What do you think?
Rate this book
Middlemarch (3 volumes) #2
Middlemarch, Volume 2
Volume: 2 Publisher: Edinburgh Blackwood Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.
- GenresClassics
464 pages, Paperback
Published February 13, 2009
8 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
George Eliot
3,122 books4,919 followersMary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 5, 2021
The title of this book is a direct allusion to the beginning of Paradise Lost:
Sing Heav'nly Muse...I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
In Eliot's hands the heavenly flight becomes a terrestrial march, a curious mixture of cosmogonic ambition and Victorian modesty. But that is precisely the point. Ten years before Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, here is a vision of life in a world in which all we human beings have is each other, one of the few greatest literary expressions of secular humanism.
George Eliot herself was a devout secularist. She translated Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and David Strauss's pioneering study of the historical Jesus into English, and when she died she was buried in the section of Highgate Cemetery reserved for atheists and agnostics, where Karl Marx is also buried.
Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols criticized Eliot for clinging to Christian morality even as she rejected Christian theology. But I'm not so sure about that. Nietzsche was a weirdo loner who, for all his wisdom, did not understand inter-human relationships. The lesson of Middlemarch seems to me to be that, in the absence of divine grace, the only salvation we can find is in each other. The emotional climax of the novel is the scene near the end between Dorothea and Rosamund in which the latter, her narcissistic self-identity having been shattered by her earlier encounter with Will, is restored to something like wholeness by Dorothea's kindness. Eliot seems to be saying: There is no God, but as long as the world has people like Dorothea in it, we are going to be okay.
People's objections to Dorothea's ultimate marriage to Will on the grounds that she is too good for him are perhaps true but also miss the point. The point is that she loves him, and he loves her, and they are happy together, and that's all that matters. Dorothea is introduced as a deeply religious young woman, but we can see that her religion is little more than a scaffolding to give structure and expression to her ardent nature. It is this last that is the true essence of her character, and the story of Dorothea is the story of that essence learning to emancipate itself from its principled illusions about what would give it the truest expression. I don't know if Nietzsche read all of Middlemarch, but his dismissal of it is unfair. The greatness of Dorothea lies not in her faith or her morality or her principles but in the geothermal energy of her inborn ardor, in her utterly, helplessly genuine urge to throw herself away - her "self-squandering spirit," as the man himself would say. In this she is indeed a vessel for the Will to Power.
I first tried reading Middlemarch when I was 22. I only got about 200 pages into it. I remember liking and identifying with Will Ladislaw. If I had read further, I might have realized that, at least at the time, I was a lot more like Fred Vincy. Reading it all the way through now at the age of 34 I find Ladislaw as appealing as ever, but slightly underdrawn, a little too perfect even with his admitted flaws. Everything comes a little too easily to him. In her treatment of her curly-haired hero she perhaps betrays a hint of that indulgent, maternal fondness that middle-aged women often have for charming young men.
Regardless, my ultimate appraisal of this towering monolith of literature is: believe the hype. In fact, I believe this book has never been more timely. In this age of impatience and close-mindedness, when we are as quick to judge others as we are unable or unwilling to look to our own selves, there is no better book to remind us of that quivering jello-mold of feelings and thoughts, prejudices and expectations, that lie behind the placid facade of every human face.
I highly recommend the free Librivox audio version, read by Margaret Espaillat: https://librivox.org/middlemarch-vers...
Sing Heav'nly Muse...I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
In Eliot's hands the heavenly flight becomes a terrestrial march, a curious mixture of cosmogonic ambition and Victorian modesty. But that is precisely the point. Ten years before Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, here is a vision of life in a world in which all we human beings have is each other, one of the few greatest literary expressions of secular humanism.
George Eliot herself was a devout secularist. She translated Ludwig Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity and David Strauss's pioneering study of the historical Jesus into English, and when she died she was buried in the section of Highgate Cemetery reserved for atheists and agnostics, where Karl Marx is also buried.
Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols criticized Eliot for clinging to Christian morality even as she rejected Christian theology. But I'm not so sure about that. Nietzsche was a weirdo loner who, for all his wisdom, did not understand inter-human relationships. The lesson of Middlemarch seems to me to be that, in the absence of divine grace, the only salvation we can find is in each other. The emotional climax of the novel is the scene near the end between Dorothea and Rosamund in which the latter, her narcissistic self-identity having been shattered by her earlier encounter with Will, is restored to something like wholeness by Dorothea's kindness. Eliot seems to be saying: There is no God, but as long as the world has people like Dorothea in it, we are going to be okay.
People's objections to Dorothea's ultimate marriage to Will on the grounds that she is too good for him are perhaps true but also miss the point. The point is that she loves him, and he loves her, and they are happy together, and that's all that matters. Dorothea is introduced as a deeply religious young woman, but we can see that her religion is little more than a scaffolding to give structure and expression to her ardent nature. It is this last that is the true essence of her character, and the story of Dorothea is the story of that essence learning to emancipate itself from its principled illusions about what would give it the truest expression. I don't know if Nietzsche read all of Middlemarch, but his dismissal of it is unfair. The greatness of Dorothea lies not in her faith or her morality or her principles but in the geothermal energy of her inborn ardor, in her utterly, helplessly genuine urge to throw herself away - her "self-squandering spirit," as the man himself would say. In this she is indeed a vessel for the Will to Power.
I first tried reading Middlemarch when I was 22. I only got about 200 pages into it. I remember liking and identifying with Will Ladislaw. If I had read further, I might have realized that, at least at the time, I was a lot more like Fred Vincy. Reading it all the way through now at the age of 34 I find Ladislaw as appealing as ever, but slightly underdrawn, a little too perfect even with his admitted flaws. Everything comes a little too easily to him. In her treatment of her curly-haired hero she perhaps betrays a hint of that indulgent, maternal fondness that middle-aged women often have for charming young men.
Regardless, my ultimate appraisal of this towering monolith of literature is: believe the hype. In fact, I believe this book has never been more timely. In this age of impatience and close-mindedness, when we are as quick to judge others as we are unable or unwilling to look to our own selves, there is no better book to remind us of that quivering jello-mold of feelings and thoughts, prejudices and expectations, that lie behind the placid facade of every human face.
I highly recommend the free Librivox audio version, read by Margaret Espaillat: https://librivox.org/middlemarch-vers...
February 29, 2012
Incredibly wonderful novel! The numerous plots were deftly handled and intertwined, but I found the most impressive element to be the depth and complexity of her characters. Lots of social and moral dilemmas -- no preachiness, no simple answers. But lots of humor and lots of pathos. One dimensional characters need not apply here! A simply great book.
It's a terrible thing, I believe, to teach Silas Marner to 10th graders, as was the case at my high school. Put us off Eliot completely. I don't think Eliot is for most youngsters. Ply 'em with Dickens instead.
It's a terrible thing, I believe, to teach Silas Marner to 10th graders, as was the case at my high school. Put us off Eliot completely. I don't think Eliot is for most youngsters. Ply 'em with Dickens instead.
March 16, 2012
Everyone should have a Dorothea Causabon in their life. (Not everyone deserves one, but neither did Mr. Causabon.)
April 16, 2012
Really long. Wouldn't really recommend it to anyone that I know.
June 21, 2012
Great classic!
April 4, 2012
I'm glad I read it, but wouldn't again.
April 22, 2012
Whew. It took me 3 months to finish it, but finish it I did. The author is long winded,but her characters are brilliant. Brilliant portrayal of British society. Glad I read it,
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews