Middlemarch

I recently finished the book Middlemarch by George Eliot. I've rarely read such a powerful character-driven novel. Centered around the town of Middlemarch in England, the book looks at the intertwining lives of various people. Plots are there, but they're more devices for us to look into the lives of the people involved. It's about ordinary people, where life pretty much goes on day by day and character is developed by small, daily choices. Marriage isn't the perfect ending that it is in Austen's work; the end towards which the whole book moves. In fact, in Middlemarch we start with a marriage between Dorothea and the middle-aged Casaubon and see how Dorothea's young idealistic hopes of being able to help her husband in his study are crippled by his distrust of himself and, consequently, those around him. Marriage isn't a place to end, but a place to begin.

Having breakfast with my dad recently we talked about books. He'd just finished The Fountainhead by Rand and described the protagonist an Individual - someone who makes their own choices and nobody can unduly influence him. He's his own man, strong jaw, decides for himself. Eliot tried to do the opposite here - nobody is on their own and the choices we make affect others. We are tied to others and at times confined by how our actions will touch upon them. Character matters, and character flaws don't go away as time goes on. At the end of the book I wondered how she would "tie it all up," as it wasn't a puzzle that was just missing a last piece and then it would all make sense. Character is more like a woven sweater and the flaws or missteps have to be corrected. And that takes work.

Eliot also has a genius for description and turns of phrases. Prosperity can be a "pale shade of bribery." The question "why?" is an "inconvenient word." Casaubon distrusted his wife, and "what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?" And if we could know what everyone around us was really going through "we should die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence."

It was simply marvelous to read.