness and boldness.

I have absolutely NO interest in politics - then or now. My pathetic head-in-the-sand approach to life... There are built-in psychological defenses in my brain to avoid it. Eliot might be turning in her grave that I am not paying much attention to an important-to-her aspect of her writing. Oh well... I 'm enjoying her work which is certainly worth whatever her life investment was to produce it. Unlike poor Casaubon! ;)

179sibylline
dec 3, 2010, 9:52 am

It's Friday and this chapter is halfway through Book V --- so if you haven't got there yet and don't want to know anything, just don't read this until you are ready!

XLVIII And so it becomes apparent that Casaubon is not well at all. He has invited Dorothea to help him now and to add to her distress she begins to understand how futile and pointless and wrong his work is, she finds she does NOT believe in it. "Everything seemed dreary..." inside and out. And this: "She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was." That is just painful indeed. "Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship...."

They work and work. Dorothea's goodness and patience is brought home to us in her amazing tenderness to Casaubon despite what she is feeling inside. They get into a strange wrangle where Casaubon insists she must agree to respect his wishes after his death without knowing what those wishes are. She asks for time to think on it and he agrees. And even in her indignant anger at this she has thoughts for him, for his disappointments. She is fearful that his desire is for her to work on his opus after his death and her spirit quails at the thought. At last, she comes to him in the garden, with her answer and finds him.

"Wake, dear, wake! Listen to me. I am come to answer."
But Dorothea never gave her answer.

XLIX A tiny chapter wherein Beecham and Brookes discuss the despicable and bizarre terms of Casaubon's will, that she can remarry anyone except Ladislaw; if she marrries him she loses all Casaubon's fortune, house etc. Beecham wants Brooke to send Will away; Brooke, true to his passive nature and his recognition that without Will his candicacy won't amount to a hill of beans, prevaricates. He 'happens' on a perfect argument -- that sending him away precipitously will make the terms of the will (which are bound to get out) appear even more scandalous.

And so whatever sympathy we might have felt for C evaporates here - in life there is always a chance for redemption, for repentance and change, but not in death.

180BookAngel_a
dec 3, 2010, 10:00 am

178- Claudia, my approach to reading Middlemarch is almost exactly the same as yours! :)

181alcottacre
dec 3, 2010, 10:35 am

178/180: Mine too.

182LizzieD
dec 3, 2010, 10:50 am

And I try to read an amalgam of the two.

183-Cee-
dec 3, 2010, 11:37 am

Cool! We are all enjoying the same book for many reasons. It was a great pick.

Special thanks to Becky and Lucy for the chapter highlights.
It's nice to know the same passages caught us all! Gives me a sense of comaraderie as I read it. You ladies are doing a great job. Bet you wonder why you ever started this! But, believe me, we are loving it.

Hope Santa brings you an extra surprise! :)

184labwriter
Redigerat: dec 4, 2010, 12:22 am

I wonder if we could have a show of hands of people who either "are" or "sortof are" sticking to the schedule of this group read: one book per week, finishing up Book V tomorrow and starting Book VI either Sunday or Monday, whenever your new week starts.

I ask because as I cruise through the threads here on the old 75, I'm finding a bunch in this group who have mentioned that they either intend to push quickly on to the end or have already done so. It doesn't make much sense to me to continue with this "book a week" schedule, which admittedly makes for a very chopped up reading experience, if most people are moving quickly through to the end of the book--especially since if we stick to this schedule, we'll be finishing the book the week of Christmas.

Thanks a bunch!

185alcottacre
dec 4, 2010, 12:30 am

Somehow this gal raising her hand looks surprisingly like me:

186BookAngel_a
dec 4, 2010, 8:39 am

I'm sort of sticking to our schedule. At the moment I'm a little bit ahead of schedule (I'm already in book 6). But the book just keeps getting more and more interesting, and I'm finding it harder to wait. So at some point soon I'll probably just finish the rest pretty quickly.

(That's usually what happens to me when I do group reads. Close to the end I get the itch to finish it in one big gulp...)

187alcottacre
dec 4, 2010, 9:24 am

I finished Book 5 in the wee hours and will start Book 6 tonight.

188sibylline
dec 4, 2010, 9:26 am

That sounds about right to me too -- esp the wanting to just read to the end. I hate leaving anyone who is insanely busy too far behind, but I am also eager to finish to make room for all those NEW BOOKS that will be coming down the chimney.

Stasia, what a hottie!

189-Cee-
dec 4, 2010, 9:34 am

I will probably finish up Book 5 today. Sticking to the schedule - but if I find I want to forge ahead and finish it up, I will. If life intervenes and I am last - oh well. :-}

190alcottacre
dec 4, 2010, 9:35 am

#188: Yeah, I wish I looked that good in real life :)

191phebj
dec 4, 2010, 11:38 am

I've gotten behind (I'm up to Chapter XLV in Book IV) due to a RL book club (which is today) and my Hemingway course (which ends on 12/7). So as of Tuesday night, I plan to focus on getting Middlemarch done and speed things up.

I have no problem if everyone moves ahead. My only request is if you post, could you post the Chapter number in bold so it's easy to find comments that have already been posted?

192labwriter
dec 4, 2010, 1:24 pm

OK, so what I'm getting from those who have answered is that the majority are content to go on at their own pace, and mostly that pace seems to be faster than one book per week. I'm good with that.

