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    Middlemarch
    Middlemarch
    Middlemarch
    Audiobook31 hours

    Middlemarch

    Written by George Eliot

    Narrated by Kate Reading

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Middlemarch is a recognized masterpiece that explores the complex social world of nineteenth-century England. It is concerned with the lives of several ordinary people, albeit ones with high social standing.

    The novel is set in the small town of Middlemarch and follows the interrelated lives of several characters. At the heart of the book is Dorothea, a kind-hearted and honest woman who longs to find some way to improve the world. She marries an older academic, Casaubon, against the advice of her friends and family. Casaubon tries to assert his influence over Dorthea, but she refuses to succumb to his will. Casaubon soon dies of a heart attack, and Dorothea marries his cousin, Will. But, in a final attempt to control Dorothea's life, Casaubon's will states that if Dorothea marries Will, she will lose her claim to Casaubon's estate.

    Meanwhile, the young doctor, Lydgate, comes to Middlemarch to start his own practice. He soon falls in love with Rosamund, a woman who has spent her life in Middlemarch, and they eventually marry. Fred Vincey, used to a lavish lifestyle but also a gambler, falls into debt as he waits to inherit money from a rich neighbor. He drifts toward the clergy and longs to marry Mary Garth. But until he proves himself worthy, Mary will have nothing to do with him.

    Through these various characters and their relationships, the novel explores the very fabric of Victorian society in the 1800s, showing how various human passions-heroism, egotism, love, and lust-interrelate within this society.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 18, 2008
    ISBN9781400178636
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot (1819-80) was born Mary Ann Evans into the family of a Warwickshire land agent and did not escape provincial life until she was 30. But she was brilliantly self-educated and able at once to shine in London literary circles. It was, however, her novels of English rural life that brought her fame, starting with Adam Bede, published under her new pen name in 1859, and reaching a zenith with Middlemarch in 1871. Eliot was a devoutly moral woman but lived for 25 years with a man who already had a wife. It is indicative of the respect and love that she inspired in her most devoted readers that Queen Victoria was one of them.

