Middlemarch
Winter break is one of the few times of the year that I have time to sit down and read a really long book, and the first of the very long books is George Eliot’s most-known work. Middlemarch is the name of a Victorian England town, and the story is set in the 1830s. The drama explores the two big problems that everyone has to figure out: what to devote their life’s work to, and whom to marry. Middlemarch is quite similar to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, in its aim and scope: both build expansive worlds and focus on half-a-dozen characters instead of one or two protagonists, and the core, overarching thesis in both is that history is made by everyday people. Eliot is at times just as psychologically incisive as Dostoevsky was, and I was amazed by how relatable and real the characters seem at those moments. All of the major characters were multi-dimensional which makes them hard to summarize by a few adjectives, and as such I was able to relate to distinct parts in all of them which I’m sure all readers can.
Through the book I’m reminded of the value of humility, not from dogmatic moral good but as the best utilitarian policy. In the story, the beautiful but egoistic Rosamond falls in love and marries the young surgeon Tertius Lydgate in a romantic flourish that soon devolves into bitter fights, arising from debts incurred by Rosamond’s excessive spending. Both are aristocratically proud: Lydgate, with his strong ambitions to change the world of the medical profession, used to look upon the debt-ridden with haughty pity, yet that attitude only made his guilt worse when he had to ask money from the people he formerly pitied because of his worsening finances. Rosamond is the same, not able to bear the disgrace of living with less fine furniture or moving to a smaller house. The two’s lack of humility made their lives worse in their hardest moments, financially and emotionally, because they had grace, and thus could be disgraced – I imagine humility, the act of not having pretenses of lofty grace, would make the inevitable downturns in life much more bearable and make others sympathetic to the humble person’s troubles instead of secretly enjoying and pining for the downfall of prouder people.
% grep -i "middlemarch" quotes.txt12 matches
on ambition
“In the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change!”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on honeymoons
“Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together, but it soon turns into working day”
— (Caleb Garth), George Eliot, Middlemarch
on guilt
“A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from a Philistine under the same circumstances; the difference will chiefly be found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very disagreeable cud in that way”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on pride
“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on magnanimity
“People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on hope
“What we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire; the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on history
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on women
“The brilliant women’s ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood, so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on women
“Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on women
“It is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on women
“The remote worship of a woman throned out of their reach plays a great part in men’s lives, but in most cases the worshiper longs for some queenly recognition, some approving sign by which the soul’s sovereign may cheer him without descending from her high place”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
on superficiality
“The shallowness of a water nixie’s soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic”
— George Eliot, Middlemarch