In light of what others are doing, I plan to drop my own chapter-by-chapter postings, since I know that for myself, once I've read something, I'm usually ready to go on to the next thing--as I think Lucy indicated also in #188. However, I would encourage people to come back here and post on whatever strikes them about what they've read. I'd be very interested to read what people have to say, as I sure other group members would be. And I agree with Pat: if you post, please post the Chapter Number (and also book that it's from) in a way so that it's easy to see.

Thanks so much, and happy reading!

193sibylline
Redigerat: dec 4, 2010, 9:53 pm

All the above sounds excellent.... I will carry on as briefly as I can as I do feel the Santa train bearing down on me.

L -- Long and short is that Celia spills the beans to D about the codicil. "Celia felt her advantage, and was determined to use it. None of them knew Dodo as well as she did, or knew how to manage her. Since Celia's baby was born, she had a new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom."

Dorothea, having been told: "She might have compared her experience at that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was taking on a new form, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs. Everything was changing its aspect....."

For any Angela Thirkell fans out there -- I don't think I ever noticed before how Thirkell pays homage to Eliot's domestic observances. Celia speaking to her baby "that unconscious centre and poise of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even to the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap off, to make-you didn't know what:-in short he was Bouddha in a Western form." -- As another aside, Buddhism was only becoming known as a religion in the west in any serious way in Eliot's day. She is very up to date!!!

I love D's indignance at Mrs. C's likening Will's suitability to an 'Italian carrying white mice'. Of course, the whole thing has the effect, just as with Rosy and Lydgate, of causing her to think about him romantically, which she hadn't consciously done before.

At the end of L Lydgate recommends Farebrother which makes us all feel much better. Poor Dorothea has a lot to think over.

LI A painful and embarrassing chapter wherein Mr. Brooke flubs his political debut -- at the end of the ch. he has convinced himself to support another candidate and to leave town for awhile, and advises Will to get along. Will is furious.

Brooke's conversation with the grocer Malmsey was priceless.

LII In which Fred comes to Farebrother for help and Farebrother is noble.

LIII Book V ends with a second sort of 'dead hand' besides that of Joe reaching out -- this time when at last Raffles and Bulstrode cross paths. Raffles knows what happened to Bulstrode's stepdaughter (who presumably should have inherited his first wife's money, or some of it anyway) and ..... something else a bit off about Bulstrode? I can't remember.... maybe that's the only thing. Anyhow, poor Bulstrode is mightily flummoxed by the unctuous and unflappable Raffles. He is a very 19th century character, but without 'im there'd be no plot!

At the end of the ch. Raffles recalls the name of the 'foreigner' Ladislaw. "The action of memory which he had tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly completed itself without conscious effort-a common experience, agreeable as a completed sneeze."
Oh, I am in awe of you GE!

194LizzieD
dec 4, 2010, 5:16 pm

Just checking in to say that I'm a very little ahead, reading in book 6, but probably won't stay that way. LVI, as the locals react to the coming incursion of the railroad, is painful because it's so like home. Mr. Solomon Featherstone has played on their natural fears to incite them against progress. Caleb Garth is the voice of reason at the risk of sounding like he is for the "big folks." I thought this section was well-done. (No surprise there!)

195BookAngel_a
dec 4, 2010, 9:24 pm

I'm enjoying your comments as always! :)

196phebj
dec 4, 2010, 10:06 pm

#179 And so whatever sympathy we might have felt for C evaporates here - in life there is always a chance for redemption, for repentance and change, but not in death.

I liked this Lucy.

I just finished Chapter XLIX and enjoyed your summary of it.

197labwriter
dec 5, 2010, 7:07 am

Yesterday was one of those days when everything comes together for the perfect read. It was cold and windy outside, so I didn't feel badly about staying indoors next to the fire with a nice cup of tea. DH was as absorbed in his own project as I was in my reading, and I didn't even have to stop to make dinner, since we were all taking him out later for a belated birthday celebration. Bliss!

Consequently, I let myself sink into Eliot's novel--I just couldn't hold back. So now, 100 pages or so later, I'm well into Book VII. My falling-apart Norton edition is now filled with Post-It notes, and I will wait on the edge of my chair while everyone catches up. I have nothing to add to Lucy's definitive summary of the last four chapters of Book V.

The genius of Eliot! I love this line from Chapt. LIII in Book V, Mr. Bulstrode speaking to the odious John Raffles: “If I remember rightly. . . our acquaintance many years ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are now assuming, Mr. Raffles. Any services you desire of me will be the more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone of familiarity which did not lie in our former intercourse, and can hardly be warranted by more than twenty years of separation” (363).

Now that I'm ahead in my reading here, I can indulge in finishing the biography I've been wanting to read more of, one of the best I've ever read--Louise Bogan A Portrait. Happy reading to everyone!

198alcottacre
dec 5, 2010, 7:35 am

I started Book VI this morning and read the first couple of chapters. I am more amused than Dorothea by Mrs. Cadwallader's attempts to marry her off again after her period of mourning is over. Interesting how one of the male members of Middlemarch can have an illegitimate son, but heaven forbid that there is any air of scandal around Dorothea!

