Middlemarch by George Eliot

May 15, 2005

Middlemarch cannot but generate a conversation about moral values, even as it engages the reader in a dramatic account of human networks: love relationships, marriages, family controversies, exploitations and manipulations due to money, various struggles to escape, to follow some kind of dream. I have always been fascinated by Dorothea's desire to be a St. Theresa, caught as she is in the conventions of a small town in 19th century England. Who has not wanted to break out that way? (I, for instance, wanted to be Virginia Woolf or Georgia O’Keefe). The novel is in no sense archaic or formulaic, and I think our conversation may give off some sparks.

"The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities."
–George Eliot

Portrait of George Eliot courtesy of Wikipedia.

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