I am drawn to book clubs that I have the intention of going to but have failed to follow through on nearly every single occasion. From the local bookstore hosting book clubs for everything from epic reads to backyard birding and the nearby libraries with bookclubs for every genre at every time of day for those will inflexible schedules.
As such, I began Middlemarch by George Eliot with the same intention that I have every time I calendar a book club: I will read, take notes, annotate the pages, and dog-ear the passages that speak to me so that I can ultimately sit in a circle with other fellow book lovers and discuss what this book did or did not do for me. The goal being that I will actually go to this book club, socialize, and talk amongst could-be friends because what better way to meet people who enjoy reading than go to an event that cultivates the love for the written word.
As I mark the days off my calendar with the event date looming like a shadow over me, I go against all previous advice and ignore the note “Book Club, 6PM!”
Ignoring advice is fitting, not only for me, but also for almost every single character in this book.
Starting with the elements I enjoyed, the characters are well-thought out and fully-developed. As a result, the good and bad of it is that you could predict what each character was going to do before they did it: there were no surprises. Clearly, this is great character development. Not-so-clearly is this just a thin plot-line.
Taking a step back, the characters were the driving force of the story, so the plot was not intended to be thick, begrudging, or even full. The plot was intended to help drive the characters, almost as if the plot was an afterthought while the characters were the beginning and the end. I find this clever. You become a fly on the wall rather than a reader. Almost like a friend in the room who they forgot was there as they carry on with the typical mundanity of life in the 19th century which of course was not-so mundane, but rather obtusely dramatic.
My initial reaction to this novel was likening it to Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf–just a day in the life. And I do think there is value to this–the plot being “c’est la vie.” In a way, I think I find it harder to write about the day-in-and-day-out rather than coming up with an elaborate plot-line driven by an all-encompassing conflict. The conflict in Middlemarch being the inability for any of the characters to take a single ounce of advice in all of the almost 800 pages.
I suppose this is where my frustration lies. Which is ironic because it’s something that I think most of us relate to. The idea that at one point or another our own intransigence has led to mistakes with consequences of great import is an all-too recurring theme in the daily lives of almost everyone I know. This is where I found it difficult to get through. Not because it wasn’t well-developed or well-written, but rather, because I’m just plain tired of it. It’s just too real.
Mistake after mistake after mistake. Ignoring advice, making the same error twice, and just the absurd amount of pride and so much of it due to just the way people interacted with each other and the social hierarchies and stratification that existed which ultimately prevented people from being clear, concise, and to the point. 800 pages of secrecy, beating around the bush, and drama got exhausting. Needless to say, I would not have fared well during this period of time.
After reflecting on the feelings I have now about this novel, I almost think that the frustration I felt by the end of it was purposeful. Similar to how parents must feel when their child is doing something so plainly stupid after multiple attempts at advising them against this act, the parents are just forced to sit back and watch it unfold. I stopped fighting against the frustration and just let the drama unfold because there was simply nothing I could do about it. Again, I think the intention was to get the audience to the point of a type of submission. Submitting to the fact that there’s nothing we can do about it because the characters are going to do what they’re going to do regardless of our feelings. George Eliot spared no regard to her audience in this way. As if saying “if I have to watch this play out, so do you.”
A good novel forces you to look at the characters and react accordingly. You cringe when they do something foolish. You laugh when they do something absurd. You empathize when they come to the realization that they’ve made a mistake and the consequences seem completely unfair.
I do believe that Middlemarch ultimately succeeded in this even if I did more cringing than empathizing. It acted both as a narration of the life of young people trying to figure it out and also as a critique of the problems associated with formality and public reception. Really, the entire work felt like a warning against excessive pride and being evasive.
Middlemarch succeeded in another way. As mentioned above, the interrogatory into the lives of regular people with regular things happening is harder to do than coming up with a clever conflict that keeps the audience on its toes for the whole piece. Why is this harder? Because capturing the mundanity of life while being so clearly explicit about capturing the feelings of mundanity is nearly impossible. We can think of it in our own terms; how often are you able to sit and conceptualize, nonetheless verbalize, what you’re feeling, especially in the moment? Hardly ever, if you’re not an alien.
Capturing mundanity and the trials of the day-in-and-day-out takes a keen observation and a certain patience that I think is unique to novelists of this kind, hence why this book is so revered. I think it also takes a certain type of admitting to oneself where you’ve errored in the past to fully grasp the emotions interwoven throughout Middlemarch. Marrying the wrong person, not knowing what career to take, hiding a big part of your past, family drama: these are all normal aspects of the human condition that are not unique to these characters, but what is unique is the audience being self-reflective enough to empathize, cringe, and laugh at the right times.
So, while I felt a broad variety of emotions while reading this, I also felt a certain camaraderie with those who have also read this book (yes, including those present at the book club I did not attend). The human condition is that of compassion. From the Latin roots Com–together and Passion–to suffer. Middlemarch is an act of compassion, the truest form of the human condition.
Wolf Den Books 
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