199Matke
dec 5, 2010, 12:48 pm

But, Stasia: He was very, very rich and male. Mrs. Cadwallader, a very comical character, makes this clear with a line about some "sprig" or "branch"--to my regret, I didn't note that down. Mrs. Cadwallader would be quite trying in real life, I think, but have you noticed that she can change her tack if she sees the prevailing winds shifting? A cagy woman.

I thought Casaubon developed into a most odious person. His disappointment, with his marriage and his life work, led him down a nasty, nasty path. And what is it with these people who try to control others from beyond the grave? We have Farebrother, using his supposed will to control behaviors while he's still alive, and now we have Casaubon trying to do the same from the great beyond. Even though my own mother did both of those things, so that I know it's realistic, it's still just repugnant to me. Oops...maybe it's so repulsive because I actually saw it happen. Hmmm....

200sibylline
dec 5, 2010, 6:18 pm

Oh, oh not Farebrother but .... oh Featherstone! So easy to mix 'em up. I had a bit of a panic there.

201-Cee-
dec 5, 2010, 7:17 pm

Ha! Gail you made me do a doubletake on that one! LOL I knew who you meant though.

But here's the thing... I couldn't remember the name "Featherstone". Ya know, dead and out of mind. hehehe "Featherstone" just didn't suit the grinch that he was!

I have to say I rather enjoyed the debate Dorothea had with herself over whether or not to agree to Casaubon's unstated request (just before his death). Her thinking was clear and inspired - but her misguided saintliness won out... almost.

202Donna828
Redigerat: dec 5, 2010, 11:17 pm

Regarding Becky's query somewhere above...I'm trying my best to catch up here and hang in with the group for the rest of the ride...but I'll totally understand if you want to forge on quickly to the end before we run into reading Middlemarch while Santa comes down the chimney looking for the cookies we didn't have time to bake. Whew, that's one long sentence.

I read 200 pp. in MM today and read and skimmed almost 100 posts so please forgive me if my comments are out of sync. A few general comments:

~ I've noticed through Books 4 and 5 that Dorothea's attitude toward her marriage is swiftly moving from idealism to duty, from pity to resentment while maintaining a wifely loyalty and even tenderness toward her husband. I think she rues the day she married 'Joe' but has a strong sense of finishing what she started. Maybe she thinks in the back of her mind that this bad choice of hers is her chance to do the "good" thing she wants to achieve in her life. I'm trying to have sympathy for her, but her idealism gets to me at times.

~ I think it's interesting that most of the quotes I liked enough to note have already been cited by others. Like minds think alike! Love, love, love Mrs. Cadwallader and her zingers. I found one from my favorite town gossip/biddy that I didn't see in the postings: (from Pt. 4, Ch. 38 She thinks Will Ladislaw should not be the editor of the Pioneer and that he should have been sent to India. "That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs."

~ Still in Pt. 4, Ch. 40. I loved the scene at the Garth's breakfast table. Perhaps it's because of the holiday season, but the Garth family reminds me of the Bob Cratchit family minus Tiny Tim. They are always so cheerful in their poverty!

~ Ch. 41...what's with all the frog faces? Eliot describes Will as being frog-faced in the beginning of Pt. 4, and now Mr. Rigg Featherstone is another frog face. Are they supposed to be related?

~ Pat, I agree there is much to think about in Ch. 42. I find myself feeling a bit of tenderness for Mr. C. myself! I need to check out the DVD again and catch up on my watching. It makes the story come even more alive for me.

~ Yes! I'm with you Claudia. This is a great story. I love all the analysis, but I'm reading it as a novel to get lost in. The comments from everyone have been so helpful pointing out things that I've missed. Thank you for hosting this group read, Becky and Lucy.

Edited to turn off bold print.

203alcottacre
dec 5, 2010, 11:19 pm

#199: Oh, I agree, Gail. That is the point I was trying to make. He could get away with something he had done, but Dorothea could not even have a suspicion of adultery hanging over her head.

204Donna828
dec 5, 2010, 11:35 pm

Continuing with a few comments on Book 5 and then I'll be ready to start in again with the rest of you. Sorry to be bringing up "old business."

~ In Ch. 45 Dr. Lydgate continues to alienate Middlemarchers with his thoughtless comments and his refusal to dispense drugs. Medical reform was tough even back in the 1800s! I think it's interesting that Will and Lydgate are becoming friends in Ch. 46 because of their political views and the fact that they are both newcomers facing suspicion among the locals.

~ I lost my sympathy for Mr. Casaubon (affectionately known here as Joe) with his selfishness in Ch. 48. He not only expects Dorothea to read to him if he awakens during the night (I'd not be as pleasant about that as she is!), but he tries to pressure her into carrying out his wishes after his death without her knowing what they are. All that worry and sleeplessness she had was for naught.

~ Favorite line from Ch. 52 when Fred professes his love for Mary: "If I had to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs." With Mary's pragmatism, it looks like we may have to call Fred "Peg Leg!"

~ Raffles is back with plenty of secrets. Looks like Bulstrode and Will Ladislaw are in for it! I'm ready to roll on Book Six. I learned my lesson and will stay current. Catch-up is brutal.

205sibylline
dec 6, 2010, 12:08 pm

Your 'old business' was timely and welcome, it helps fix the book in my mind to keep thinking about parts I've already read as I read on. I might post a little later today, but not ready yet.

