Middlemarch

William Morris design, 19th century

By George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. with notes by David Carroll, with intro. by Felicia Bonaparte, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 810.

Ooof!  This is my second time reading Middlemarch, and while I developed a richer appreciation of Eliot's storytelling, it is still almost unbearably ponderous.  This history of provincial life is set in a fictitious Midlands town during the 1830s.  The plot centers around three relationships: first, beautiful Dorothea Brooke marries an unhappy pedant Edward Casaubon and upon his death finds contentment with the artist Ladislaw.  Second, pretty spendthrift Rosamond Vincy marries the ambitious doctor Lydgate.  Third, Fred Vancy falls in love with his childhood sweetheart, Mary Garth.

What does it mean to seriously consider a great work of art and miss out on the glory?  This is a good book.  The characters unfold and grow throughout the story (rather than in Dickens where the essence of a character is fixed), and the protagonists grapple with the Reform Law and other Big Ideas in the Victorian era.  Yet, wisdom comes at the price of lugubriousness, and Eliot's humor is overplayed by her fans.  Yawn.