Well, it’s that time again. Time to re-read Middlemarch, and to see what it has to say to me as I turn 70. I know what it said to me at 20, 30, 40, and 60. But 70 ain’t 20, and it isn’t even 60.
But first, a word about Eliot’s Victorian prose. Padded with ivy, painted with ornate descriptions of the simplest human emotions, and plastered over with obscurities to refer to (rather than just state) unmentionable subjects, it requires patience to chew, swallow, and digest. I once had that patience, and I used to think of this language as gorgeous. Every secondary and dependent clause only added to the beauty of the words. Now, I tap my fingers impatiently, waiting for the upshot of Eliot’s long meanderings. (The only prose I now find gorgeous is Joseph Conrad’s and Michael Chabon’s.)
When I last wrote about the book, I thought Dorothea should have been trundled off to Bedlam before her idiot uncle allowed her to marry Casaubon. I still think so. I once thought those around Dorothea were somewhat awed by her notions of nobility, sacrifice and the undefined moral mission that she was desperately trying to get a leg up, on, and over. But I finally realized the functioning adults around Dorothea did recognize her half-baked enthusiasms and hairshirted crusades for what they were: hairbrained. The single adult who had the authority to intervene and stop the marriage was the vacant and ever-vacillating Uncle Arthur. My opinion hasn’t changed. But now, from my crone’s vantage point, I see it as Uncle Arthur Brooke’s failure to act forcefully and effectively as her guardian. Dorothea might carry herself like a queen, but she is still a teenager when she decides to marry Causabon. And at 19, Dorothea’s is still those an inexperienced girl. (Confession: When I was 19, I thought there was nothing my parents could tell me about love and marriage. But that’s a story for another day.) At my first reading, I fumed at her choice of because Casaubon was old and physically unappealing, and there were clearly better, younger, sexier candidates available. In later readings, I wanted to scream at Dorothea’s idiotic innocence. But now I think it’s time I forgave her for her youth, her inexperience, and her foolish aspirations. In the absence of education, she had idealistic fantasies of how to shape and build a meaningful life. (Didn’t we all, when were 19? Hell, I had an education, and I was still an idiot.) Dorothea grew up fast. Her first, unhappy marriage matured her beyond her years. But the bottom line remains: Arthur Brooke---forever waffling, and never making a firm decision---should have stopped the hasty marriage plans.
Casaubon is somewhere between 45 and 50 at the outset of the book, and I used to see him as a grizzled old buzzard. Well, that hasn’t changed. He remains the pasty, scrawny, physically unappealing old bachelor I first envisioned. (Celia’s several comments about his moles chilled me then, and still do now.) Eliot’s portrayal of this sad, solitary man still rings true. He was old enough to know that he didn’t really want a wife. His discomfort at the thought of a secretary at his elbow---someone who is expecting some intellectual output to be distilled into words and put on paper---is now transferred to the earnest and eager Dorothea. She sits there patiently, expectantly, waiting for him to spit out the brilliant work he’s been chewing over for the last 20 years. And worse yet, unlike a secretary, she can’t be dismissed. To her credit, Dorothea transforms her disappointment with Casaubon’s chilly intellect and emotional vacuity into a tender and enduring concern for his health. Her unflinching sense of duty is genuine and admirable.
And yes, after all these years, I find Dorothea’s endurance of her marriage to Casaubon a tribute to her patience and strength. She wishes to love and be loved by a man who has absolutely no impulse to love or be loved. The Casaubon union remains a shining example of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. I once interpreted Dorothea’s submission to Casaubon’s emotional flatline as a willing choice—a way of demonstrating her sacrifice to support her very own Milton. But, no, in this reading of Eliot’s dense prose, I finally recognize how lonely and desperate she is. And yet, despite her desperation, Dorothea stands resolute, unwavering, and uncomplaining in her commitment to her husband.
In this reading, I’ve finally paid closer attention to the two-dimensional view of women held by most of the men in the book. For them, the ideal woman is a mirror in which they can admire themselves. If all goes well, she is a convenience, a comfort, a loving pet. When men do discover that a woman has brains and motives enough to devise and carry out her own plans, they are astounded.
Tertius Lydgate is gob smacked—not once, but twice—by beautiful women whose minds and motives were news to him. There was Laure, the Madonna-faced French actress who murdered her husband because he bored her. And then there’s the emptiest, vainest, most selfish vessel in the world—Rosamund. The world, and everyone in it, exist to please, pet, and admire her. If they fail to do so, she sulks, she grieves, and she takes matters into her own hands to disastrous effect.
Casaubon initially looks at Dorothea and sees, in her young, uncritical eyes, a flattering reflection of himself as an intellectual. He never anticipated that this girl would do more than stare adoringly at him—much less offer to pull together his cryptic, useless notes. He expected silent, passive adoration, but what he got was pressure to publish. Dorothea’s offers to assist him in wrapping up his years of study make Casaubon uncomfortable and resentful.
Women are rarely acknowledged as equal partners in a marriage; but equal partnerships do exist. Caleb and Susan Garth are clearly equals in their union. And although Eliot muses upon Susan’s sense that it’s a woman’s duty to subordinate her will to her husband’s, that’s not how she portrays the Garths’ marriage. Caleb bows to Susan’s faults and foibles---just as Susan does to his. They are loving equals through the trials and triumphs of their life together.