206Matke
dec 6, 2010, 12:31 pm

Oh yes, of course "Featherstone" and not "Farebrother". Those were two characters, quite BTW, whose names almost seemed to be something out of Dickens.

I found Lydgate to be perhaps the most believable (arrogance of the logical mind) and still quite sympathetic (witness his kind treatment of anyone in trouble/fear/pain) of all the characters in the book, except Mrs. Cadwallader and maybe Mrs. Garth. Mary seems quite true to life, as well.

I thought Dorothea became a bit less saintly (gee, she annoyed me at the beginning of the book) as her illusions about her marriage disintegrated . The concept of "duty" was very strong in the Victorian era and it seemed to me that she was following that course (accepting that she'd made her bed and now must damned well lie in it, rocks and all). Although that last scene with Joe was kind of over the top, imo. It seems to be the weakest part of the book...almost the only weak part.

207BookAngel_a
dec 6, 2010, 1:50 pm

I'm still trying to figure out who in Middlemarch has an illegitimate child. Either I haven't gotten far enough in the book to find out, or I've missed something important in my reading - yikes!

208sibylline
dec 6, 2010, 5:48 pm

Mean old Featherstone did -- Joshua Rigg to whom he leaves Stone Court is his 'natural' son. (I don't think he ever married?)

And so, in the way of things, time moves on relentlessly. In Ch 54 Dorothea is in mourning, a bit stifled and restless at Beecham's fine house, The Grange, where it seems the main activity is admiring baby. She determines to move back to Lowick and prevails despite various objections. Will comes to see her before leaving, he has determined to become a lawyer. She assumes he knows about the will; he is determined not to appear to be a fortune hunter and they part, both miserable. "She had turned her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, which seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be away."

Ch 55 Wherein Dodo's mourning is relieved somewhat when Celia makes her remove her black cap.
- Dorothea comes to say goodnight to Celia and there is a scene worthy of Mary Cassatt: "Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life. I shall never marry again." said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin, and looking at her with indulgent affection. Celia was nursing her baby and Dorothea had come to say goodnight to her." I can just see Celia in some sort of robe and shawl arrangement, comfortable on a chaise or in bed in her room.... just a very intimate moment, quite special.
Ch56 Wherein Fred's career, finally, is determined. Caleb will take him on. I love the scene where Fred's abominable handwriting annoys Caleb and then this when Mr. Vincy tells Mrs. Vincy she needs to move on and accept that Fred will be working as an estate manager's assistant and will likely marry Mary: She promises to be in better spirits and then "roused by this appeal and adusting herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled plumage."

209BookAngel_a
dec 6, 2010, 7:22 pm

Oh, that was his son? I DID miss something then - I was remembering him as a nephew or something like that...whoops! Well, this goes to show how much more I would get out of this book if I re-read it someday...

210LizzieD
dec 7, 2010, 6:44 pm

I read a little this afternoon. I'd so love for *MM* to be my book #75, but Lavinia, at least, will sneak in ahead. It struck me today that GE has amazing insights into every kind of person I can think of. I guess that goes without saying, but really, not every writer among the greats can make that claim. Just saying.

211sibylline
dec 7, 2010, 6:51 pm

Very happy to see some activity here. I don't know why it is but the snow has sort of distracted me from reading today. Either staring out the window at it drifting down or out there in it coping or whatever.

I agree wholeheartedly with you Peggy! And I swear after dinner I am going to sit me down and read until I close my eyes.

212-Cee-
dec 7, 2010, 8:21 pm

Peggy,
"GE has amazing insights into every kind of person I can think of..."

And then some, I might add! This struck me about Eliot right away... and what makes this book so interesting, I think.

213BookAngel_a
dec 7, 2010, 8:56 pm

212- Yep, it's a good book for us nosy folk who like to get inside other people's heads and see what makes them tick, lol...

I admit to being very guilty of that!

214labwriter
dec 8, 2010, 6:19 am

Book VI, Chapt. LIV

Mrs. Cadwallader strikes again. This woman is hilarious. Dodo is leaving her sister's home to go back to Lowick, and all are concerned. Says Mrs. C, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that." Mrs. Cadwallader warns Dorothea against playing "tragedy queen" (371).

My DH had a great-aunt who was just like Mrs. C--full of advice that was actually pretty good, but always couched in the strangest ways. We laughed at her quite a bit behind her back, but now, almost 40 years later, what I wouldn't give to have her back for a day. We think we know it all when we're young, don't we?

215BookAngel_a
dec 8, 2010, 8:36 am

I think Mrs. Cadwallader is a hoot! And you're right - her advice usually has some truth to it.

I loved the hair shirt comment she made at the beginning of the book.

Just recently in my reading Celia made a comment that I found amusing - but now I can't find where it is. She said that it was good Dodo was a widow, because if she was married her husband wouldn't let her have any ideas. Amusing now, but sadly true in those times.

216Donna828
dec 8, 2010, 8:55 am

>214 labwriter:: I don't think Dorothea went 'mad' at Lowick but she was the queen of tragedy with these melancholy remarks to her short-lived prince Ladislaw when she tells him she will never forget him:

"My life has never been crowded and seems not likely to be so. And I have a great deal of space for memory at Lowick, haven't I?"