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    Reviews for Middlemarch

    4.5/5

    167 ratings136 reviews

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    • 5/5
      So, so good! I enjoyed Adam Bede…but Middlemarch is even better
    • 5/5
      I have read this book several times over the years and it still appears fresh each time. It has enormous scope. Dorethea is a wonderful central character who has the grace to learn from her mistakes. My favourite quote is "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity"
    • 5/5
      A great book. Her empathy even toward people like Bulstrode is remarkable. And I appreciate that she didn't tidy things up with Victorian coincidences. Things ended right, although maybe not what you'd want.
    • 5/5
      I don’t even know how to review George Eliot, especially this novel. She captures such amazing things about human nature; not every ending is happy, but some are. I love the relationships between characters, their passions, how they grow and develop as the book goes along. Dorothea especially shines as a character, suffering through a difficult marriage and finally greeting happiness with open arms and a great deal of maturity. Each character has both flaws and virtues, and they are all well-drawn and capable of existence.I love the society of Middlemarch, and I’d like to think of it as a snapshot of a small, somewhat rural town, all residents bound together against scandal and “new” inhabitants. She’s an author that captures the connections between people really well. Married people, friends, clients, children; all are connected and believably so.I enjoyed the epilogue, even though it wasn’t necessary since I felt as though I lived in Middlemarch. Having such a place just stop existing is impossible!Wish I could go back and read it again!
    • 4/5
      Middlemarch is, as much as anything, a domestic novel illustrating the importance of marriage. The decision to marry, to entrust one's future and well-being to another person, is not to be taken lightly. In a desire to be useful to a man of letters, beautiful young Dorothea Brooke ties herself to a melancholy and jealous man who is unworthy of her devotion. Dr. Lydgate rashly chooses a wife based on physical attractiveness rather than depth of character and lives to regret his decision. Both Dorothea and Lydgate find a measure of peace by submitting their own desires to those of their mates, without receiving much in return. Mary Garth proves to be as shrewd as she is pretty. Both Mary and her suitor are fully aware of his shortcomings, and their partnership enables him to succeed where he would otherwise have failed. George Eliot's keen insight into human nature makes this character-driven novel feel as fresh as a contemporary novel. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      I was reading an issue of a magazine where pastors were giving out their selections for favourite books, and one pastor chose Middlemarch, saying it was the best novel in the English language. In my opinion its a good book but not a great one. The writing is good at times but hard to read at others. It didn't have a great moral dilemma to make you really think about it in your life or characters that were believable and hard to conceptualize. But it is a book to recommend as the situation of Mr. Bulstrode is an interesting discussion point.
    • 4/5
      I found this book terribly difficult to get into, but once past the first section, it got better and better. The problem with the start is that Dorothea does not appear to be that likable of a character and I really need to be able to connect or sympathize with one or more of the main characters in order to really enjoy a book. Dorothea does become a much more sympathetic character and her strength of mind certainly appealed to me. Middlemarch is an epic but not in the way that I have come to think of epic works. It is an epic of the thoughts and motivations and strengths and weaknesses of those very human beings who populate the novel. The book slowly builds reaching a quiet crescendo that satisfies the reader who has invested the time and effort into reading it. I learned early on that Middlemarch was best enjoyed by reading it slowly, a little at a time and letting it ferment. Although the reading was a little tedious at times, the payoff was worth it.
    • 5/5
      i liked this book very very much; but Jim did not like it at all, although he managed to finish it in around 2007; I read it in my 20's or 30's; cant remember exactly; only Eliot that I disliked was Ramola; and Daniel Deronda was not so good, either
    • 4/5
      I was assigned this book in college and faked my way through the class. Years later, I picked it up. It took me 2 yrs to read in fits and starts. The story bogs down in places, but ultimately it was totally worth the long struggle. Very rich. I hate to say it, but I'll need to read it again sometime in order to really understand everything Eliot is trying to say here.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book, from beginning to end. I can't remember right now when I read it, or why on earth I didn't write a review!
    • 5/5
      Absolutely great. Fantastically true. It is one of the books you read, and changes your life. Or at least your view on it. Really, one of the best books ever written.
    • 4/5
      An undeniably great book, but tough going for me. Much of it seemed "scholarly" and almost tedious. I'm glad I made it to the end, though!
    • 5/5
      This is one of my all time favorite books.
    • 2/5
      This was a slog for me. Certainly it picked up after Casaubon's demise but not to an extent that kept it from feeling like a chore to finish the book. I can see that this is a great novel in many ways, but for sheer reading pleasure, it doesn't compare to the greatness AND readability of Villette or David Copperfield or Emma (just throwing a few superb, old, English novels out there.) There's something sterile about it, there's no mess, no slipping-in of the author's frame-of-mind. It is observant, yes, and deeply so, but clinically.
    • 4/5
      I've just finished reading Middlemarch. It took me quite a while to get through but I attribute this more to the fact that I was unable to get the book from the library until just a few days ago and was forced to read the online editions for the longest time. Also, I did not become engrossed in the book until I'd read almost half of it. I think this is because there are many characters and a web of story lines playing out at once, so it was hard to become engrossed in any one story until more of the interwoven plot was revealed. In some ways I found the book very similar to Tolstoy's War and Peace (minus the battlefield). Both Middlemarch and War and Peace are huge, sprawling historical novels, written around the same time in the nineteenth century but many decades after the events they describe. They are both complex epics which interweave the fates of many different characters amidst a backdrop of political unrest/reform. In Middlemarch, the characters are all neighbors living in the same place - Middlemarch. Tolstoy's characters are brought together by war. Both George Eliot and Leo Tolstoy often reveal great meaning from seemingly insignificant events and create situations forcing characters to choose between selfish and selfless behavior. Other common themes are self-determination vs fate, money and debt, compassion, forgiveness, sympathy and how our actions affect and are affected by the actions of others. Marriage is one of the main themes of both Middlemarch and War and Peace. Both novels provide intimate looks at married relationships, both suitable and unsuitable. I think Tolstoy tends to convey a more hopeful attitude toward marriage in War and Peace, although both he and Eliot delve into the complexities of relationships that take place behind closed doors, paying particular attention to communication (or lack thereof) between husbands and wives. Overall, I found War and Peace to be a bit more optimistic in its depiction of marriage than Middlemarch. Eliot focuses on the trials of Dorothea, an upper middle-class woman in Victorian England who is unable to learn Greek or Latin simply for herself and attempts to find fulfillment through the scholarly work of her husband, the dry, self-centered and much older Causabon. Through Dorothea, Eliot calls particular attention to a woman’s role in marriage. She ends the book on this thought, which makes her concerns for conventional marriage a central theme of the story. Eliot displays a keen understanding of numan nature, intricately examining each of her characters in turn, and is able to realistically convey the hopes, dreams, failures and anxieties of each as they are cought by the expectations of British society. She introduces us to Lydgate, a struggling young doctor, new to Middlemarch and in love with the simple-minded beauty Rosamond Vincy, Rosamond's irresponsible and unmotivated brother Fred and his love, practicle and plain Mary Garth, and Causabon's good-looking young cousin, Will Ladislaw, who falls for Dorothea. I found myself empathizing with characters on more than one occasion. I felt Fred's feelings of stupidity and shame when he was unable to meet his debt to the Garths and agonized with Lydgate as he became more and more entagled in debt, while wanting to smack Rosamond for her uselessness and deception. I felt both pity and triumph for Dorothea as she was unable to put into action many of her plans for helping others, but ultimately followed her heart and did not embrace the role that society dictated for her. If you are looking for an exciting read then Middlemarch may not be for you, but if you enjoy examining human nature and relationships, this book with it's large and varied cast of characters cought up in social expectations and desires may be just your cup of tea.
    • 4/5
      It's most interesting in the ways she differs from Austen. Much more political and philosophical and concerned with morals and the class system. I liked how it swept over many of the citizens of Middlemarch. It was about the whole town.
    • 5/5
      It's true, what all those people said about this book. This is one of those books that alters your lens on life. I was not kind to this book, and did not give it its proper due because I took much too long to read it, being frequently distracted by more superficial discourses, which only diluted the richness of the style and depth of the prose.
      But despite that, it waited for me patiently and did not fail to reward, and nor did I fail to marvel.
    • 5/5
      Excellent. A traditional novel with a lot of psychological truth, a great panorama of the society, some humour mixed in, and no easy exits.
    • 5/5
      Masterful. Probably the only 19th century English novel comparable to the great Russian masters.
    • 5/5
      Moving and profound; all the superlatives are true. There is an aphorism on nearly every page and altogether this is one of those nineteenth century novels that is about a very specific (imaginary) place and yet contains the whole world.
    • 5/5
      Loved it. Interesting characters and twists in the plot
    • 5/5
      Awhile ago I ended up watching 'Til Human Voices Wake Us and there was this beautiful scene where the two main characters are teens out on a lake. The girl is reading a book of poetry and the boy asks about it. She fondly exclaims that it's words (or it's a book of words, bear with me and my lapse of detail retention). He looks off at the lake as if he doesn't care all that much so she holds the book up to his ear, flicks through the pages so they brush against his earlobe, and asks him if he can hear them.

