Ian’s Reviews > Middlemarch > Status Update

“Yes dear, a great many things have happened.”
“I wonder what,” said Celia.
“Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth,” said Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of her head.
“Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for them?” said Celia, a little uneasy at this Hamlet-like raving.

“There are episodes in most men’s lives in which their highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill their inward vision: Lydgate’s tender-heartedness was present just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an emotion that swayed him to tenderness.”
And then on the next page she pulls this off. So articulate about what goes on in the mind, damn.

“‘Why can’t you think it your duty to submit a little to what James wishes?’ said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument. [J is her husband.] ‘Because he only wishes what is for your own good. And of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.’”

Funny little moments reminiscent of P&P sprinkled throughout this novel.

“Full souls are double mirrors, making still an endless vista of fair things before, repeating things behind.”

Another thing I appreciate about Middlemarch is that in contrast to Great Expectations, Bleak House, etc., novels that develop out from a central mystery or intrigue or conflict and maintain that focus, there is a little more play in the joints here. Feels more like the real world. I have a sense of some things I would like to have happen with the end of this story, but I can’t say what will…