The scene becomes increasingly glum with Dodo's dispirited statement about sorrow coming in many ways. She "used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up." If it weren't for that "smiling playfully" description tacked onto the end, I would have been very worried about the state of D's mental health. It's hard to keep a good (and strong-spirited) woman down for long! Another example of Eliot's getting inside her character's head - as Peggy, Claudia, and Angela so aptly commented on upthread.

Like Lucy, I read until my eyes began to close last night. I made it through Chapter 58 when we begin to see the trouble that is brewing in the Lydgate household. No surprises there!

217sibylline
Redigerat: dec 8, 2010, 2:27 pm

I am so in agreement about Mrs. Cadwallader! I had a vision suddenly that she is a bit like 'the Greek chorus' always seeing a bit ahead of everyone else.

I'm where you are Donna --

57 - Fred has an alarming tete-a-tete with Mrs. Garth, who violates her 'women as subordinate' oath right left and center, tweaking the poor boy with the threat of Mr. Farebrother

58 -- storm clouds over the Lydgate household as 'Tertius' begins to realize what he is up against, a force -- not wind and weather, but water...... any chink and it will fill up and take over everything. Rosy's obstinancy being coupled with a sweet and 'neutral' demeanor, isn't something you 'get' but now he is 'getting' it indeed.

"Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly called his moodiness-a name which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupations with other subjects than herself."

An odd moment of insight comes after that -- how Lydgate had truly thought Rosy would support him in his medical quests -- and in that way is not so different from Casaubon, just in a much nicer package with greater abilities.

218BookAngel_a
dec 8, 2010, 2:39 pm

I feel sorry for Lydgate...sometimes...and then I don't!

219Matke
dec 8, 2010, 6:27 pm

As I think about the book, I'm struck by the fact that Chettam was so easily able to switch his affections from Dorothea to Celia, and that Dorothea and he become best friends. Of course that's probably where they should have been in the first place, but it strikes me that the sort of arranged marriage or marriage only within one's own social and financial set led to some tepid relationships, to say the least.

220labwriter
dec 9, 2010, 9:04 am

>217 sibylline:, Chapt. LVII.

I love the character of Mary Garth--really the entire Garth family. At the end of this chapter, Fred goes to Lowick parsonage where Mary is working to assist Mr. Farebrother. Farebrother quite smoothly gets Fred and Mary away from the Farebrother women and into a room where they can speak together alone. Mary is vexed at Fred for thinking that she might marry Mr. Farebrother. Mary is Rosamond’s opposite in every way, as when she says to him, “If you were not such a charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be to play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody besides you has made love to me” (400). This scene is the climax of Mary's drama, in which she makes the moral decision for Fred--constancy is a virtue, and people are worth more if we are loyal to them.

221sibylline
dec 9, 2010, 1:25 pm

So glad you mentioned that Becky! I think my summary was a bit too brief! On the other hand, that leaves space for everyone to jump in.

222labwriter
dec 9, 2010, 3:56 pm

>221 sibylline:. I can't seem to help myself--I have no idea why. Rather than yours being too brief, I'm quite sure my summaries were too long. Sib, you're doing a great job of pulling the wagon!

223-Cee-
dec 9, 2010, 8:07 pm

Becky and Lucy, You are both doing a great job. ANd I am loving this book - usually about 2 chapters behind you. Now that I have finished up a few books I needed to get done... maybe... I'll keep up or even forge ahead!

Love MM! and Eliot's writing! Thanks, ladies!

224labwriter
dec 9, 2010, 9:57 pm

Book VI, Chapt. LVIII

I just wanted to point out that Lydgate and wife Rosamond are in debt and finding it impossible to live on 1,000 pounds a year, while Fred Vincy is looking forward to a living of 80 pounds a year. The Lydgates, it would seem, are living absurdly beyond their means.

225alcottacre
dec 10, 2010, 12:58 am

#220: I think my favorite character in the book is Caleb Garth. I am like you, Becky, in really enjoying the Garth family.

#224: The Lydgates, it would seem, are living absurdly beyond their means.

And cannot seem to communicate with one another either.

226LizzieD
dec 10, 2010, 10:31 am

>224 labwriter:>225 The chapter that deals with Lydgate's attempt to apprise Rosamond of their financial situation is classic. Each one misinterprets the other's every word and action, and on top of that, Rosy "turns her neck" at the exact moment when she might have seen the depth of her husband's emotional turmoil. It's chapter LVIII, and I don't see how a married person can read it without some mixture of amusement and rue.

227BookAngel_a
dec 10, 2010, 2:46 pm

I'm almost finished! This book just gets better and better...

228sibylline
dec 10, 2010, 4:35 pm

Oh very very good everyone - and yes -- that chapter certainly resonates. What I like about it though is that both of them are hopeless. Lydgate's upbringing is never quite gone into, but clearly there was sufficient money around or goodwill towards him on the part of better-off rellies that his needs were met in such a way that he is oblivious to certain 'economies'

59. A little thickening of the plot here, as Fred, learning about the codicil about Will in the will (sorry, had to do that) relates it to his sister who relates it for pure mischief, bad girl, to Will who Freaks Out. Understandably.

