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Middlemarch

The most interesting IMHO of today's (early am) postings.  You should try
subscribing again.  I haven't contributed anything to most of the lists,
but it would be fun to see your contributions.  Love, J

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I'll preface this brief comment by saying that I have never participated in
any critical discussion of Middlemarch before, nor have I read any criticism
recently. I'm not sure about the theme of "usefulness" as Ellen mentioned,
though it is clear that the character Dorothea wants to live a "useful" life;
my impression in analyzing the first few chapters is that death (symbolized
by Casaubon) and re-birth (Ladislaw), and their connection to the female
soul, are major themes. 

Rachel Youdelman

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Ellen asked who finds Dorothea irritating.

I don't so much find her irritating as feel frustration for her. She seems to
be courting death itself. Her idealism won't allow her to led a useful,
meaningful life; her idealistic notions are futile; she is spinning her
wheels in the sand, because no matter how grandly she plans, there are men
 ("patriarchs") in the drawing room, making "interjectory asides" about women
: "I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us;" "There
should be a little devil in a woman;" "There is a lightness about the
feminine mind..." So while admiring her idealism and aspiration, we feel an
irritating sense that Dorothea is doomed before she begins. She practices
asceticism, punishing herself and leading to her courting of Death, Mr
Casaubon.

Mrs Cadwallader perceives Dorothea's masochism when she says "...I wish her
joy of her hair shirt." 

Rachel Youdelman

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ELLEN MOODY wrote:
> 
> Duffy asks why do I "suppose George Eliot sides with
> Dorothea on this big point rather than with the Rector."
> 

> Yes they fail, but their trying is the book.  That's
> why we are to love them.  It's the driving motive
> of the book.

Yes, but are we to love them?  Or are we to be reminded continually that
George Eliot succeeded where Dorothea failed?   So far, no-one in the
novel strikes me as worthy of admiration, except of course for the
narrator.   (I would be very interested to see the textual support,
based on what we've read so far, for the claim that the narrator admires
Dorothea.)  I suspect, at the end of this reading, I will again pity
Dorothea and Lydgate but am not sure I will ever love either.  

As for the Rector -- I don't hold out much hope for a sympathetic
approach to his outlook on life.  It took lesser writers, like McClean
and Hemingway,  to make religion out of trout fishing.  That sort of
thing seems to be beneath Ms. Eliot.  

Duffy

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Duffy Pratt writes
If the goal is to be "really, truly, seriously, useful," does anyone
doubt that Dorothea is doomed to failure?  (Isn't the goal itself a
symptom of Dorothea's vanity?)


I don't think the goal is a symptom of D's vanity so much as it is a symptom 
of being a woman in a world of limited choices.  She has rather more freedom 
to choose a mate without the interference of the older generation.  Even Alice 
Vavasour (Trollope, 1864), who is, to my mind, one of the most 
independent-minded mid-Victorian heroines has to tolerate who is it?  Lady 
Midlothian?  (D's uncle belongs to what I think of as the Mr. Bennet school of 
fatherhood: men who hide in their libraries or clubs while their daughters try 
to make their way in the marriage market.  At least Lizzie Bennet had a 
no-nonsense mother.)  But how far beyond the choice of a mate does D's freedom 
extend?  Not very.

D's evangelicalism strikes me as having little to do with God and much to do 
with wanting a calling.  The word carries both sacred and secular 
connotations.  I have always felt about Dorothea that she would have 
considerably less interest in God if she had just a little more to do.  One of 
the things that happens between Jane Austen and George Eliot is that heroines 
look upon marriage less as an economic safe harbor and more as an acceptable 
way of being active in the world.   Alice Vavasour would enter parliament if 
she could.  But she can't, and must be content with the prospect of marrying 
an MP and living a political life vicariously.  Trollope is filled with such 
women.  Dorothea is of a piece with them, except that her provincial world is, 
well, more provincial.   And like many women before her, her inner passion 
finds expression in renunciation.  Or so she would like.  I agree with Lesley 
Hall that try as she might, D is drawn to the jewels and fascinated by their 
intrinsic beauty at the same time that she rejects the value that society 
places upon being seen with the baubles attached to one's person.  But GE 
reminds us that D "had not reached that point of renunciation at which she 
would have been satisfied with having a wise husband: she wished, poor child, 
to be wise herself."  What is the tone of that "poor child"?  Surely it isn't 
merely a matter of immaturity for a young woman to want wisdom of her own?  I 
noticed this time around that D's hands are "powerful, feminine, maternal 
hands" (iv).  In this first book it's easy to forget or fail to notice or 
discount the ways in which D is a powerful woman, at least potentially.  If 
Duffy's right and she's "doomed to failure" I don't think it's because she 
wants to be truly, seriously useful.  I think it's because in choosing 
Causabon she chose badly.

_______________
Jo Ann Citron
jacitron@msn.com

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GE is so often considered the voice of morality and high seriousness that we 
tend not to pay enough attention to a tongue that can be quite as sharp as 
Austen's.  Don't miss the great lines from Mrs. Cadwallader:

When Sir James says that Casaubon has no red blood in him, she replies, "No.  
Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and 
parentheses. . . . he dreams footnotes and they run away with all his brains." 
 (viii)

She says Casaubon "looks like a death's head skinned over for the occasion" 
and that "he is as bad as the wrong physic -- nasty to take, and sure to 
disagree."  (x)

I think Mrs. Cadwallader is my favorite character thus far.

_______________________
Jo Ann Citron
jacitron@msn.com

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