Summer 2023 - Middlemarch by George Eliot

Resources for Middlemarch

Discussion Questions

Prelude (6/21 discussion)

The story of Saint Theresa is clearly set up as a keynote for the novel. What are its crucial elements? What ideal does Saint Theresa embody? What obstacles does she face, and how are her aspirations fulfilled? What’s different for “later-born Theresas”? 

What’s the overall tone of the Prelude?If (like the title and subtitle) it teaches us something about how to read the novel, what’s the lesson here? What are we set up to expect (or fear, or hope) for the characters we meet? 

The Prelude is our first meeting with the narrator of Middlemarch. So far, how would you characterize her*? What kind of relationship does she establish with us here? As you read on, be aware that one of her favorite tricks is to use free indirect discourse – that is, to channel other characters’ points of view through her own voice. She’s also prone to irony: you might notice an ironic inflection here, for instance, in the lines about levels of “feminine incompetence.” 

Book I: Miss Brooke (6/21 discussion)

What do you think about the epigraphs: they provide clues (if sometimes oblique or obscure ones) to each chapter’s major themes. A particularly good one is the quotation from Don Quixote at the top of Chapter 2: how does the epigraph illuminate the events of that chapter? Who in the chapter turns out to be “Quixotic,” and who’s the realist? Is either one of them right?

“Book I: Miss Brooke” comes immediately after the Prelude, and the juxtaposition inevitably suggests parallels. Is Dorothea a “later-born Theresa”? What are her ideals and aspirations? How do her circumstances support or hinder their realization? How does the Prelude prepare us to read her character and her story?

One of the ways we get to know Dorothea is by comparison — to her sister Celia, for instance. What are some of the similarities between Dorothea and Celia? How are they different — and how are those differences reflected in their dress, their speech, and their actions? What do we learn about them from the scene in Chapter I in which they divide up their mother’s jewels?

“Signs are small measurable things,” remarks the narrator, “but interpretations are illimitable.” This principle applies to many aspects of Book I (and, indeed, to the whole novel), but the varying interpretations of Mr. Casaubon provide an especially good case study. He is seen very differently by different characters, including not just Dorothea and Celia but also Mr. Brooke, Sir James Chettam, and (memorably) Mrs. Cadwallader. What do these characters’ views of Mr. Casaubon reveal about them? What do we actually know about Mr. Casaubon’s own point of view? What are other scenes that highlight problems of (mis)interpretation?

Mr. Casaubon’s proposal is both hilarious and ominous. What accounts for Dorothea’s response, especially when it seems so obvious to us (and to nearly everyone else in the novel) that she’s making a terrible mistake? What does her choice say about the big issues of idealism, aspiration, and vocation raised by the Prelude and explored in our introduction to Dorothea in Chapter 1?

We meet a lot of characters in Book I and  can’t always tell who will turn out to be important: as the narrator says, “Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.” What are your first impressions of Will Ladislaw? Dr. Lydgate? Fred and Rosamond Vincy? Mary Garth? How do these characters and their stories seem, so far, to fit into larger patterns the novel has been setting up? Are any of them ardent or petty, for instance? Who has a vocation and who doesn’t?

You may have noticed that I’m having trouble not quoting the narrator: you may want to keep a notebook just for jotting down examples of what one 19th-century enthusiast called “the wit and wisdom of George Eliot”! How does the narrator’s commentary affect your reading of the novel? (I don’t mean whether you like the narration or not, but how it steers you, what it makes you notice, what tone it takes, etc.)

Book II: Old and Young (6/21 discussion)

1. We learn a lot about Dr. Lydgate in Chapter XV. Is Lydgate another example of a ‘later-born Theresa’? How is his story like or unlike Dorothea’s? What do we learn about him from the incident with Laure?

2. Chapter XV contains some pointed remarks about the role we (yes, you and I) play in people’s failures. Indeed, the narrator of Middlemarch uses the first-person plural pretty often throughout the novel. How does it affect you to be drawn into the novel in this way? How do you think this strategy serves the larger purposes of the novel?