60. There is a fine portrait of a local auction -- Trumbull presiding and Will in attendance as the local art 'expert'. BUT the plot swirling around Will takes a new twist when, as if Will wasn't enough disturbing news for Will, Raffles approaches him and professes to have met his father and his mother and hints at some shadiness in his mother's past..... As is usual with the plot thickening chapters there I marked little. When I first moved to VT in the 80's I attended some 'house' auctions that were not unlike the one described in Middlemarch -- including food. They were as much social events as anything. Plus the snoop factor. I have some mixing bowls from a 'mystery' box we bought for a dollar or two towards the end of one sale. They still have the family name on a label on the bottom from when, presumably, they went to covered dish events!

229LizzieD
dec 10, 2010, 11:24 pm

"a label on the bottom from when, presumably, they went to covered dish events!" I find that incredibly poignant. I must be up past my bedtime.

230labwriter
Redigerat: dec 11, 2010, 9:08 am

Book VI, Chapt. LVIII

>217 sibylline:, 224, 226.

I love Eliot's description of the truth about his wife that is starting to dawn on Lydgate:

"He was intensely miserable, this strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts. He was not saying angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the mistake was at work in him like a recognised chronic disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every thought" (408).

Sib, in #217 you compare the Lydgate marriage with the Casaubon. It's an interesting parallel, particularly noting how Dorothea and Lydgate both come to realize they've made a mistake--and then, what does their mistake cost each of them? Eliot seems to have let Dorothea off pretty lightly, killing off Casaubon. I have the impression that things aren't going to be quite so easy for Lydgate--??

Does anyone else find echoes of Vanity Fair in the character of Rosamond?

231sibylline
dec 11, 2010, 3:03 pm

Yes yes, great quote. -- Lydgate is not going to get let off -- but neither he nor Rosy are quite as far apart as D and C were -- there's is a more 'normal' divergence -- though I have no doubts it will end up being a disappointing marriage, I expect, that they'll have to live with.

Yes Becky and Rosy have a good deal in common, I was thinking that.

BTW I still go to 'covered dish' events -- of course we call the pot-lucks -- although Town Meeting day, everyone is expected to bring 'a covered dish' and there are a couple of other events, library fund-raiser things and so on, that are not called 'pot-lucks' -- that seems to be reserved for private as opposed to public parties. Anyhow, i have a few bowls and pans with our last name on the bottom on a piece of tape!!!!

232LizzieD
dec 11, 2010, 8:58 pm

I'm continuing to read about Tertius and Rosamond. I feel his frustration completely. How does the superior partner deal with an irrational, limited, selfish and self-righteous little person? Boy, is Lydgate not going to get let off!

233alcottacre
dec 11, 2010, 11:52 pm

I finished Book VI this morning and will pick up with Book VII tomorrow.

234sibylline
dec 12, 2010, 12:27 pm

I am also done with Book VI. Somewhere I am realizing I misunderstood something -- I swear Ladislaw stated that he was going to go up to London to study law.... but apparently not as somewhere along these last couple of chapters he remarks he will do whatever comes up....

Meanwhile Ch 61 - Bulstrode is now to pay for his ethical lapse in deciding to ignore the inheritance rights of his step-daughter - Eliot shows such a perception of the slow and devious ways an ordinarily good person with good intentions can convince themselves to be involved and to condone something against their beliefs. She says of him: "The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be coarse hypocrites who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process that shows itself occasionally in us all...." I do not think Eliot is being the least bit satirical here. But would such a defense hold up in civil court? I think not!

At any rate, in an effort to square things with Will, he reveals himself as Will's stepgrandfather and offers him money and inheritance. Will, being his impetuous self, spurns it all, spurns the suggestion of even the slightest connection with Bulstrode as it would harm what social standing he has. He, of course, knows why Bulstrode has come forward -- out of fear that Raffles will reveal all.

In the next chapter Will and Dorothea meet once again. This meeting is once again unsatisfactory and at cross-purposes, partly due to Will's pride and impetuousity and the rest due to Dorothea's strong emotion and the thought perhaps Will is speaking of Rosy as being the problem that kept him from leaving for two months, not herself..... However, once he is gone, she has a reversal of that worry and becomes utterly sure he was speaking of her. Some part of me found that switch a bit unsatisfactory -- a bit of an unearned shift that suited some purpose Eliot had of not leaving the reader in too much despair, or something.

Which led me to think about the fact that these stories, written in serial form, often have dramatic things happen at regular intervals that in a novel published all in one piece can dispense with -- things can build and build and come to a head all at once fairly far along in that case -- but the serial reader needs a constant sense of excitement and things moving along -- more like a soap opera, really. I felt that here. Different pacing, I guess. Also perhaps the reason why there is a need for several couples and a complex plot and intertwining, so that things can keep happening to different people..... That's enough out of me for today. On to Book Seven!

235BookAngel_a
dec 12, 2010, 12:45 pm

234- "However, once he is gone, she has a reversal of that worry and becomes utterly sure he was speaking of her. Some part of me found that switch a bit unsatisfactory -- a bit of an unearned shift that suited some purpose Eliot had of not leaving the reader in too much despair, or something. "

I can see what you mean. But I thought she changed her opinion and realized he loved her because of his last words to her as he walked out her door??

236sibylline
dec 12, 2010, 12:53 pm

Quite right, Yes, that makes some sense -- D. says, "I may have done you and injustice. Please remember me." (a little sob) To which Will replies (irritated) "Why should you say that? ...As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else." I guess I can buy that D. would not grasp the import of that remark immediately..... and yet, how convenient that she did not!

