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Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne–Davies. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990, p. 719. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Leavened with comic elements, Middlemarch approaches significant historical events in a Literary realism mode: the Reform Act 1832, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels.
In December she wrote of having begun another story, on a subject that she had considered "ever since I began to write fiction". By the end of the month she had written 100 pages of this story and entitled it "Miss Brooke". Although a precise date is unknown, the process of incorporating material from " Middlemarch into the story she had been working on was ongoing by March 1871. While composing, Eliot compiled a notebook of hundreds of literary quotations, from poets, historians, playwrights, philosophers, and critics in eight different languages.M.a.13–14, from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library; [1] .
By May 1871, the growing length of the novel had become a concern to Eliot, as it threatened to exceed the three-volume format that was then the norm in publishing. The issue was compounded because Eliot's most recent novel, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) – also set in the same pre-Reform Bill England – had not sold well. The publisher John Blackwood, who had made a loss on acquiring the English rights to that novel, was approached by Lewes in his role as Eliot's literary agent. He suggested that the novel be brought out in eight two-monthly parts, borrowing the method used for Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables. This was an alternative to the monthly issues that had been used for such longer works as Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and avoided Eliot's objections to slicing her novel into small parts. Blackwood agreed, although he feared there would be "complaints of a want of the continuous interest in the story" due to the independence of each volume. The eight books duly appeared during 1872, the last three instalments being issued monthly.
With the deaths of Thackeray and Dickens in 1863 and 1870, respectively, Eliot became "recognised as the greatest living English novelist" at the time of the novel's final publication.
Dorothea Brooke, a wealthy young woman of strong religious idealism, lives with her sister Celia under the guardianship of their uncle Mr Brooke. Though admired by the baronet Sir James Chettam, Dorothea instead marries the much older clergyman and scholar Edward Casaubon, hoping to dedicate herself to his research. On their honeymoon in Rome, she discovers the sterility of the marriage and befriends Casaubon’s disinherited cousin, Will Ladislaw. Casaubon grows jealous of Ladislaw’s friendship with Dorothea, and his insecurity deepens as his health declines.
Meanwhile, the Vincy family occupies an important place in Middlemarch society. Fred Vincy, the mayor’s son, is charming but feckless, relying on the expectation of inheriting from his wealthy uncle, Peter Featherstone. He is in love with Mary Garth, the practical and principled niece who keeps house for Featherstone, but she refuses him while he remains irresponsible. Fred’s debts lead him to involve Mary’s father, Caleb Garth, in financial loss, straining his hopes of winning her. When Featherstone dies, the inheritance goes not to Fred but to an illegitimate son, leaving Fred humiliated and forced to reconsider his path.
Fred’s illness during this period brings him under the care of Dr Tertius Lydgate, a talented young physician new to Middlemarch. Lydgate hopes to reform medical practice through science and sanitation, and finds support from the wealthy, evangelical banker Nicholas Bulstrode, who funds a new hospital. Lydgate’s dedication earns him respect, but his courtship of Rosamond Vincy, Fred’s beautiful but vain sister, leads to marriage and financial strain. Rosamond’s extravagance draws Lydgate into debt, undermining his professional independence.
Casaubon, increasingly ill, tries to bind Dorothea to his control, asking her to promise obedience to his wishes after his death. When he dies, his will reveals a clause disinheriting her if she marries Ladislaw. The provision fuels gossip in Middlemarch and complicates their relationship. Dorothea continues to struggle between duty and affection, while Ladislaw remains in town as a journalist, supporting Mr Brooke’s unsuccessful parliamentary campaign on a Reform platform.
Bulstrode’s past eventually returns to haunt him. The arrival of John Raffles exposes how Bulstrode had profited dishonourably in his youth, concealing the existence of Ladislaw’s mother, the rightful heir to his first wife’s fortune. Fearful of exposure, Bulstrode hastens Raffles’s death while attempting to cover his tracks. His disgrace spreads to Lydgate, who has recently accepted Bulstrode’s financial help; many in Middlemarch assume the doctor complicit in corruption. Though Dorothea defends his honour, public opinion forces Lydgate and Rosamond to leave, his ambitions for medical reform destroyed.
As scandals and disappointments reshape the town, Fred redeems himself by training as a land agent under Caleb Garth. With the guidance of the kindly Rev. Farebrother, who suppresses his own love for Mary, Fred matures and eventually marries her. Dorothea, after recognising her feelings for Ladislaw, rejects the security of Casaubon’s fortune and chooses to marry him, despite her family’s disapproval.