      If I could live to be half as well read and witty as Eliot, I'd consider myself truly happy. As it is, I'll settle for the time being with simply hearing her beautiful prose flick softly against my ear whilst being thoroughly inspired by her intellect and ability. There's so much depth and contradiction in her characters, so much humanity. I found it absolutely lovely and delicious.

      I'm not quite sure what else there is to say about this book as of yet. I'm still sitting with it and adoring it.
    • 5/5
      This is one of my favorite novels. I love reading the story of this community, especially Dorothea and her trials with the Rev. Casaubon. As Virginia Woolf once said, this is truly a book for adults.
    • 5/5
      This classic novel has been languishing on my bookshelf for more than a decade in the 'Books I Really Ought To Read' corner of shame so I was very glad that the Group Reads - Literature group picked it for their next book. It moved me to pick it up and stick with it, not to be seduced away by shorter 200-page-reads.I will state up front that I just loved this book. I approached it expecting to enjoy it, certainly to appreciated it for its classical literary merit, but not necessarily to love it in the way I do some of my favourite more contemporary novels. How wrong I was! I am used to reading classic novels and commenting on their literary merit as if they are a genre apart from their modern counterparts, but what struck me about Middlemarch was how alive and contemporary it was - I raced through to the end empathising and identifying with the characters and situations from my modern perspective. Much has been written about Eliot's depth of characterisation and layered storytelling, about her use of language and development of themes - all undeniably valid. However, what is sometimes missed in these lofty critiques is that Middlemarch is a cracking tale and a great love story. It's one of those rare novels that you live with and are absorbed by so completely and for so long, that on finishing it is as if you have lost a group of friends.Admittedly, in the beginning it took a while to understand where Eliot was heading with the many different character threads and her somewhat verbose style took a few chapters to get into. If you find this difficult, I can only recommend you stick with it. This book more than returns the favour by the end and I found I whipped through the second half, desperate to find out how it would all end up for my favourites.Possibly the best demonstration of its pulling power is that the characters grow and develop so much over the course of the novel that I know that I will re-read it sometime in the future because I want to go back to the early sections knowing what I do now about how each individual ends up.The most worthwhile read I've had in a long, long while and a rare 5 stars from me!
    • 5/5
      Why can't there be more than five stars for a book like this? And why can't I find the words to describe how beautiful Eliot's story is? One day after I finished it, I'm feeling the lingering effects of Eliot's wise insights into human behavior and relationships. Eliot has inspired me to be a better person.
    • 5/5
      Middlemarch is a towering achievement. It's tough to find words strong enough to describe it; I mean, I just finished Madame Bovary and called it perfect, so where do I go from there? Middlemarch is almost three times as long and it's still perfect; that's more impressive. But Anna Karenina is pretty close to perfect too, so here's the best I can do:

      George Eliot is better than Tolstoy.

