Middlemarchisms

"We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement." George Eliot

Now I really feel accomplished, having finished reading George Eliot's Middlemarch voluntarily and without benefit of BritLit professorial assistance. It's a slice of provincial life in the nineteenth century, much of the plot driven by money issues, so actually having also read Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century this summer helped.

dustjacket of the 1992 Book of the Month Club edition, to which my page references refer.

So for a Jane Austen fan to tackle the Eliot masterpiece, the first thing I had to get over was the hope that the heroine would end up marrying the right hero. As soon as Lydgate, the maverick doctor, entered the neighborhood, I figured he was the best match for the virtuous but clueless do-gooder Dorothea. But anyway, in a round about way, there were enough happily-ever-afters at the end of 800 pages to satisfy.

The other difference between Austen and Eliot is the complexity of the latter's sentences. It's not a fast read, but once I got used to it, there were many rewards and a lot of great thoughts. Here are a few of my favorite Middlemarchisms:

"Among all forms of mistakes, prophecy is the most gratuitous." (p. 83)

"O Mrs. Cadwallader, I don't think it can be nice to marry a man with a great soul." (p. 56)

"Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on." (p. 57)

"... and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts--not to hurt others." (p. 62)

"... the requisite things must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor quality." (p. 341)*

"'What is your religion?' said Dorothea. 'I mean--not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?'
'To love what is good and beautiful when I see it,' said Will." (p. 377)

"Good meat should have good drink." (p. 379)

"Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than practice." (p. 416)

"Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids? He only neglects his work and runs up bills." (p. 417)

"Oppositions have illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw for ever on the vasts of ignorance." (p. 422)

"... and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?" (p. 421)

"... it is a little too trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have it noticed...." (p. 440)

"It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much." (p. 475)

"It had seemed to him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning." (p. 518)

"... to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?" (p. 555)

"... and, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better." (p. 700)

"Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a character to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." (p. 703)

"... a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion." (p. 705)

"Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love." (p. 716)

"We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement." (p. 744)

"... husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order." (p. 787)

"... there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody else." (p. 790).


love, hosaa
standing on a perilous margin, but loving what is good and beautiful...

*ETA: In context, the quote about poor quality being bad economy was used to justify Lydgate's spending beyond his means to prepare his new household for his spoiled bride. But shortly following that episode was the discussion about making improvements to the farms and households in the villages as long-term investments (think of the copper plumbing rationale that Cosmo used with his customers in Moonstruck). So I still think the principle is sound: Poor quality is bad economy.