The novel concludes with a brief “Finale” summarising later lives. Fred and Mary live contentedly with their children. Lydgate prospers in a conventional career but dies at 50, leaving Rosamond to remarry a wealthy physician. Dorothea and Ladislaw raise two children, their son inheriting Mr Brooke’s estate, while Dorothea devotes herself to her husband and to reformist causes. Each character’s fate reflects the mixture of compromise, limitation, and idealism that defines life in Middlemarch.
The critic Rosemary Ashton notes that the lack of attention to this side of the novel may indicate its merits: " Middlemarch is that very rare thing, a successful historical novel. In fact, it is so successful that we scarcely think of it in terms of that subgenre of fiction." For its contemporary readers, the present "was the passage of the Second Reform Act in 1867"; the agitation for the Reform Act 1832 and its turbulent passage through the two Houses of Parliament, which provide the structure of the novel, would have been seen as the past.
Though rarely categorised as a historical novel, Middlemarchs attention to historical detail has been noticed; in an 1873 review, Henry James recognised that Eliot's "purpose was to be a generous rural historian". Elsewhere, Eliot has been seen to adopt "the role of imaginative historian, even scientific investigator in Middlemarch and her narrator as conscious "of the historiographical questions involved in writing a social and political history of provincial life". This critic compares the novel to "a work of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus", who is often described as "The Father of History".
The subtitle—"A Study of Provincial Life"—has been seen as significant. One critic views the unity of Middlemarch as achieved through "the fusion of the two senses of 'provincial'": on the one hand it means geographically "all parts of the country except the capital"; and on the other, a person who is "unsophisticated" or "narrow-minded". The Chambers Dictionary (13th edition), London,: Chambers Harrap, 2014. Carolyn Steedman links Eliot's emphasis on provincialism in Middlemarch to Matthew Arnold's discussion of social class in England in Culture and Anarchy essays, published in 1869, about the time Eliot began working on the stories that became Middlemarch. There Arnold classes British society in terms of Barbarians (aristocrats and landed gentry), Philistines (urban middle class) and Populace (working class). Steedman suggests Middlemarch "is a portrait of Philistinism".
It is worth noting that Eliot went to London, as her heroine Dorothea does at the end of the book. There Eliot achieved fame way beyond most women of her time, whereas Dorothea takes on the role of nurturing Will and her family. Eliot was rejected by her family once she had settled in her common-law relationship with Lewes, and "their profound disapproval prevented her ever going home again". She omitted Coventry from her last visit to the Midlands in 1855.
Dorothea is a St Teresa, born in the wrong century, in provincial Middlemarch, who mistakes in her idealistic ardor, "a poor dry mummified pedant... as a sort of angel of vocation". Middlemarch is in part a Bildungsroman focusing on the psychological or moral growth of the protagonist: Dorothea "blindly gropes forward, making mistakes in her sometimes foolish, often egotistical, but also admirably idealistic attempt to find a role" or vocation that fulfils her nature. Lydgate is equally mistaken in his choice of a partner, as his idea of a perfect wife is someone "who can sing and play the piano and provide a soft cushion for her husband to rest after work". So he marries Rosamond Vincy, "the woman in the novel who most contrasts with Dorothea", and thereby "deteriorates from ardent researcher to fashionable doctor in London".
Henry James presented a mixed opinion. Middlemarch, according to him, was "at once one of the strongest and one of the weakest of English novels ... Middlemarch is a treasure-house of details, but it is an indifferent whole". Among the details, his greatest criticism ("the only eminent failure in the book") was of the character of Ladislaw, who he felt was an insubstantial hero-figure as against Lydgate. The scenes between Lydgate and Rosamond he especially praised for their psychological depth – he doubted whether there were any scenes "more powerfully real... or intelligent" in all English fiction. Thérèse Bentzon, for the Revue des deux Mondes, was critical of Middlemarch. Although finding merit in certain scenes and qualities, she faulted its structure as "made up of a succession of unconnected chapters, following each other at random... The final effect is one of an incoherence which nothing can justify." In her view, Eliot's prioritisation of "observation rather than imagination... inexorable analysis rather than sensibility, passion or fantasy" means that she should not be held amongst the first ranks of novelists. (Reprinted from Swinden, Patrick, ed. 1972, pp. 56–60). The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who read Middlemarch in a translation owned by his mother and sister, derided the novel for construing suffering as a means of expiating the debt of sin, which he found characteristic of "little moralistic females à la Eliot".Thomas J. Joudrey. "The Defects of Perfectionism: Nietzsche, Eliot, and the Irrevocability of Wrong." Philological Quarterly 96.1 (2017), pp. 77–104.