      Tolstoy is a realistic writer: his characters are real, complicated people with real lives. Among other things, that means that they don't always get neat little character arcs; Tolstoy's plots don't always come together in a tidy bow. By comparison, guys like Hugo and Dickens operate in slightly surreal worlds; their characters' stories weave in and out of each other, often by means of coincidences that would be unlikely in real life. That's very satisfying from a plot point of view, but I know it bothers some people who can't get over its unlikeliness.

      And here's Eliot, walking a tightrope right over both of those methods. Her characters do intersect: they all come together - eventually - and they have enormously satisfying arcs. But it all happens completely naturally. She sets up each person's personality so carefully, so exquisitely, that everything that happens subsequently feels perfectly inevitable. It's one of the most tightly plotted books I've ever read. Not a thread out of place. It's an astonishing feat. There are times when I put the book down just to say, "I can't believe she's pulling this off." It's like the first time you get a handjob. "Technically, this is something I've experienced hundreds of times before...but holy shit, is it better!"

      You can borrow that comparison for your thesis if you want. I don't mind.

      And her writing! I put a tiny sampling of some of the many sentences that knocked me out in status updates below. Her mastery of the language is staggering.

      So okay, yeah, we should mention that it does take a while to get going. I didn't really figure out what Eliot was up to until about 400 pages in. That's a very long time. I had fragmented reading time during that period, so it's partly my fault, but I'm not the first to mention that Middlemarch isn't quick off the blocks. Normally I would say that prevents a book from being called perfect - but Eliot's so aware of what she's doing, and what she's doing is so brilliant, that I think Middlemarch actually earns the right to be a little boring for a while. The ROI is extraordinarily generous.

      A few years ago I had this flash of insight about a new friend I'd been making. We'd been hanging out for a couple of months, and one night she said something dismissive about someone else and all of a sudden, all the pieces I'd gotten to know fell into place and I knew her. "Oh!" I thought. "She's a narcissistic twat."

      I'm sure we all know how it feels, that moment when you finally really get someone. And Eliot works like that. Character spoilers, and also a very bad word, ahoy: I went back and forth on Dorothea several times before I finally realized what Eliot was showing me: a naive but good person groping for meaning, and fucking it up several times along the way. And it took me a while to realize that Rosamond's not just vacant: she's my favorite villain since Heathcliff. God, what a cunt.

      So yes, Eliot requires a great deal of patience and commitment. But it's so worth it. Ten stars, guys. A hundred stars. Millions and millions of stars. This book is a unicorn. It doesn't reveal itself easily, but when it does, it's magic.