Fred Vincy and Mary Garth are another example of equals who form a partnership of shared goals, values, and love. It may have required the aid of a couple of well-timed kicks to the seat of Fred’s pants (administered by a would-be rival for Mary’s affections) to clear Fred’s head of his childish habits. Fred may have been a youthful twit, but he is clear and consistent on one thing in his life: that Mary is his polestar. He depends on her common sense and judgement as being unfailingly right.
There is the little-mentioned, but quite vibrant marriage between Elinor and Humphrey Cadwallader. Humphrey is the rector at the church on Sir James Chettam’s estate, and Elinor willingly took several steps down the social ladder in marrying him. Humphrey is easy-going and good-humored. And Elinor is just one more semi-comic character who energetically yacks away for the sole purpose of fleshing out the main characters’ back stories. But I finally realized I’ve been blind to Elinor’s rapier wit for the last 50 years. Elinor Cadwallader is the Dorothy Parker of Middlemarch. She fires off effortless barbs about Will Ladislaw’s Byronic looks, Arthur Brooke’s famous penny-pinching management of his tenants and estate, and refers to Casaubon as ’Thomas Aquinas’. How could you not want to have cocktails with this woman?
And then there is the question about Casaubon’s dislike and resentment of Will Ladislaw. Eliot dances around it for a hundred pages, attributing Casaubon’s dislike to Will’s decision to refuse further financial support from his aging cousin. Does Casaubon see it as a rejection of his superiority and beneficence? That’s pretty thin stuff---especially as this resentment springs up just as he marries a young bride. The coincidence of timing overrides every possible nuanced and far-fetched explanation for Casaubon’s attitude except the most obvious: jealousy of an attractive, virile, young rival. I guess that would have been too coarse a motive to attribute to a man she is trying to depict as human, sad, and conflicted. Eventually, Casaubon tries to preempt any possibility of Dorothea and Will having a future together by amending his will to cause her to forfeit his estate and fortune if she ever marries Will. The little world of Middlemarch is shocked at his display of malice, and the suggestion that he’s been privately obsessing about this possible turn of events. Oh, my… Still waters run deep and spiteful. If that’s not green-eyed jealousy, I don’t know what is.
And speaking of wills and inheritance… Peter Featherstone’s prolonged deathwatch is one of the least sentimental journeys ever undertaken by family and friends. The family harpies descend on the house to flatter and fawn on him, while the old man keeps them guessing about the contents of his will. In or out? How much? How little? Is blood thicker than water? The reading of the will plays out like an audience waiting to learn who’s won tonight’s Powerball drawing. People avert their eyes to silently mutter prayers for luck.
Given enough time, we all experience or witness the drama that surrounds family inheritances. I always said that my husband’s family only showed real emotion when a will was read. Eyes welled up on these occasions. For the rest of the time, they were dry-eyed misers. Until I met Peter, I never imagined that comic villains like Featherstone really existed. But then I met my father-in-law. Here was a man who delighted in threatening his adult children that they were in or out of his will. It might depend on his mood, the day of the week, or the offspring in question having displeased him in recent or distant memory. I once asked him if he kept a xeroxed copy of his will, complete with check-off boxes, a signature line, and a space for the current date. He glared at me, but stopped threatening to remove a daughter from the will for not having dropped her pregnancy weight after the baby’s birth fast enough to suit him. He played that drama out to the very end of his life---destructive and spiteful to the very end—culminating in a will that clearly declared who was loved and who was not. From time to time, I reread his will just to refresh my acquaintance with narcissism and evil. But I digress….
I’ve read this book as a love-struck teenager, as a wife experiencing the ups and downs of a life shared with another flawed mortal, as a participant in the local community of neighbors and business associates, as an observer of the greater community of local and national politics, and now, again as a 70-year-old. The impetuous and hormonally turbo-charged years are long past. But I recognize shades of my own experiences in Dorothea’s foolishness. The most obvious, available, and best life partner choices didn’t satisfy her---nor did they satisfy me. Nice, dependable, steady, menschen were boring. Bad boys were alluring. It took me years to realize that my nice, steady mensch of a father was a hero, a prince, and a pearl of the greatest price. In the end, there is nothing more precious than a man who cherishes you, cares for you above and beyond himself, doggedly goes to work every day for 40 years, and replaces light bulbs without having to be begged. My husband, Peter, fits most of the requirements. He has patiently put up with me, my moods, and my acerbic humor. He’s fatally flawed. But then, so am I. Neither of us is a saint.
I’ve read this book as a participant in the local community of neighbors and business associates, as an observer of the greater community of local and national politics, and now, again as a 70-year-old. My dealings and conflicts with prickly, narcissistic, and plain crazy business associates are in the past. What is still current are the larger community issues: The motives of politicians should always be doubted and examined for possible motives of personal gratification, self-aggrandizement, or self-enrichment. Is there a slender chance that they are in it for the betterment of anyone other than themselves? Well, that would be lovely, if it ever happened.
The most beautiful moment in the book remains Harriet Bulstrode’s mature acceptance of her husband’s failings and public humiliation. Their emotional joining in their shared shame and pain is more poignant than anything else described in the book. Harriet steps forward with a show of strength, love, and forgiveness that is beyond splendid. It is grace itself. This is the stuff saints are made of.
