THE WORLD OF MIDDLEMARCH
An examination of timelessness of George Eliot’s ‘Study of Provincial Life’, with particular reference to the ‘Three Love Problems’
‘All these people, solid and vivid in their varying degrees, are members of a deeply human little world, the full reflection of whose antique image is the great merit of these volumes. How bravely rounded a little world the author has made it – with how dense an atmosphere of interests and passions and loves and enmities and strivings and failings, and how motley a group of great folk and small, all after their kind, she has filled it, the reader must learn for himself.’
Henry James
Following her death,
George Eliot’s reputation suffered a decline – with critics accusing Middlemarch of being too analytical and reflective.
Virginia Woolf came to its defence in 1919, when she described it as, ‘one of the few English
novels written for grown-up people,’ and this is the view that I wish to defend. In Middlemarch, George Eliot has created a town that typifies
English towns of the time – indeed, not just of the time, but possibly all time. Each of the characters has their own differing
aspirations and grievances; different
ideologies and passions; and, perhaps most importantly of all, differing views of
morality and how to live one’s life. This is illustrated by the
stark contrast in the nature of the novel’s three main
romances: Dorothea Brooke and Will Ladislaw, Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, and Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy. Henry James criticises the novel for being, ‘a treasure house of detail but an indifferent whole,’ largely due to its being too
structured. However, I will argue that it is the superlative interweaving of
plots that makes Middlemarch so good – each
storyline could stand on its own but, as in the real world, we come to realise that everyone has an impact on another.
When Middlemarch was first published, between 1871-2, it was a time of enormous social and political upheaval. Set in the years preceding the
Reform Bill of
1832, and written following the second Reform Bill of
1867, the novel documents Mr Brooke’s failed attempt to stand for
Parliament, assisted by the ideological
reformist, Will Ladislaw. Eliot also comments on the
scientific advancements, embodied by Dr Lydgate, an ambitious young practitioner concerned with research and the establishment of a
fever hospital in the town. The introduction of
cholera to Britain, from
India, is also alluded to, as is the conflict between
church and
state – illustrated by the crisis within the
Church of England, regarding its
Catholic or
Protestant heritage and the
Catholic emancipation of 1829. By the time of its publication, Eliot was widely regarded as the greatest living English novelist, and it is easy to see why. Throughout Middlemarch there is evidence of
wit that would not be out of place in
Jane Austen, and yet she paints a
panorama more vivid and with greater depth than
Dickens. While
Bleak House provides a similar array of characters and inter-woven plots, it fails to encapsulate a world of its own so fully, as this ‘Study of
Provincial Life.’ However, Elisabeth Jay criticises Eliot for being,
a middle-class author writing for her peers in an era where domestic labour was cheap, plentiful and therefore always replaceable.
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She goes onto ask why Mary Garth’s servitude at Stone Court is painted so bleakly, when her time there was probably no worse than that of anyone else
below stairs. But this is to miss the point. Middlemarch is not a comment on society or social conditions of the time, so much, as society in general.
This is the novel’s great strength – its
timelessness. Her character analysis is so penetrating and her understanding of
humanity so acute that none of the novel’s main protagonists are restricted to time or place. In her portrayal of Dorothea, Will and Casaubon at Lowick one could easily be reading
Forster’s description of twenties England; in her description of Lydgate and Rosamond’s courtship one could be reading a novel of
Austen. That is because this is a novel about
emotions, morality and humanity, all
transcendent concepts – and this is never more insightful than in the depictions of the novel’s ‘romances’.
In Dorothea, Eliot presents us with an idealistic young woman, with a thirst for
knowledge and
understanding. She marries Casaubon out of a desire to aid his
scholarship and learning, but soon realises her mistake, and the chill that her husband places upon her desire to be of help. However, the sense of
tragedy is so much greater because Eliot gives us a sympathetic figure in Casaubon too. He may be uninspired, dry, and even
pretentious in his work – but it’s not just Dorothea who’s trapped in an unhappy marriage. The reader can sense his exasperation with his wife – the ‘total missing of each other’s mental track’ as Eliot later says of Lydgate and Rosamond. Perhaps he even feels guilty for ensnaring her in this disastrous relationship – in which emotion is so poorly expressed:
‘But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated.’
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The above quotation is reminiscent of Stevens, in
The Remains of the Day, for its verbosity, more in keeping with a legal document than a love letter or proposal of marriage. Even his jealousy is poorly expressed, in a series of slight actions: firstly refusing to allow Will to stay at Lowick, and then the codicil, in which Casaubon pathetically strikes out against his wife and cousin in death. However, this is a tragedy that Dorothea must endure, for her ‘short-sighted belief … that knowing
Latin,
Greek or
Hebrew would transform her view of the world.’
Dorothea is then saved, or spoiled further, depending upon your critical viewpoint, by her relationship with Will Ladislaw. Most critics seem to agree that Will is a poorly realised creation; lacking ‘sharpness of outline and depth of colour’ , whilst
artistic, idealistic,
sensitive and sometimes charming he can also be sulky, impetuous, tactless and something of a
dilettante. However, he is vital in terms of Dorothea realising the passion and
sexuality that she has tried to deny. Her world is one of
sacrifices:
devotion and
piety, not love and pursuit of self-happiness.
She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure.
