Achieve Middlemarch Narrated By George Eliot Listed As Paper Copy

is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view, ”
George Eliot, Middlemarch

One of those books that I personally believe every single reader has to read at some time during their reading journey.
As I spent a lot ofandreading classics, I decided my time was now, This sprawling multi concurrent story arced classic runs over four main plots following the lives and community of the fictitious Midlands town Middlemarch.
Despite its length and age of publication this a surprising easy read although the ensemble cast and numerous story threads get a bit much at times.
A tale of provincial life, the ingrained disempowerment of women and how marriage was just another tool to exact this.
I have no doubt that this is a classic, and in its day a book that shook the world.
I personally, didn't enjoy it that much, but on the other hand would never put anybody else off, of reading it.
A strong Two Star,out of, Plus it annoyed me that it took me so long to finish, . . churlish I know.

read This was a big one! At times a slog, but not too bad in the end.
I am very thankful for online summaries Shmoop and Wikipedia as they helped me gather and clarify my thoughts every few chapters or so.


While this book is large, I am guessing the fact that it is broken up into several smaller "books" means that at the time it was released it was delivered to the public in easier to swallow chunks.
I did not look this up to confirm, but it would make sense, Instead of beingpages total, it would have been eight or ninetopage episodes,

Speaking of episodes, I think this book would make a good BBC miniseries and I think perhaps it already has.
As a lot of the subject matter deals with medical care politics, I was reminded of the hospital storylines in Downton Abbey.
And, while reading was a bit of a chore, I don't think a miniseries would be,

Storywise, despite the book being long, the story itself is not very Epic, There are a few key plots focusing on aboutorcharacters, but when you reflect on it in the end, not a whole lot actually happens.
In fact, the Wikipedia summary is only a few paragraphs, With that in mind, this is a good book for people who love the writing style of the time period because you get more of that than actual plot.


If you like the classics and don't mind a formidable tome, Middlemarch is right up your alley!

The Author is not Marching hidden in the Middle.

One could write a very long review just collating the various responses to this novel by subsequent writers.
In my edition the introduction was written by A, S. Byatt who quotes James Joyce and John Bayley, I have also encountered somewhere that Julian Barnes thinks this is the best novel written in English,

I will not attempt that collage, but I wish to begin with two other quotes,

In a letter to his friend and painter Anthon van Rappard, from Marchthat is, just four years after George Eliots death, Van Gogh wrote:

While Eliot is masterly in her execution, above and beyond that she also has a genius all of her own, about which I would say, perhaps one improves through reading these books, or perhaps these books have the power to make one sit up and take notice.

And the second may seem at first from an unrelated book and matter, My suspicion, though, is that Mary Ann Evans would have been pleased for the connection between Carl Sagans sitelinkCosmos and her novel.

A book is made from a tree, It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts still called leaves imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles, One glance at it and you hear the voice of another personperhaps someone dead for thousands of years, Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you, bold letters are mine

So we have one genius recognizing another and showing awareness of the artifice in which an artist engages masterly in her execution.
And we have another genius drawing attention to the timetravelartifacts that are books, because they allow us to be in direct contact with an Author from a previous age.


Author

Yes, Author, And well alive thanks to the books authored, In spite of what Modernist artists and writers have been playing with, and what Roland Barthes defended in his Death of an Author, I felt the Author was very near and clear in the Foreground of this novel.


Had I read this book years ago, I may have been irritated by the overt presence of the Narrator.
All those morals comments and those directions to the reader would have seemed to me to interfere and hinder the advancement of the action, or obstructed my own independent view.
Not in the least. Instead I found myself perking up and underlying whenever I heard or read the Narrators clear voice, Sitting up and taking notice, as Van Gogh had written,

The utterances came in different tones and flavours,

Sometimes warning or guiding the reader:

The faults will not, I hope, be a reason for the withdrawal of your interest in him.
"

Or:

must not we, being impartial, feel with him a little

Or providing us with a little moral aedification:

We are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong.
"

But fascinating were those of the Narrators claim to be acting as a natural historian:

But Fielding lived when the days were longer for time, like money is measured by our needs.
We belated historians must not linger after his example, "

Or even more astounding, to those which betray the notion that the Narrator is artificer:

And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low subject.

Which means that the Narrator is aware of the rivalry between a painter and a writer.
Which of those two arts is more persuasive

painting and Plastik are poor stuff after all.
They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising them, Language is a finer medium, Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague, . The true seeing is within and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection, . . as if a woman were a mere colored superficies, . "

And yet, even if this Narrator is also part of the fictional structure of the work, and serves as a mechanism for the reader to enter without participating on the world narrated, and is not the Author, nonetheless I cannot fail to hear that this voice has a very particular tone and timbre.
And it was this awareness that kept me so excited during my read,

For me this voice has a name: Mary Ann Evans, And I have heard her inside my head, as Sagan says, Since it's still Stalker Week here on Goodreads, I decided to create a new shelf, which I've called sitelinkoldermenyoungerwomen.
I hope that's neutral enough that I won't get flagged, My criterion is simple: a relationship between a man and a much younger woman needs to play an important part in the story.


