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Title: Middlemarch
Author: George Eliot
Genre: Classic literary saga of middle class people screwing up their lives through shitty marriages
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: The story of everyone ever to live in this one town, and why sexism caused people to make bad marriages and ruin their lives forever.
Thoughts: I have to say, despite the random ramblings about proto-Zionism, I liked Daniel Duronda better.
Nearly everything in this story is driven by marriage. People making terrible decisions about who to marry, people twisting their lives around to try to get someone to marry them, people twisting other people's lives to prevent them from marrying someone, past unwise marriages destroying people's lives for generations. It's fascinating, as sexism drives a lot of these shitty decisions and the author talks a lot of the talk of women being weak and illogical. But the fact that the writer is in fact female, if only disguised, and the fact that her characters actual actions reveal the same levels of wisdom and foolishness amongst the male and female characters turns the entire thing into a subtle refutation that men are intellectually superior to women. But because of their beliefs in this fallacy, the characters completely screw up their lives. Dorothea's belief that her role as a pious and intelligent woman requires her to prostrate herself before her husband leads her to marry a man who turns out to be a lousy scholar with subpar work. Rosamond's angelic looks and sweet manners makes Lydgate believe that she is docile when in fact she's a selfish idiot. Only Mary insists on setting her own conditions and only Mary and Fred have what seems like a functional relationship at the end.
I did enjoy this book, but I remain baffled as to why it's hailed as one of the best novels in the English language. I found Landislaw, who I suppose is the closest thing to a real romantic hero we have, to be immature and entirely unworthy of Dorothea. A lot of the symbolism seems a bit heavy-handed to me. Fred and Mary's story takes up a huge chunk of first half of the book, and then they disappear for the entire climax and only pop up again in the epilogue, making the whole thing feel unbalanced. There's some really good insights into people, but on the whole, this felt clunky to me. I realize this is far more ambitious than, say, Jane Austen, to choose a contemporary. But the sprawlingness feels less epic and more undisciplined, as though Eliot just included random bits as they occurred to her and without any thought of how it furthered the goals of the novel as a whole.
Author: George Eliot
Genre: Classic literary saga of middle class people screwing up their lives through shitty marriages
Thingummies: 3.5
Synopsis: The story of everyone ever to live in this one town, and why sexism caused people to make bad marriages and ruin their lives forever.
Thoughts: I have to say, despite the random ramblings about proto-Zionism, I liked Daniel Duronda better.
Nearly everything in this story is driven by marriage. People making terrible decisions about who to marry, people twisting their lives around to try to get someone to marry them, people twisting other people's lives to prevent them from marrying someone, past unwise marriages destroying people's lives for generations. It's fascinating, as sexism drives a lot of these shitty decisions and the author talks a lot of the talk of women being weak and illogical. But the fact that the writer is in fact female, if only disguised, and the fact that her characters actual actions reveal the same levels of wisdom and foolishness amongst the male and female characters turns the entire thing into a subtle refutation that men are intellectually superior to women. But because of their beliefs in this fallacy, the characters completely screw up their lives. Dorothea's belief that her role as a pious and intelligent woman requires her to prostrate herself before her husband leads her to marry a man who turns out to be a lousy scholar with subpar work. Rosamond's angelic looks and sweet manners makes Lydgate believe that she is docile when in fact she's a selfish idiot. Only Mary insists on setting her own conditions and only Mary and Fred have what seems like a functional relationship at the end.
I did enjoy this book, but I remain baffled as to why it's hailed as one of the best novels in the English language. I found Landislaw, who I suppose is the closest thing to a real romantic hero we have, to be immature and entirely unworthy of Dorothea. A lot of the symbolism seems a bit heavy-handed to me. Fred and Mary's story takes up a huge chunk of first half of the book, and then they disappear for the entire climax and only pop up again in the epilogue, making the whole thing feel unbalanced. There's some really good insights into people, but on the whole, this felt clunky to me. I realize this is far more ambitious than, say, Jane Austen, to choose a contemporary. But the sprawlingness feels less epic and more undisciplined, as though Eliot just included random bits as they occurred to her and without any thought of how it furthered the goals of the novel as a whole.
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Date: 2011-11-22 09:50 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 09:54 pm (UTC)From: