Middlemarch ~ George Eliot (1871-2)

George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-2) is an epic classic and famously reviewed by Virginia Woolf as being "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". Woolf's praise rings true as Middlemarch depicts the lives of an expansive cast of characters within a small rural town, under the looming 1832 Reform Act. The novel, like the Act, expands public attention to the wider population as key characters including Dorothea Brooke, Mr Casaubon and Mary Garth present the experiences of conflicting genders, social classes and ages. These three characters are a small sample of the intriguing, and conflicting, accounts told in the novel; the work rather depicts the whole town. Each character is well developed and while some leading characters such as Dorothea spend more time with the reader than the likes of Mary Garth, each 'character' feels real, with their own aspirations and anxieties. In the subtitle to the work, Eliot describes the novel as "A Study of Provincial Life", suggesting that we are reading a non-fiction report or witnessing a scientific experiment. Both scenarios are thoroughly believable as the detail for each character breathes a formulated personality. The remarkable achievement of this "Study" is Eliot's attention to, and understanding of, gender conflicts: while the psyche of Rosamond Vincy is intricately realised, her desire to escape provincial life, the oppositional arguments of her husband are given equal justice. Opposed to being degraded to a patriarchal obstacle, Doctor Lydgate is given fair treatment by Eliot, where his dichotomy of wanting to pursue his scientific discoveries for himself and battling society's pressure to appease his wife's desires is explored. While under the pen name of 'George Eliot', readers were impressed by 'his' ability to write female characters, yet Mary Ann Evans also had the skill to write, and understand, the psychology of men, thus appealing to a much wider readership with more equal representation.

Both characters, like the remainder of the wide ensemble, are presented with their ambitions, but also their downfalls, a famous example being Rosamond's desires described as "castles in the air", and for this reason, it is difficult to assign the 'hero's and 'villain's of the story: they are all simply human.

The greatest appeal of the novel is ironically it's largest fault: in granting attention to so many figures, the work is lengthy. Much of the narrative is preoccupied with describing the minuscule, opposed to progressing the story. There are also multiple narrative arcs which intermingle, creating a vast and complex web. This inevitable confusion is amplified by the novel's length, yet in following the written style of analysing the details, the work can be completed through patience. Once concluded, the true reward is the understanding and integration into the town and the feeling that Middlemarch speaks to its readers, with each re-reading a new experience, as the stories of the expansive cast will appeal to all, regardless of age, gender, class etc. and will appeal to a different aspect of life upon each return.