Middlemarch

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, a novel by George Eliot, published 1871-2.

The scene is laid in the provincial town of Middlemarch, Loamshire, during the years of the agitation immediately preceding the first Reform Bill [1832]. It has a multiple plot, with several interlocking sets of characters. Dorothea Brooke, an ardent, intelligent, idealistic young woman, under the negligent though affordable care of her eccentric uncle, marries the elderly pedant Mr Casaubon, despite the doubts of her sister Celia, her neighbour and suitor Sir James Chettam (who later marries Celia), and Mrs Cadwallader, the rector's outspoken wife. The marriage proves intensely unhappy; Dorothea realizes during a disastrous honeymoon in Rome that Casaubon's scholarly plan to write a great work, a 'Key to all Mythologies', are doomed, as are her own aspirations to share and aid her husband's intellectual life, and her respect for him gradually turns to pity. She is sustained by the friendship of Casaubon's young cousin Will Ladislaw, a lively, light-hearted, goodnatured young man, detested by Casaubon, who begins to suspect that Dorothea's feelings for Ladislaw are questionable; his irritation is increased by the fact that he fears he has acted justly but not generously by his impoverished kinsman. Shortly before he dies,with characteristic meanness, he adds a codicil to his will by which Dorothea forfeits her fortune if she marries Ladislaw.

Meanwhile other threads have been added to the remarkably broad canvas of the novel. We follow the fortunes of Fred and Rosamund Vincy, son and daughter of the mayor of Middlemarch; the extrovert Fred, unsuitably destined to be a clergyman, is in love with his childhood sweetheart Mary Garth, a practical, shrewd young woman, daughter of Caleb Garth, a land agent. Mary, who at the opening of the novel is nursing her disagreeable and aged realtive Mr Featherstone, will not pledge herself to Fred unless he abandons his father's plan for him to enter the Church , and proves himself stable and self-sufficient. Rosamund, the town's beauty, sets herself to capture the ambitious, idealistic, and well-connected doctor Tertius Lydgate; she succeeds, and their marriage, wrecked by her selfishness, insensitivity, and materialism, proves as unhappy as the Casaubons'. Lydgate finds himself heavily in debt, and and against his better judgement borrows money from Mr Bulstrode, the mayor's brother-in-law, a religious hypocrite; Lydgate's career is ruined when he finds himself in a scandal concerning the death of Raffles, an unwelcome visitor from Bulstrode's shady past. Only Dorothea, now widowed, maintains faith in him, but she is severly shocked to find Ladislaw and Rosamund together in what seem to be compromising circumstances. Rosamund finally rises above self-interest to reveal that Ladislaw has remained faithful to the memory of Dorothea, though with no prospect of any happy outcome. Dorothea and Ladislow at last confess their love to one another; she renounces Casaubon's fortune and marries him. Fred, partly sobered by the spectacle of Lydgate's decline, and encouraged by Caleb Garth to enter his own prfoession, marries Mary, Lydgate is condemned to a successful and fashionable practice and dies at 50, his ambitions frustrated.

Through the histories of these characters, George Eliot analyses and comments upon the social and political upheavals of the period, contrasting the stauch Tory attitudes of Chettam and the Cadwalladers with the growing demand for Reform, somewhat unsatisfactorily espoused by Mr Brooke, more satisfactorily by Ladislaw, awho in the last chapter becomes 'an ardent public man' and a member of Parliament, with Dorothea's support. The importance of marital loyalty is also widely illustrated, not least in Mrs Bulstrode's support of her husband in his disgrace.

George Eliot's reputation reached its height with Middlemarch, despite some complaints that the action was slow or the tone didactic; H. James found faults in its organization, but concluded, 'It sets a limit . . . to the development of the old-fashioned English novel' (1874). Its status as one of the greatest works of English fiction was confirmed by Leavis (The Great Tradition, 1948), despite his doubts about the indulgent portrayal of Dorothea.


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Middlemarch: Online at Project Gutenberg

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And a TV adaptation by the BBC:

Middlemarch. Dir Anthony Page, Screenplay by Andrew Davies, based on George Eliot's novel. Cast: Rufus Sewell, Jonathan Firth, Juliet Aubrey, Robert Hardy, Peter Jeffrey, Caroline Harker. Prod, Louis Marks, BBC, 1994. Online at YouTube (LadyLewly):
    http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL27D3BC341FBEE65E&feature=plcp
    2012 DISCONTINUED


Episode 1 (restricted access) here: https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cvideo_work%7C3562505
 

Middlemarch (In Our Time):

 

George Eliot bibliography

 

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