Four Novels: Adam Bede / Middlemarch / The Mill on the Floss / Silas Marner

by George Eliot

Adam Bede was George Eliot's first full-length novel. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the eighteenth century, the book tells a story of seduction, and is also a pioneering record of a long lost rural world.
Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate, illuminating the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century. The Mill on the Floss is a masterpiece of ambiguity in which moral choice is subjected to the hypocrisy of the Victorian age. Maggie Tulliver's love for her brother Tom turns to conflict. His bourgeois standards contrasting with her own lively intelligence, and the result, is tragedy. Silas Marner tells the tender and moving story of the unjustly exiled linen weaver, Silas Marner of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England. It tells of how he is restored to life and his sadness ended by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie.

Genres: Classics, Fiction

1421 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 1998

About the author

Mary 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.

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mill on The Floss by George Eliot – the author has five works on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, Middlemarch, Silas Marner and hundreds of other opera are reviewed on my blog, where the best take might be this one https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...



9 out of 10

The Mill on the Floss is 357th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, while Middlemarch https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is near the top, at 24th, and a naughty thought crossed my mind – it could be because the latter has a happy ending, while the former is a tragedy

Tom and Maggie Tulliver are the main characters in this novel, albeit Maggie would be the favorite and her brother, Tom, plays the negative role, for quite some time, if we look at the story, published in 1860, using our own standards, if we try to put things in perspective, the sibling shared his harsh views with the people of his period
Their father tries to send Tom to have a good education, and that is the opening of the plot, he does not want his son to take ‘away’ his occupation and farm, while at this stage, Maggie is only nine, and although she loves her brother, the two appear to spar over some matters, and they would eventually clash fiercely

Tom is indeed sent to get a good education, and this is where he encounters Philip Wakem, an impressive young man, intelligent, but with a deformity that makes him unsuitable in the eyes of most of the hoi polloi, young Tulliver included, this is the main reason why he would get so infuriated with his sister
Maggie and Philip have feelings for each other, in her case I venture to say that she is kind to the hunchback, more like Dorothea was in Middlemarch towards the reverend, it would be more of a platonic inclination, though I could be mistaken, but seeing the way things progress, that might be the explanation

Dorothea chose to give herself to this obnoxious reverend, in awe of his supposed nobility of spirit (a false assumption) while Maggie, compassionate and munificent, feels that this appreciation of the noble Philip is actually love, and when her sibling finds out, a storm is coming down, because Tom is against this
I am now thinking that were they to marry, perhaps Maggie and Philip would have been happy together – let us refer to the classic of psychology The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... by John Gottman

Nevertheless, we reach a nadir when her father and Mr. Wakem have a business dispute, the former is ruined, and attacks the other, nearly killing him, this is Romeo and Juliet now, to some measure, notwithstanding the course events take – cousin Lucy Deane has a romantic affair with Stephen Guest, rich and handsome
They are assumed to become married soon, but when Stephen sees the tall, dark Maggie, he is enraptured, even if he claims ‘she is too tall’, and whether this is love or infatuation, sexual attraction maybe, I do not know, but the result is overwhelming, and the opposite of Middlemarch, where the villain dies…

Leaving open the door for the widow to find happiness in her love, here, we have the attitudes of society, they called ‘lover’ not one who consumed the attraction, and it was anathema to have coitus before, or outside marriage, at least when the community was aware, or just suspicious, as in this particular case
Thinking that maybe somebody reads here, it could be a situation where they look at the first and last lines, a spoiler will be avoided, I will just say that it is tragic that we have this ending, on the one hand, but on the other, this is what happens in life


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Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have never read Middlemarch before, and I was thoroughly caught up in her wisdom and her very striking characterizations of different kinds of marriages. Also, the analysis of different characters' choices with regard to that age-old question: What do I do for work that engages my mind and makes a real difference in the world. There were some great quotable lines in this book that I would love to always remember, but won't.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Eliot rules the fascinating and selective world between Victorian fantasy and true modernism, and Middlemarch is one shining example of her expertise.

[Sdprince · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silas Marner and Middlemarch are terrific. The Mill on the Floss is very good, but depressing as hell. Adam Bede is above-average.