middlemarch

i managed a lovely wee quarter hour yesterday meeting up with a friend of my to, initially, have a chat about middlemarch. she's way younger than me and hadn't read middlemarch before. me, i'm old, antisocial (see previous post!), and i'd read middlemarch after a gap of 7 years or so. i was surprised that the middlemarch i read this time seemed much more open, characters that used to be feel sympathetic (i'm looking at you dorothea!), characters that didn't (arthur brooke and even, to a certain extent, poor old causabon), and so different from what my friend had read. what a lovely experience to be able to share different perspectives!

i'd shy away from any attempt of what defines a classic. but i think there's something that speaks to humanity. both of us liked how the characters, despite being fictional, despite the gulf of time, were instantly recognisable and identifiable. here's rebecca mead talking about this sort of thing in the new yorker

 

middlemarch

i got a beautiful folio society copy of middlemarch (it's the same one as in the vid) this week as part of a wee indulgence where i buy lovely reading copies of my favourite books to see me in my dotage. i'm on a classic literature discussion group and middlemarch has evinced a variety of views some number of which focus on the perceived difficulty of the text. i don't share this view though i can see why people might think that. as ever the internet has a video for that and here it is. there's a bunch of good essay writing on middlemarch (or, if you prefer, some funny writing on why people hate middlemarch) online and, in my opinion, it's a great jumping off point for some contextual reading - the reform act etc

on seaweeds

 

this rather lovely public domain review essay on seaweed collecting in the 19th century and the lost world of algology. anna atkins appears, of course, but a rather nice piece of george eliot trivia also.

george eliot

trapped in the house by rain, had enough of fixing bikes, waiting for paint to dry i'm thinking to myself that i've reached that nineteenth century time of the year again, time to read a zola or a dickens, then as if by magic i come across an excerpt from middlemarch on the radio...

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

i couldn't have read it when i was younger, didn't have the patience, didn't have the insight but, something like dickens (though i prefer eliot), i did realise that i probably would do later in life and it'd be worth the wait which, of course it was. i hear there arethose who haven't read it, who consider it long winded, boring etc. in the words of that great lost critic mr t - i pity the fool!