Well, as I was saying to Meredith, I knew ahead of time that Twilight and Lolita would be there.
I trust we've already absorbed all the lessons that can usefully be drawn from these books, so I won't dwell on them.
My list also contains a considerable number of volumes from the wonderfully trashy sitelinkBrigade

Mondaine series, If you look at these, you'll get rather more offbeat advice: for example, don't get involved with an older man if he's investigating your twin sister for a grisly murder, or don't get involved with an older man if he's just using you to help get his regular girlfriend back from a gang of Chinese criminals who are threatening her with death by poisonous seasnake.
Note: it's okay if poisonous seasnakes aren't involved,

But it was the classic novels that surprised me most, I'd quite forgotten that some of them belonged to this category, and Middlemarch is the star example.
Girls, don't get involved with elderly academics, They'll try and get you to do things you really don't want to do, Disgusting things. I'm having trouble even saying this, but they'll, . . they'll they'll try to make you promise to edit their papers posthumously, They will. It's true. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shock you, but it was necessary, Just say no. And run.
This is such a beautiful book and the first George Eliot work that I enjoyed, I've read her before, and although I appreciated their merit, I cannot say that I enjoyed them, In Middlemarch, I found a work of Eliot that I truly enjoyed,

The original title of this work is Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, True to the title, the work portrays the lives of people in a provincial town, Their conventions, their social, political, and religious ideologies, their values, their social status, their pride, their vanities, their jealousies, their suspicions, the way of living, the interhuman relationships, all are discussed at length in the work.
The author's observing nature is well displayed throughout the book whereby the ideas, values, and human nature are truthfully and genuinely portrayed.


Although many areas are discussed through this lengthy work, it can be narrowed down thematically to three distinct categories: social status, conventions, and relationships.
These three themes are interwoven and are brought to light through the numerous characters employed in the story, Victorian Era is well known for its conventional rigidity and the judgmental and opinionated society, Eliot brings them to light brilliantly, all the time subtly satirizing them,

There are three love stories here, The first and foremost is the one between the female protagonist, Dorothea, and Will Ladislaw, When young Dorothea's elderly husband dies being suspicious of hers and Will's friendship, he puts a codicil in his will preventing a future union between them.
Will is of a questionable parentage although being related to Dorothea's husband, This codicil and the conventional view of her friends that she will fall from social rank by marrying a man beneath him work as a yoke on Dorothea.
But her willful, strong and just nature defies convention, dares poverty, and follows her heart, The steady and strong attachment between Fred and Mary despite the difference in their social status according to Fred's family is another.
The educated yet unstable Fred has no proper vocation, nor has he any wealth, But despite all obstacles, they remain faithful to each other, Mary and her father, slowly helping him to stand on his own feet Mary through encouraging and Mr.
Garth through aiding. The more rigid and artificial relationship is the one between pretty Rosamond and Dr, Lydgate. Both being entered into matrimony through a mistaken conception of each other, they find the marital bond to be rather too heavy.
These three love stories were quite interesting, And I was quite surprised at the author's willingness to create happy ending love stories, for I have always associated her with tragedies.


The characters, be it main or supporting, were an interesting lot, Eliot has chosen them with care, I couldn't find a male protagonist, but the female protagonist, Dorothea grew on me, She was introduced as an ignorant, naive, and highminded young girl for whom I didn't care much, Her character is developed through her trials and she becomes a strong, willful yet kind, sympathetic as well as an empathetic young woman.
Eliot tends to create strong female characters and it is quite appealing, This story has two strong women, One is the above mentioned Dorothea, The second is Mary Garth who with her influence and love helps Fred become stable in life, Despite her love to have strong female characters, she uses a good number of strong male characters as well here.
And through the balance Eliot has been able to portray the true conditions and relations between the two opposing sex during the Victorian time.


Eliot's writing is bold and commanding, She doesn't concentrate on poetic beauty but is concerned more in the power with which she tells her story.
I have always liked her tone of voice, The story is a mixture of Austenian social criticism and Dostoevskian human psychology and her bold and graceful writing blended well with the story.


Middlemarch really is one beautiful work I read in a while, It is quite a complete work which gives immense enjoyment and satisfaction for those who read it, I never thought that I'll be ever able to enthusiastically praise George Eliot, and I'm happy to have been able to do so.
Now I can say with my whole heart that she is a great author, .