I finally finished this book. I think it took me upwards of 6 months. It’s long. And it’s not really that fast-moving.<\/p>\n
I did care about the characters though.<\/p>\n
But the real reason I persevered is because my Victorian lit teacher said that Middlemarch <\/em>is Elliot’s quintessential book. I had read Mill On the Floss<\/em> in his class and truly enjoyed it. He said he would have liked to have us read Middlemarch<\/em>, but it was too long to read for the class. We were already reading a lot of other books.<\/p>\n When I finished Middlemarch<\/em>, I really wished that I had read in it a class. It seems to me that there was a lot going on, and that I would have been better able to understand it if I’d had some people to talk it out with.<\/p>\n I especially thought that the ladies in the book were interesting archetypes. This was not a book about one female heroine. Or even one male hero. There were a lot of stories of different people who chose to live their lives in different ways.<\/p>\n Dorothea is the most interesting character. But Mary Garth is very sympathetic, and Rosamond had promise. Celia, Dorothea’s sister, could have gone either way. She ended up being a little too good a fit for the mold of society. That made her much less interesting.<\/p>\n But she had no desire to be interesting.<\/p>\n Well, in the absence of a class discussion, I looked up some websites to see what others had to say. Here <\/a>is one website’s list of major themes.<\/p>\n But the specific treatment of the women on the book was lacking.<\/p>\n Too bad. I guess nothing really takes the place of free discussion.<\/p>\n I think, right now, that I liked Mill on the Floss<\/em> much better. But maybe Middlemarch <\/em>will grow on me with time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I finally finished this book. I think it took me upwards of 6 months. It’s long. And it’s not really that fast-moving. I did care about the characters though. But the real reason I persevered is because my Victorian lit … Continue reading