Despite the divided contemporary response, Middlemarch gained immediate admirers: in 1873, the poet Emily Dickinson expressed high praise for the novel, exclaiming in a letter to a friend: "What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory."Megan Armknecht. "The Weight of 'Glory': Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, and Women's Issues in Middlemarch." Criterion 9.1 (2016): 35–46.Eleanor Elson Heginbotham. "'What do I think of glory –': Dickinson's Eliot and Middlemarch." Emily Dickinson Journal 21.2 (2012): 20–36.
In separate centuries, Florence Nightingale and Kate Millett remarked on the eventual subordination of Dorothea's own dreams to those of her admirer, Ladislaw.Kate Millett (1972), Sexual Politics p.139; Nightingale quoted in The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot, "George Eliot and Gender", Kate Flint, 2001. Indeed, the ending acknowledges this and mentions how unfavourable social conditions prevented her from fulfilling her potential.
F. R. Leavis's The Great Tradition (1948) is credited with having "rediscovered" the novel:
The necessary part of great intellectual powers in such a success as Middlemarch is obvious ... the sheer informedness about society, its mechanisms, the ways in which people of different classes live ... a novelist whose genius manifests itself in a profound analysis of the individual.Leavis' appraisal of it has been hailed as the beginning of a critical consensus that still exists towards the novel, in which it is recognised not only as Eliot's finest work, but as one of the greatest novels in English. V. S. Pritchett, in The Living Novel, two years earlier, in 1946 had written that "No Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative ... I doubt if any Victorian novelist has as much to teach the modern novelists as George Eliot ... No writer has ever represented the ambiguities of moral choice so fully".Quoted in Karen Chase, George Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 94.
In the 21st century, the novel is still held in high regard. The novelists Martin Amis and Julian Barnes have both called it probably the greatest novel in the English language,"Julian Barnes, The Art of Fiction" Interviewed by Shusha Guppy The Paris Review, No. 165: |accessdate=12 April 2015| and today Middlemarch is frequently included in university courses. In 2013, the then British Education Secretary Michael Gove referred to Middlemarch in a speech, suggesting its superiority to Stephenie Meyer's vampire novel Twilight. Gove's comments led to debate on teaching Middlemarch in Britain, including the question of when novels like Middlemarch should be read, and the role of Literary canon texts in teaching. The novel has remained a favourite with readers and scores high in reader rankings: in 2003 it was No. 27 in the BBC's The Big Read, "BBC – The Big Read" . BBC. April 2003, Retrieved 28 October 2012 and in 2007 it was No. 10 in "The 10 Greatest Books of All Time", based on a ballot of 125 selected writers. In 2015, in a BBC Culture poll of book critics outside the UK, the novel was ranked at number one in "The 100 greatest British novels".
On 5 November 2019, the BBC News reported that Middlemarch is on the BBC list of 100 "most inspiring" novels.
The opera Middlemarch in Spring by Allen Shearer, to a libretto by Claudia Stevens, has a cast of six and treats only the central story of Dorothea Brooke. It was first staged in San Francisco in 2015. In 2017, a modern adaptation, Middlemarch: The Series, aired on YouTube as a video blog.
Legacy and adaptations
Middlemarch has been adapted several times for television and the stage. In 1968 it appeared as a BBC-produced TV mini-series of the same name, directed by Joan Craft, starring Michele Dotrice. The first episode, "Dorothea", is missing from the BBC Archives, while the third episode, "The New Doctor", can be viewed online, although only as a low-quality black and white telerecording owned by a private collector. The other five episodes have been withheld from public viewing. In 1994 it was again adapted by the BBC as a television series of the same name, directed by Anthony Page with a screenplay by Andrew Davies. This was a critical and financial success and revived public interest adaptating the classics. In 2013 came a stage adaptation, and also an Orange Tree Theatre Repertory production adapted and directed by Geoffrey Beevers as three plays: Dorothea's Story, The Doctor's Story, and Fred & Mary. The novel has never been made into a film, although the idea was toyed with by the English director Sam Mendes. In April 2022, Dash Arts produced The Great Middlemarch Mystery, an immersive theatre experience staged across three locations in Coventry, including Drapers Hall.
Notes
Bibliography
(1972). 9780333021194, Macmillan. ISBN 9780333021194
Further reading
Contemporary reviews
Later reviews
External links
Categories: 1871 British Novels, 1872 British Novels, British Novels Adapted Into Television Shows, English Novels, Fiction Set In 1829, Fiction Set In 1830, Fiction Set In 1831, Fiction Set In 1832, Fictional Populated Places In England, Novels By George Eliot, Novels First Published In Serial Form, Novels Set In The 1820s, Novels Set In The 1830s, Novels Set In England, Realist Novels, Victorian Novels, Cultural Depictions Of William Iv
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