237phebj
dec 12, 2010, 3:38 pm

#234 Lucy, I just finished Chapter 54 where Will says to Dorothea (when he's come to Lowick to say goodbye): "I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public business." Could that be where you got the impression about going to London to study law?

238-Cee-
dec 12, 2010, 6:31 pm

I'm starting to really dislike Rosamund. I applaud a strong woman who can stand up to her husband and share the responsibilites... but this little twerp is quite devious. And now she is pining for Will? :P

The upbringing she and her brother have gotten has done neither of them any good. At least Fred is trying to make something of himself (pitiful chance he will succeed though) and seems to be less selfish.

Well, well! What a mess everyone is in ! Poor Dorothea. Poor Will. Poor Lydgate. Poor Rosamund. Poor Bulstrode.

239sibylline
Redigerat: dec 12, 2010, 7:09 pm

Pat -- that's it exactly! I know in England there are all these distinctions, barristers, lawyers and possibly one or two other law-ish levels ..... oh gosh, *trudges off to look it all up.* I'm assuming barrister is one of the quicker ones to pick up.

I'm back, quick as a wink with a link: barristers

The other type of British law person is the 'solicitor'.

Indeed Claudia, we are at some sort of novelish nadir.

I also keep meaning to mention that as Eliot herself was the daughter of an estate manager of course she has sympathies with the hard-working Garths. In Angela Thirkell's books the estate managers are always similar, very hard-working, good people, a bit put-upon by the toffs. Interesting -- so that was still enduring somewhat into the middle of the last century (!......! which is since that is about when I was born!)

240alcottacre
dec 12, 2010, 8:24 pm

#238: I do not like Bulstrode. I cannot possibly think of him as 'poor Bulstrode' :)

241BookAngel_a
dec 12, 2010, 9:21 pm

I finished it, and wrote my humble review. I'll paste my review here, as well as on my thread, and on the book's work page.

I tried very hard to give NO spoilers here.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

I have been wanting to read this classic for a long time, and thanks to the support of this group and everyone in our group read, I've finally done it.

Middlemarch is primarily the story of Dorothea Brooke - a woman who wants to make the world a better place at a time when women were not encouraged to have ideas outside of their own homes. This ardent desire leads her to make some poor choices, and some admirable ones.

This book is also a story about marriage. We see how Dorothea's marriage turns out - her sister Celia's marriage (Celia is the typical woman of her day), Rosamund's (the spoiled town beauty) marriage, and the marriage prospects of Mary Garth, a poor working girl.

The author helps us to get inside the minds of her characters, which helps us to decide if we like them or not, or if we've made similar choices too. Often I found myself sympathizing with a character I initially disliked, because I was helped to see their emotions.

It's very much a grown up book. If I had read this in my teens I would not have gained as much from the reading. There's no "and they lived happily ever after" here - Eliot keeps the story grounded.

If I had to sum up Middlemarch, I'd say Eliot gives us an inside view of the lives of women in her day. There's also quite a bit of political talk, helping us see what it must have been like to live in England while so much was starting to change.

For me, this book was just about perfect. One day I'd like to re-read it because I know there are some things I missed this time around.

242BookAngel_a
dec 12, 2010, 9:23 pm

Calling all Middlemarch experts - I have a question!

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT!!
.
.
.
.
.
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At the end of the book, who gets Casaubon's estate? Do we know? How did that work in those days?

243lauranav
dec 13, 2010, 8:56 am

I will eventually get to finish this book.

In the meantime, a book I had on hold at the library for months finally came in, The mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear. Just inside is a page with this great quote

"There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms."
--George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

244yolana
dec 13, 2010, 9:05 am

Hi everyone, I've been away from the thread as the season has been keeping me busy (violinists are alway slammed at the holidays and during the summer wedding season). I love all the points that everyone has been making.
#238 I agree with you about Rosamund. Earlier I thought that I could not dislike a character more than I disliked Casaubon but then I got to know her better. While every other character manages to deceive themselves and so I feel sorry for them she and Bulstrode are the only ones who go out of their way to deceive others as well

245phebj
dec 13, 2010, 9:27 am

#243 Laura, I love that quote. Thanks for posting it.

246labwriter
dec 13, 2010, 10:15 am

It's a busy time of year, so my time at LT is somewhat spotty, although I have been keeping up with the reading in MM.

I had something I wanted to say about Bulstrode, back in Book VI, Chapt. LXI.

>234 sibylline:. re: the quotation cited by Lucy: "The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be coarse hypocrites who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process that shows itself occasionally in us all...." I do not think Eliot is being the least bit satirical here. But would such a defense hold up in civil court? I think not!

Eliot may not have been satirical in her comment about hypocrites here, but I don't think we should therefore believe that she is at all sympathetic with Bulstrode and his behavior. Bulstrode was a hypocrite; yes, we are all of us at times hypocrites; however, Bulstrode isn't merely a hypocrite: he is thoroughly reprehensible. He wasn't just a part of Mr. Dunkirk's shady business deals; once Mr. Dunkirk died and Bulstrode married his widow, he carried on Dunkirk's business for another thirteen years: "he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the business, which was carried on thirteen years afterwards before it finally collapsed" (427).