3.  What parallels do you notice between Lydgate and Rosamond’s courtship and Dorothea and Casaubon’s?

4. When Lydgate casts his vote in Chapter XVIII, it’s a pivotal moment in his relationship with Bulstrode and with the town of Middlemarch — and perhaps also in our understanding of his character and situation. What does Lydgate (and what do we) learn from this episode? Do you think Lydgate made the right decision? Do you think there is a right decision?

5. How does Dorothea’s view of Mr. Casaubon change during their honeymoon? What are the consequences — moral or otherwise — of her new perspective?

6. Chapters XIX-XXI are great examples of Eliot’s manipulation of chronology in the novel. Here’s a fun experiment: list the following events first in the order that we are told about them, then in the order that they “actually” happen:

i. Dorothea and Casaubon go to Rome for their honeymoon

ii. Dorothea cries in her apartment in Rome

iii. Naumann points Dorothea out to Will

iv. Naumann sees Dorothea in the Vatican

v. Dorothea goes to the Vatican

vi. Will visits Dorothea in her apartment

vii. Dorothea quarrels with Casaubon

Why mess with chronology this way? What structural problem is Eliot trying to solve? How does the treatment of time in the novel compare to the treatment of point of view?

7. We meet yet more people in Book II — and meet some people again. What do you think about Mr. Bulstrode? Reverend Farebrother? Will Ladislaw? Have your reactions to any characters changed substantially since Book I? If so, have they changed, or have you?

Book III: Waiting for Death (7/12 discussion)

1. In this book we get to know the Garths much better — not just Mary, but also her mother and father. What are they like? What values does their family represent? What kind of contrast do they provide to other families we know, such as the Vincys?

2. Virginia Woolf famously called Middlemarch a novel for “grown-up people,” but a lot of its main characters are very young and prone to youthful mistakes. What lesson does (or at least could) Fred learn from his bad experience of horse trading, and from the harm his mistakes cause the Garths?

3. The opening paragraph of Chapter 27 is probably the most famous single passage in Middlemarch. What do you think the parable of the pier glass helps us understand about the novel’s structure? In what other ways does it illuminate the novel’s ideas?

4. The narrator’s interruption (“but why always Dorothea?”) in the first sentence of Chapter 29 not only interrupts our concentration on the plot but also raises an important question about priorities and sympathies — both hers and ours. It’s followed by an extended section on Mr. Casaubon. Why do you think she makes such a big deal of this shift in perspective? What are the stakes?

5. Why does Dorothea’s blue-green boudoir look so different to her when she returns there after her honeymoon? (We see her boudoir again at several points in the novel — it’s interesting to track her relationship to the room.)

6. Chapters 27-29 make up another unit that is interesting to analyze for its manipulation of chronology. Again, it’s worth considering why (both structurally and thematically) Eliot doesn’t just give us the events in linear order. What’s different, for instance, about the encounter between Lydgate and Sir James’s servant at the end of Chapter 27 when we return to it in Chapter 29 — how has our perspective on that event changed?

Book IV:  Three Love Problems (7/12 discussion)

1. What are the three love problems? What elements do they share, and how are they different?

2. Featherstone’s funeral is a great set piece, not just for the wonderful dark comedy of it but for the way it brings some of the novel’s diverse plot lines together. What does this criss-crossing of stories and characters reveal — about the class structure of the community and the novel, for instance?

3. It takes much longer for Rosamond and Lydgate’s marriage to actually happen than it did for Dorothea and Casaubon’s. As a result, we (and they) have more time to think about everything. What do their marriage preparations show about Rosamond and Lydgate? Are they well suited? What do you think are the biggest threats to their marital happiness? Dorothea saw marriage to Mr. Casaubon as a way of realizing her dreamed-of vocation. How do Rosamond and Lydgate think of marriage?

4. There’s a lot of attention to money in Book IV, from Fred’s disappointed expectations to to Lydgate’s profligate spending to Dorothea’s anxiety about her prospective inheritance. We also meet some of the poorest characters in the novel, the Dagleys. What is money good for in the novel? What are the moral effects of wealth or poverty?

5. Will is becoming a more prominent character in this book. What kind of a character is he turning out to be? How does he see Dorothea? How does she see him? What kind of contrast does he offer to Mr. Casaubon? (It’s interesting to compare the metaphorical language used for each of them.) Does he seem like a good alternative to Mr. Casaubon, or do you have reservations about him?