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She colours in meetings with Will, feels inexplicably guilty about asking him to stay before consulting her husband; she even denies her obvious feelings of jealousy when she walks in on Will and Rosamond in a compromising position. Dorothea, therefore, has an unrealised romantic streak – which she tries to refute through her idealistic workings and desire for
reform. The problem with Dorothea, according to Graham Handley is not that she is too good to be true, ‘rather she is too true to be effectively good.’ It is only when she casts off this shroud of piety and acknowledges the passion that lies underneath that she is able to move on – accepting the
happiness that is rightfully hers and become useful to those around her. Perhaps
D. H. Lawrence’s statement is never more true than when applied to Miss Brooke: ‘I am what I am, not merely what I think I am.’
If Dorothea personifies what it is to be idealistic, striving for academic and spiritual enlightenment, Mary Garth and Fred Vincy personify the
grounded human, with
modest desires. While Dorothea and Will appear to be seeking a grand
remuneration from life, Fred and Mary appear content solely with the happiness they can find in each other. Friends since
childhood, theirs is a wholesome relationship – based almost entirely upon devotion to each other.
‘I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known-ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl,’ (pondered Fred).
‘Let me see,’ said Mary, the corners of her mouth curling archly; ‘I must go back on my experience. There is Juliet – she seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a long while …’
… as (Fred) had grown from boy to man, he had grown in love with his old playmate, notwithstanding that share in the higher education of the country which had exalted his views of rank and income.’
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I disagree with Henry James’ view that, ‘to the end we care less about Fred Vincy than appears to be expected of us.’ He lacks the artistic pretensions of Ladislaw, and the scientific pretensions of Lydgate. He is
honest and true, even if he is a little misguided. We warm to him as, naïvely, he aims to pay off his debts by:
(metamorphosing) a horse worth forty pounds into a horse that would fetch a hundred at any moment – ‘judgement’ being always equivalent to an unspecified sum in hard cash.
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There is something inherently good about Fred, illustrated by his intervention when Lydgate is gambling and also in his unswerving love for Mary. She, in her turn, is honest, moral and has real
integrity. She refuses to concede to Featherstone’s last request to burn his second
will, in spite of a bribe, and her decision is ultimately to Fred’s cost. The Garths and Vincys, meanwhile, are portraits of two very different families. The Vincys appear concerned with the material and their place in the
class structure. Mr Vincy and his dealings with Bulstrode encapsulate the small-scale politics, in comparison with the backdrop of Reform. The Garths, on the other hand, represent an honest, hard-working family – more concerned with the morality of an action than its monetary
profit. They may be miniatures, but they further the idea that Middlemarch is as much a landscape of humanity, as it is of a Midlands town.
The final relationship of great importance is that between Rosamond Vincy and Tertius Lydgate. In Rosamond we are presented with a
vain, materialistic girl – obsessed with social climbing, an embodiment of Eliot’s belief that a fountain’s height is dependent upon its source. She ‘works’ Lydgate with her womanly
charm and expects a certain
standard of living, to which she should not be denied. She is an expert
manipulator, but still a character that Eliot paints sympathetically. As a result of the
industrial and transportation upheaval of the time, Rosamond can be given no
dowry by her father at the time of her marriage; her union with Lydgate has a bad effect upon her – and we feel her pain deeply at the novel’s end, when Dorothea comes to comfort her. Her husband, meanwhile, is seen as the real
hero of the book. James describes him as manly. While Ladislaw is dismissed as a ‘woman’s man’, Lydgate is ‘powerful, ambitious, sagacious,’ with the minimum of
egotism. However, he has faults, most expressly observed in his choice of wife:
Lydgate’s spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble intention and sympathy, were half of them as such found in ordinary men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardour, did not penetrate his feeling and judgement about furniture, or women …
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While he is an intellectual, a
pioneer breaking the boundaries of science, he is also a
snob – while it is Rosamond who pushes for a house above their means, and insists upon the extravagant furnishings, Lydgate does little to resist – he positively indulges her, believing that a man of his standing deserves no less. He desires a wife who can play the piano and make a good hostess, but merely as the backdrop to his
medicine – he and Dorothea are alike in that sense, that marriage for them is never the precedent aspiration that it is for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth. While Dorothea moves on, however, Lydgate is destined for a tragic end. James believes that the domestic scenes between Rosamond and her husband to be some of the finest writing in
English literature. The dialogue is short but perceptive, cutting to the quick of their relationships dilemma. In the end we are left in no doubt that ‘she had mastered him.’ Ultimately Rosamond gets the fashionable world she desires, at the expense of Lydgate’s intellectual ideals and medical ambitions:
He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place; having written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth on its side.
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With Middlemarch George Eliot creates a landscape populated with an array of characters. At the time it provided a witty and insightful commentary upon life in provincial England, during the
Industrial Revolution and the
Great Reform Bills. However, it goes far beyond that – providing an intuitive analysis of character and humanity. The politics of the time may be documented in history, but the petty politics of the fever hospital and town’s tradesman is just as relevant and telling today. The population transcend their time, full as they are ‘of interests and passions and loves and enmities and strivings and failings’. Eliot’s
humanist beliefs are also evident, as she describes our ability to see what we wish to see in life, but perhaps also the fact that our own
perceptions of the world around us are not really false, if there is no
objective truth there at all:
Your pier glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles around that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection.
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Therefore this novel, far from being over analytical, extrapolates our view of the world, and its objective truths by examining humanity from many of its aspects. It is this that makes Middlemarch a timeless work of literature, as well as a truly grown-up novel.