I would submit that this business about Bulstrode is, at least partially, Eliot's commentary on the idea that organized religion isn't worth much, and that religious people are just as apt to be hypocritical as people who don't ascribe to organized religion. In his youth, Bulstrode was "an eminent though young member of a Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon" (425). He was "Brother Bulstrode" in prayer meetings: "He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality" (426). That without effort is the tipoff for me to Eliot's point of view in the argument here.

We've seen over and over Eliot's approval of characters in the book who work at freeing themselves from their own moral stupidity, as we witness in Dorothea: "We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves: Dorothea had early begun to emerge from that stupidity. . . ." (146). One of the major themes of the novel is seen in the characters who struggle towards their own better selves, and we see very little in the novel where this is happening with the aid of organized religion.

Well, I'm blathering on here. I'll just end by saying that, as usual, I'm of two minds at this point in the novel: I do believe that our Mr. Bulstrode, while shown to be a thoroughly "bad actor" here in chapter LXI, is also a worthy antogonist in this novel--certainly not a stock character like a Raffles, for example--someone who in his own imperfect way is trying to see himself as better than he is; however, he is judged harshly by Eliot as a selfish character for whom she feels (well, I almost wrote "nothing but," however, I'll just say "a great deal of") antipathy.

247labwriter
dec 13, 2010, 10:46 am

I didn't mean to ignore anyone--I see that I cross-posted with about 3 or 4 posts. It's great to see the activity here!

Hope you all are staying warm. I woke up to 6 degrees with 68% humidity (it's now warmed all the way up to 8 degrees). My house furnace is still off, my kerosene heater is still on, and my fingerless gloves are a marvel to use when typing at my computer. I simply can't believe the outrageous weather we've had here--Fall at the beginning was hot and dry, now towards the end it's bitchingly cold. If any of my new bushes/trees survive outside, it will be some sort of miracle. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those who are living on the edge in this terribly cold weather--either unable to afford to heat their homes, or to those who are homeless. This is a killing cold.

248yolana
dec 13, 2010, 11:05 am

She also seems to approve of characters who are more discreetly christian for lack of a better word. We have two very rich religious men like Bulstrode and Casaubon pointing out to everyone what great christians they are and trying to convert others to their point of view by any means they can while neither has a bone of true charity in their hearts and then we have the Garths, and Mr. Farebrother who relatively poor but exemplify religious values much more and in a quieter way. Eliot probably thought that divesting Dorothea of Casaubon's wealth was the greatest favor she could do for her.

249LizzieD
dec 13, 2010, 11:16 am

Good insights, Becky and Yolana (and I see that you're another Tar Heel! Really!!!) Bulstrode is a prime exemplar of what rationalization can do for a person. Especially since he doesn't have anybody who really knows him who can provide a spot of balance, he's off in his own fantasy world and will eventually have to deal with some reality, I'm sure. Actually, I know because I'm about to finish book 7 today.
(Becky, that quotation about "the world as an udder' is one of my favorites!)
And Yolana, I'm not sure about your question. I need to finish and think, but right now I'm guessing that Spoiler Alert


since it couldn't go to Ladislaw as his next of kin, he probably might have given it to his college or something like that. I'll be interested to see whether anybody knows.

250Donna828
dec 13, 2010, 11:19 am

>244 yolana:: Yolana, that was a good point about Rosamond and Mr. Bulstrode going out of their way to deceive others. I would try to avoid both of these people in real life.

>246 labwriter:: And yes, sadly, being a "religious" member of a church is meaningless as to what is in the heart, although I always maintain that church is a great place for us sinners to be!

I'm in cold Kansas City for a few days without Middlemarch. I've read through Book VI and will catch up with this week's reading when I return home. I may try to go ahead and finish it so I can concentrate on last-minute Christmas preparations next week. It looks like we will be traveling again starting on Christmas Day.

251labwriter
dec 13, 2010, 12:51 pm

New thread here.

252Jan7Smith
okt 10, 2018, 4:14 pm

Can someone recommend an edition of Middlemarch that has a text size and spacing that is less tiring for old eyes?

253rosalita
okt 10, 2018, 4:19 pm

>252 Jan7Smith: That's a great question! So many of the older classics cram the text into a mass-market paperback with tiny print, which isn't very user friendly. I wish I could help, but I read an ebook version. One of the things I love about my ereader is that I can adjust the type size and spacing to whatever is most comfortable for me at the moment. And virtually all of the classics like Middlemarch are in the public domain so free ebook versions are available for download from just about any ebook retailer. I don't know if that would be an option for you, but it's something to consider.

254Jan7Smith
okt 10, 2018, 4:35 pm

>253 rosalita: Thanks for your reply. I really would like to have a nice hardcover edition. I recently bought a beautiful 3 volume edition of Middlemarch but the text size is a little too small for my comfort. I find it hard to believe that the Limited Edition Club did not produce a Middlemarch edition. I think that would have been perfect for what I want.

255rosalita
okt 10, 2018, 4:48 pm

>254 Jan7Smith: Ah yes, I can totally understand that. I will keep an eye out and if I see a really nice one I'll make a note of the publisher for you!

256Jan7Smith
okt 10, 2018, 4:50 pm

>255 rosalita: Thank you!