6. Chapter 42 could be seen as the culmination of the effort begun in Chapter 29 to win our sympathy for Mr. Casaubon — or at least to see things from his point of view. How do you feel about Dorothea’s struggles at the end of the chapter, and about their resolution?

Book V: The Dead Hand (August 2 discussion)

1. Chapters 43-45 offer yet another wonderful sequence worth analyzing for its twists of chronology. I think that, in addition to helping us see situations from different points of view, in constructing the novel this way Eliot is also working on a problem identified by her contemporary, philosopher-historian Thomas Carlyle: “Narrative is linear; action is solid.” Try to draw a diagram representing the movement of our attention through one of these sections(any kind of graphic that you think that will work) — messy, right? But if you think in three dimensions (if you think of yourself as building a solid) it neatens up.

2. Chapter 43 brings different plot lines together again — a bit to Dorothea’s surprise, as she doesn’t expect to see Will Ladislaw at the Lydgates’. What’s the effect for us of running into people outside of their usual context? Do we notice different things, or judge them differently?

3. This section focuses a lot on Lydgate’s career. How are things going for him? Why? How has his marriage affected his pursuit of his vocation? How have things changed for him — or have they? — since the earlier episode in which he voted for Tyke? In the struggle between ardour and pettiness, which force seems to be winning?

4. Lydgate, of course, is not the only person in his marriage. What has marriage meant for Rosamond? Has it changed her at all?

5. In Chapter 48 Mr. Casaubon asks Dorothea for a promise that is very hard for her to make. What are the stakes here— not just for her personally, but morally, in a more general way? Are there limits on the obligations imposed on us by sympathy? Does Dorothea make the right choice? Is there a right choice?

6. Brooke’s speech in Chapter 51 is another of the novel’s comic highlights. What picture of electoral politics does Eliot paint for us? What attitude towards reform does the novel encourage: what kind of change is desirable and how can or should it be brought about?

Book VI: The Widow and the Wife (August 2 discussion)

1. “What could she do? What ought she to do?” wondered Dorothea near the beginning of the novel. She thought marrying Mr. Casaubon was the answer: are there any ways in which she was right? What might she, or we, now see as an answer? Was there a better one then? Is there a better one now? How does Mr. Casaubon’s death affect the range of her choices ? Is it wrong — for her or for us — to be glad, or at least relieved, that he is dead?

2. How does the codicil to Mr. Casaubon’s will change the relationship between Dorothea and Will Ladislaw? Do you look at these two differently because of Mr. Casaubon’s suspicions? Do you think they should be romantically involved — that the book has set them up to be in any way solutions for each other’s problems, for instance? Or would falling in love with Will just be a different kind of mistake for Dorothea? It’s interesting to compare the two partings between them in Book VI.

3. A major development in Book VI is Fred’s engagement to work for Caleb Garth. Do you think that this decision reflects larger patterns of value in the novel? Is working the land shown as better than burrowing in old books, for instance? better than science or medicine? Fred’s father is upset that Fred is throwing away his gentleman’s education: is there a commentary in here on social mobility or class consciousness?

4. How is the coming of the railway represented? What connections can we make between the opposition to the railway and the novel’s attitude to democracy?

5. Are your sympathies shifting about at all with regard to the Lydgates’ marriage? How does Rosamond’s miscarriage affect them? What about the couple’s financial woes, and attitudes towards resolving them: do you blame Lydgate, or Rosamond, or both, or neither for their difficulties?

6. What contrasts or similarities do you notice between the Fred – Mary – Mr. Farebrother triangle and the Dorothea – Mr. Casaubon – Will Ladislaw triangle? Or, for that matter, the less distinct but still visible Lydgate – Rosamond – Will Ladislaw triangle? Which, if any, couple seems our best hope for a happy outcome? Why?

7. One of the novel’s most important experiments in engaging our sympathies with imperfect people is the story of Mr. Bulstrode and his morally questionable past. “If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all,” says the narrator, but at the same time, to understand is not to excuse. How do you judge Bulstrode, either for his past or for his present attempts to deal with it?