      -----------------------

      Edition notes: this Penguin edition has a serviceable intro, but it's very short on endnotes. For example: each chapter begins with an epigram, but many of them are unattributed. I now know that the unattributed ones were written by Eliot (thanks Carla!), but an endnote to clue me in at the time would have been lovely, yes?
    • 5/5
      The small, fictional town of Middlemarch is a tight-knit community filled with people who are kind, pious, romantic or devious. In other words, it’s just like any other small town. Everyone has their own secrets and money problems and everyone knows everyone else’s business. The book looks closely at marriage, especially between two people who are not well-suited. Now for the meat of the story, spoilers and all...The main focus of the book is on three separate couples in Middlemarch, but unlike many books, the majority of the story happens after they’re married instead of during the courtship. First, there’s Dorothea, a young idealistic woman and Edward Casaubon, the scholarly older man she marries. She believes he will do great things and wants to be his helpmate in that process. Unfortunately, he’s not the great man she hoped he would be and she quickly finds herself in a lonely marriage. Then she meets his cousin, Will Ladislaw, and feels an instant connection.Then there’s the town’s doctor, Tertius Lydgate, who’s bursting at the seams with new ideas for the hospital and experiments to improve the healthcare offered. He falls for the sweet face of Rosamond Vincy and before he knows it, he’s married and she’s spending money faster than he can make it. Rosamond may be beautiful, but she’s also selfish and conniving, always looking for the next angle that will benefit her. The final couple, Mary Garth and Fred Vincy, tends to be everyone’s favorite. Fred is immature and constantly gets himself into financial troubles. Mary loves him, but refuses to marry him until he gets his life together and finds an occupation that he loves. I loved that Mary wasn’t willing to settle and her decision helped build a happier life for both of them. The three very different couples show a wide view of marriage. They offer both cautionary tales and sweet love stories. They remind us that you don’t always fall in love with the person you should and that sometimes people aren’t who they seem to be on the surface. I love classics, but to be honest it usually takes me a little bit it get into them. Once I adjust to the language and get to know the characters, then I’m good to go. This one was completely different. From the first chapter I felt like knew Dorothea Brooks. I didn’t agree with all of her choices or connect to her on every level, but I felt like I “got” her. Her noble aspirations and idealistic nature act as both main strength and weakness. I was rooting for her from the beginning and the final scene between her and Will is one of my absolute favorites. Sometimes, I felt so involved in Dorthea’s story that it was hard to switch gears and hear about the other people in Middlemarch, like Bulstrode of Dorothea’s sister Celia and her husband, Sir James. Parts of the story are slow. It’s hard to avoid that when you have 800 pages of provincial life. But I really loved the intricacies of the characters’ lives. Nothing is laid our in black or white. Each character does both good things and bad things, sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes not. Everyone has flaws and makes mistakes. Even our two idealistic heroes (Dorothea and Lydgate) make horrible choices when they pick their spouses. Those flaws make the characters feel very real and relatable, which is what made the book work for me. So, dig in and be willing to stick with the story, even if it gets slow, and you’ll be rewarded. The story is worth it, but don’t expect quick, constant drama.
    • 5/5
      Arguably the greatest novel in the English language, a richness of character and unity of theme hard to match. I've reread it every year or two since I discovered it. Even characters I don't like, she makes me understand, such as Rosamund and Bulstrode. Perhaps she is too easy on Farebrother, Fred and Lydgate, three men who indulge themselves more than is fitting.
    • 5/5
      Middlemarch is an intimate, yet sweeping look at a small English town in the Nineteenth Century.When the story opens, Dorothea Brooks is a young, beautiful girl whose burning passions are narrowly funneled into religious, moral, and intellectual fervor. She has a consuming desire to touch greatness. This leads her to marry the older, intense Casaubon, whom she envisions teaching her, and whom she expects to help in the work that consumes him. Simply, she considers him a great man, and expects to be brushed by his greatness.Another couple central to the story are Dr. Tertius Lydgate, a practical man of science, and the beautiful, coquettish, spoiled Rosamond Vincy.Middlemarch seemed to take me ages to read, but I loved it. I did, however, come away with a strong desire to kick a few butts, especially that of Rosamond Vincy Lydgate. I finished this yesterday morning, so I've had some time to reflect abuot why I reacted so stongly to her character. I believe it is because I was very annoyed that her character never seemed to mature much. Her character lacked developement, especially when compared to most of the other characters. I could definitely forgive her for being immature...but it irritates me that she remained that way!I find it interesting that every character ended up with a life that I found easy to predict. I'm not saying that I was particulary insightful. I think it had more to do with the writing - how fully the characters were fleshed out so that their motives were crystal clear, and it was obvious how they would react in any given situation. There must have been some good foreshadowing as well.The more I reflect on this book, the more I love it, and the more I appreciate Eliot's genius.
    • 5/5
      Middlemarch is primarily the story of Dorothea Brooke - a woman who wants to make the world a better place at a time when women were not encouraged to have ideas outside of their own homes. This ardent desire leads her to make some poor choices, and some admirable ones.This book is also a story about marriage. We see how Dorothea's marriage turns out - her sister Celia's marriage (Celia is the typical woman of her day), Rosamund's (the spoiled town beauty) marriage, and the marriage prospects of Mary Garth, a poor working girl.The author helps us to get inside the minds of her characters, which helps us to decide if we like them or not, or if we've made similar choices too. Often I found myself sympathizing with a character I initially disliked, because I was helped to see their emotions.It's very much a grown up book. If I had read this in my teens I would not have gained as much from the reading. There's no "and they lived happily ever after" here - Eliot keeps the story grounded.If I had to sum up [Middlemarch], I'd say Eliot gives us an inside view of the lives of women in her day. There's also quite a bit of political talk, helping us see what it must have been like to live in England while so much was starting to change.For me, this book was just about perfect. One day I'd like to re-read it because I know there are some things I missed this time around.