Middlemarch. George Eliot.

Middlemarch (1871/72).
George Eliot
New York: Book-of-the-Month Club. 1992.


Why read it? The theme of this novel is the loss of idealism, first by Dorothea, who is disillusioned to find that her husband is a desiccated scholar, a scholar whose work is a waste of time. The second loss of idealism occurs with Dr. Lydgate, a physician. The lost idealism of Dr. Lydgate is probably true of many physicians today.

A single quote from the novel summarizes George Eliot's theme: "For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them in much the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little and the story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be picked by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness, for perhaps their ardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves."

What does that quote mean to me? We lose our idealism because we lose the desire to achieve for the sake of the achievement. Instead, we seek the achievement for fame, wealth or power.

Novel with a double plot interest. The heroine, Dorothea Brooke, longs to devote herself to some great cause and, for a time, expects to find it in her marriage to Rev. Mr. Casaubon, an aging scholar. Mr. Casaubon lives only eighteen months after their marriage, a sufficient period to disillusion her completely. He leaves her his estate, with the ill-intentioned proviso that she will forfeit it if she marries his young cousin Will Ladislaw, whom she had seen frequently in Rome.

Endeavoring to find happiness without Ladislaw, whom she has come to care for deeply, Dorothea throws herself into the struggle for medical reforms advocated by the young Dr. Lydgate. Finally, however, she decides to give up her property and marry Ladislaw.

The second plot deals with the efforts and failure of Dr. Lydgate to live up to his early ideals. Handicapped by financial difficulties, brought about by his marriage to the selfish and ambitious Rosamond Vincy, and by the opposition of his medical associates, he drifts into cultivating a wealthy practice at the expense of his medical standards.

There is a subplot dealing with the love affair of Rosamond's brother Fred Vincy and Mary Garth, the daughter of Caleb Garth, the builder.

An unprecedentedly full study of the life of a provincial town, focused on the thwarted idealism of George Eliot's two principal characters.