elle's Reviews > Middlemarch

"but what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."

middlemarch is a behemoth book at almost 1000 pages. but it’s a book that grows with you.

i see a lot of people love and rave about jane austen and the bronte sisters (as do i), but i seldom see anyone talk about the masterpiece that is george eliot’s middlemarch.

middlemarch is one of those books that you just know you’ll be going back to time and again, the ones you want to fill the margins with annotations. the ones you want to write over your old ones with new ones because you know your perspective will change over time as the words grow up with you.

there is no big plot in this book - it is simply a portrayal of provincial life in the victorian age. the magic, ironically, lies in its mundanity and dullness.

the characters are so real and so human, and we as readers grow with them over the course of nine hundred something pages. it is a masterclass in empathetic and sympathetic portrayal of characters. while it does not have a dramatic flair like austen’s novels, middlemarch’s beauty lies in its subleties and mundanities of ordinary life.

when i was done with middlemarch, it filled me with an odd feeling of melancholy. like it had made me hopeless and hopeful at the same time. such is the nature of human emotions, but this is what makes the novel so timeless. we get access to the characters’ introspection but we also view them from other character’s perspectives. this sort of intimate connection with the characters allows us to care deeply for them by the end.

eliot shows the scene of victorian england through the people of this small town. it paints such a beautiful parallel that this fictional book can almost serve as a historical marker for this era.

middlemarch is filled with questions of what it is to love and what it is to live with and for someone else. it’s packed with political criticism, ordinary financial struggles, romantic lines that made my heart hurt, sarcastic humor, and a strong authorial voice.

in thirty years, i hope to see the same copy of middlemarch on my shelf - a bit frazzled, flowing to the brim with annotations, and with a record of my life the same way eliot recorded the lives of these characters.

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ok i completely fell off the radar for the daily updates because i was stupidly busy this month (i'm so so sorry emma i hope you still love me) BUT i am done!!

and holy shit holy shit holy shit what a MASTERPIECE. i am literally underqualified to write a review for this. but alas, review to come in a few days.

for everyone scared of reading this because of the length: don't let the length deter you!! deciding to read this was the best decision i made this month.

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the start of a month long experiment where emma and i peer pressure each other into reading three chapters a day and see how far we get.

day 1 [chapters 1-3]: three chapters in. so far, i'm pleasantly surprised. the description & narrative aren't redundant and the readability is not as hard as i thought it would be. stay tuned to see if this remains true.

day 2 [chapters 4-6]: i kind of wish i had read this book in college because of how much i want to analyze and discuss every little element. i love how different dorothea and celia are and how well politics/commentary about gender roles are woven in. can't believe i like this so much?

day 3 [chapters 7-9]: weirdly this feels more modern than jane austen books. like, all the very intense descriptions + 'classic' elements are there, but it reads so nicely. also. the way age + gender & its intersections are explored? love it.

day 4 [chapters 10-12]: celia vs dorothea and will vs casauborn is super interesting? also. rosamond !!!

day 5 [chapters 13-15]: lydgate is so idealistic it hurts but also...i'm tired of him. also, literally fuck featherstone. also lydgate wanting a "strictly scientific view of women" lmao

day 6 [chapters 16-18]: i love the weird political microcosm in Middlemarch and the pro/anti reform. also also also rosamund: "it was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank."

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emma and i decided to read this in march because reading middlemarch in march is poetic and nice.

what's not nice is the fact that this book is 918 pages.