Middlemarch

[coalescent]

An extraordinary novel in many ways, one of which is the way in which I think this, from Rosemary Ashton's introduction to the current Penguin Classic edition, is dead wrong:
We have seen that Lydgate's own ideal of womanhood is damagingly limited and egotistical. So too is Casaubon's ... Yet there is some authorial ambivalence here. Just as, while

Comments

[immortalradical]

I think you're right - there is a sort of 'warm chicken soup' feeling to Middlemarch, and this is encouraged by the qualities of the voice (which, again, we agree is the principal attraction of the novel). I think it'd be massively perverse to call this a vice, though: Eliot chose to elaborate upon her theme of our own unknowability to each other through her narrative, not style. The voice is perfectly suited to this approach.

I do, by the way, see some of the ambivalence referred to by Ashton: Middlemarch is a book which, as you point out, praises Dorothea for her imaginative sympathy ... but it is also acutely aware of its costs. The ambivalence lies, I think, in the space between the moral imperative of trying to imagine oneself into another's shoes, and the, for want of a less bald phrase, practical use of doing so.

Really pleased you enjoyed the book. :)

[coalescent]

I think it'd be massively perverse to call this a vice, though

Yeah, I can't get on my full MJH-style ideologue about it, it's true. But I'd want to pin down a bit more where you see the distinctions between "narrative", "style" and "voice" before agreeing with you.

The ambivalence lies, I think, in the space between the moral imperative of trying to imagine oneself into another's shoes, and the, for want of a less bald phrase, practical use of doing so.

I can get on board with that, although I think there's a finger on the scales in favour of the moral imperative in this book. It's not quite what Ashton was arguing, though, I think.

[immortalradical]

I'd want to pin down a bit more where you see the distinctions between "narrative", "style" and "voice" before agreeing with you.

Well, voice is obviously part of style; otherwise, yes of course there's overlap between the two - but since they aren't the same thing, either, I'm not sure it should be demanded that they match each other.

It's not quite what Ashton was arguing, though, I think.

No, it isn't - and I didn't mean to suggest it was, merely that, Ashton's muddy thinking aside, Middlemarch remains ambivalent in other, connected, ways.

[coalescent]

I was having a debate with grahamsleight recently about voice, you see -- does it include subject matter, or not? I tend to think not, generally -- that it's the personality that emerges from style.

But my point here is that if the voice matches the narrative but the style doesn't, that's still a weakness.

remains ambivalent in other, connected, ways.

Right. Then yes, I agree.

The thing I do sort of agree with in the post by Walton that I linked is that Eliot is very interesting on political/technological change -- but slightly frustrating (given my reading preferences) in the extent to which it's kept in the background here. Are any of her other books more direct on that?

(Also, which classic should I be reading next? Not that this will happen soon: all sf to the end of the year now, for me.)

[sartorias]

Nifty review--and you hit on a lot of the things that Henry James did in his review for the Atlantic Monthly, as I recall. (Though he had a shade more dislike for Ladislaw--felt that he was a nebulous, unconvincing male of the sort often written by women.)

[coalescent]

I can find this review, but it doesn't seem to have been published in the AM; is it the one you were thinking of?

I don't think there's anything to dislike about Ladislaw, really. He's just kind of there. And the range of other characters in the novel rather suggests to me that Ashton's right -- his blandness is a function of narrative need -- rather than anything about Eliot's ability to write or not write men.

[sartorias]

That's the review--I remembered it as part of his collection of reviews, but I managed to elide them all into the Atlantic when he wrote for a number of magazines. (I just checked my source, which is Volume One of his collected criticism.)

I think Ashton is right; I just remembered that jab of James's as someone (I don't think it was Eliot, and I can't recover when and where I read it) said in a review at the time that James writes the same female character over and over--always the cause of a man's downfall.

[oursin]

I find I like or notice different things on re-reading Middlemarch. I've never greatly objected to the Bulstrode thread, though it has its melodramatic elements, and I think justifies itself entirely with Mrs Bulstrode's great moment - 'Look up, Nicholas' - coming out of the shadows and doing the unexpected and right thing (the parallelisms with Rosamund her niece are fascinating).

Ladislaw is a bit Fotherington-Tomasy: but I suspect that women readers may object to this less than men. I do not suppose that I am entirely unique in cheering when a beta, or at least, non-Byronic, male gets the heroine. His being the polar opposite of Heathcliff (except for dark secrets of origin) was why Rufus Sewell was such a bizarre casting choice in the TV series.

[coalescent]

I do not suppose that I am entirely unique in cheering when a beta, or at least, non-Byronic, male gets the heroine

Except that, unfortunately, Ladislaw has all the blandness that normally goes with alpha-Byronic heroes. (And he's so obviously and repeatedly signalled as The One for Dorothea, too...)

I didn't find the Bulstrode thread melodramatic (the most objectionably melodramatic moment is Ladislaw and Dorothea's first kiss, what with lightning flashing and rain lashing the windows...), just tedious. They seemed to lack the clarity that attended most of the other characterisations.

[lady_schrapnell]

Oh - this is such odd timing: steepholm was reading Middlemarch recently, as he'll be teaching it this year, and they specified that edition (which is very inferior to the Oxford World's Classics, I think!) and I picked it up idly one day and read the very sentence you've quoted from the Intro. I didn't agree with it either.

I love Middlemarch and couldn't agree more with what you've said about the generosity of the voice. The 'vice disguised as a virtue' idea is really interesting. Off the top of my head, I'd think not, because of the whole scientific underpinning of the book - so the message isn't exactly undermined by saying that viewing perspective changes the perceived 'reality' completely, because it's constantly forcing us to consider how different people and relationships look from a shifted angle. (Or are changed by the act of observing

[sartorias]

Agree all the way through.