Middlemarch

Citation

Eliot, G. (2024). Middlemarch (R. Chatterjee, Ed.; Norton Critical Edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

Chapter Summary

Preface

A preface (page vii) and acknowledgments (page xi) come before the novel. The edition, by Ronjaunee Chatterjee, prints the corrected 1874 text with explanatory footnotes, then adds backgrounds, contemporary reactions and criticism, following the three-part Norton Critical format of annotated text, contexts and criticism. The volume runs to about 930 pages, of which the novel itself fills roughly the first 560.

The Text of Middlemarch

The novel is a study of provincial life in a Midlands town in the years leading up to the first Reform Bill, with the 1829 to 1832 setting visible in the dated references. It has a Prelude, eight books and a Finale.

• Prelude. It opens with Saint Theresa and the "later-born Theresas": women with great aims who find no epic life in which to use them. Dorothea is the novel's own example.
• Book I, Miss Brooke. Dorothea, a young woman of high ideals, rejects a suitable match and marries the scholar Mr Casaubon, hoping to share in a great work.
• Book II, Old and Young. The young doctor Tertius Lydgate arrives with plans for medical reform. Fred Vincy's debts and his love for Mary Garth begin to matter. Dorothea's honeymoon in Rome shows how little she and Casaubon share.
• Book III, Waiting for Death. The old miser Mr Featherstone lingers on while his relatives wait for his will, Casaubon is taken ill, and Lydgate's medical work and his attraction to Rosamond grow.
• Book IV, Three Love Problems. Featherstone's funeral and will open the book, to Fred's disappointment. The courtships of Fred and Mary Garth and of Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy develop beside Dorothea's troubled marriage and her friendship with Casaubon's young cousin Will Ladislaw.
• Book V, The Dead Hand. Casaubon dies, leaving a will that restricts Dorothea's inheritance if she marries Will, and the banker Bulstrode's past begins to surface through the arrival of Raffles.
• Book VI, The Widow and the Wife. Lydgate's marriage and money troubles grow, Bulstrode is pursued by Raffles, and Dorothea has to decide what to do about the condition on Will.
• Book VII, Two Temptations. Lydgate takes money from Bulstrode, Raffles dies in Bulstrode's care, and suspicion spreads until Bulstrode is publicly disgraced.
• Book VIII, Sunset and Sunrise. Lydgate is drawn into the scandal, Dorothea visits Rosamond, and Dorothea and Will come to an understanding. The Finale follows the couples further and ends with the sentence on "unhistoric acts".

Backgrounds and Contemporary Reactions (pages 565 to 654)

The backgrounds section begins with Eliot's notebook "Quarry for Middlemarch" and continues with twenty-three selections from her letters, journals and essays, among them "How I Came to Write Fiction," "Notes on Form in Art," a passage from "The Natural History of German Life," and letters to her publisher John Blackwood. The contemporary reactions are five pieces: R. H. Hutton in the Spectator, Edith Simcox in the Academy, Sidney Colvin in the Fortnightly Review, Henry James in the Galaxy, and Virginia Woolf in the Times Literary Supplement (1919).

Criticism (pages 655 to 900)

Twelve critical essays, by authors including Catherine Gallagher, Gillian Beer, Neil Hertz and Clare Carlisle, make up this section. The titles show the range: Eliot and Darwin ("From Darwin's Plots"), colonies ("From George Eliot and the Colonies"), psychoanalysis and aliveness, Feuerbach and secularism, and marriage, realism and gender (Grace Lavery's "Trans Realism, Psychoanalytic Practice, and the Rhetoric of Technique" and Jill Galvan's "Marital Realism"), and Spinoza. A chronology of Eliot's life and a selected bibliography close the volume.

Key Concepts

The Text

• Epic life and the later-born Theresa: the Prelude's question of what a person of high aims can do when her society offers no great task.
• Vocation and compromise: Lydgate's scientific ambition and Dorothea's wish to do good are tested by marriage, money and the town.
• Provincial community: the town's households, rumours and obligations form a web in which each person's choices affect others.
• Unhistoric acts: the Finale's claim that the good of the world depends partly on unrecorded lives.

Contexts and Criticism

• Realism and form: Eliot's own essays and later critics ask what the novel's method claims about the world.
• Science and philosophy: Darwinian, Feuerbachian and Spinozist readings place the novel among scientific and philosophical ideas.
• New readings: recent essays approach the novel through empire, gender, psychoanalysis and secularism.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Selections that match the three-part format. The publisher lists twenty-three background selections, five contemporary reactions and twelve critical analyses, so one volume covers text, context and interpretation.
• A range of critical approaches. The twelve essays take up Darwin, the colonies, psychoanalysis, Feuerbach, marital realism, trans realism and Spinoza. Reviewers quoted by Norton (Deidre Lynch, Carolyn Lesjak and Lorenzo Servitje) describe the edition as well suited to teaching because of its annotations and the range of readings.
• Eliot's own voice. The notebook "Quarry for Middlemarch," the journal entries and the letters let a student see the novel's making.

Limitations

• Heavy for a first read. The volume has about 930 pages, and the novel is the first 560. A reader who wants only the text may find the supplements an added weight.
• A selective critical record. Seventeen critical responses cannot survey a century and a half of writing on the novel. A student who needs a fuller history of its reception will have to look beyond the volume.
• Not a study of textual variants. The edition prints the corrected 1874 text with small variations from Eliot's manuscript, so readers interested in the novel's earlier printings need a scholarly edition.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the British literature course, Middlemarch is the Victorian novel on the list, and this edition is the one to choose when a seminar needs the text, contexts and criticism in a single volume. The Norton Anthology of English Literature is a survey anthology, and the Routledge history by Carter and McRae, Sanders's Short Oxford History and Bate's very short introduction give period and genre background. Raymond Williams's The Country and the City studies how English writing from the sixteenth century to the twentieth imagines the country and the city, and offers a way to place a provincial novel in that tradition. Paradise Lost in Gordon Teskey's Norton Critical Edition shares the same series format and makes a useful contrast in period and genre.

How to Use This Book

The novel is long, so plan for several weeks. Read the preface first, then the novel book by book, using the footnotes only when a reference blocks understanding. Read the Prelude and Finale together. If your course is short, read Eliot's "Quarry" and letters after Book IV, the contemporary reactions after Book VIII, and two or three critical essays that match your essay topic. For research, begin with the critical essays closest to your topic and use their notes to go further.

While reading, track Dorothea, Lydgate and Fred as three attempts at a vocation, and note where money and marriage constrain each.