Book VII: Two Temptations (August 23 discussion)

1. What is the role of gambling in the novel? Examples we’ve seen include Fred’s losses at billiards and his subsequent attempts to get the money back by “swopping” horses; Farebrother’s fondness for cards; and now Lydgate’s taking to billiards in the hopes of winning enough to cover his debts — the first of the book’s “two temptations.” It also seems noteworthy that there’s a character named “Raffles.” How do people fare in Middlemarch who trust to chance? Why — what’s wrong with pushing your luck a little?

2. “I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year,” declares Becky Sharp, the ruthlessly amoral social-climbing heroine of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Does Middlemarch too suggest that morality is a luxury enabled by money? How does the threat of bankruptcy affect Lydgate, for instance? Is his judgment about Raffles affected by his indebtedness to Mr. Bulstrode?

3. Chapters LXIX-LXX set up what becomes a kind of murder mystery — or at least a crime story, since while there is a death in ambiguous circumstances, there isn’t exactly a murder. Or is there? What do you think? Why does it matter?

4. The stories that circulate after Raffles’s death are another of the novel’s great case studies in (mis)interpretation. What factors affect how people interpret what they hear or see about the case?

5. The Board meeting in Chapter LXXI brings Lydgate’s vexed relationship with Mr. Bulstrode to a crisis. Do you think better or worse of Lydgate for his actions at the meeting? Did he do the right thing? Was there a right thing to do?

6. The Lydgate – Bulstrode catastrophe finally brings all of our characters together into one plot, showing that the novel’s many strands are all interconnected parts of a single — very tangled — web. Can you see a way out of the mess? Is there any hope that Dorothea’s bold plan (“Let us find out the truth and clear him!”) will succeed?

Book VIII: Sunset and Sunrise (August 23 discussion)

1. What ongoing themes of the novel are exemplified by the crisis over Raffles’s death?

2. Just as people’s reactions to Mr. Casaubon reveal more about them than about him, so too people’s responses to Lydgate and Bulstrode through this crisis illuminate their characters. Does anyone’s response surprise you? Who, if anyone, best lives up to the novel’s ideal of sympathy?

3. The Raffles crisis leads to another catastrophic moment of misunderstanding, when Dorothea walks in on Will and Rosamond in a compromising position in Chapter LXXVII. What further sequences of interpretation and reinterpretation follow? What is at stake in them? How are they resolved — if they are?

4. “Was she alone in that scene? Was it her event only?” How do the events and emotions of Chapters LXXX-LXXXI illuminate the novel’s ideas about egoism, sympathy, point of view, and morality? What other moments in the novel have prepared us to appreciate these scenes? Is there anything new or significant about the climactic encounter between Dorothea and Rosamond in Chapter LXXXI?

5. Critical opinion about Will Ladislaw has been very divided over the years. To give you just a taste, Henry James called him “the only eminent failure in the book”; Lord David Cecil said he was “a school-girl’s dream, and a vulgar dream at that”; and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argued that “Will is Eliot’s radically anti-patriarchal attempt to create an image of masculinity attractive to women.” By the end of the novel, what do you think of him? Is he a satisfactory partner for Dorothea? What does he offer that her first husband does not? What, if anything, do you think he lacks?

6. It’s interesting to compare the reactions of Dorothea’s family and friends to her second engagement to their reactions to her first. Has anyone changed? Has anyone — including Dorothea, or us — learned anything from her first mistake?

Finale (August 23 discussion)

1. Would “home epic” be a good label for Middlemarch? What does that term suggest about scale and significance, in both life and literature?

2. Why is “a solid mutual happiness” within reach for Fred and Mary? What makes them (or their story) different from Lydgate and Rosamond? Do they somehow deserve better — did they do something right? Or are they just luckier?

3. Do you agree with those who are dissatisfied that Dorothea ends up “absorbed into the life of another,” “known only as a wife and mother”? Or do you find the conclusion of her story fitting, if perhaps not ideal? Can you think of other endings for her that you would prefer but that would also be realistic? What might be the political value of any lingering dissatisfaction?

4. Now that you’ve finished the entire novel, it’s worth rereading and reconsidering the Prelude. What does the story of Saint Theresa mean to you when you return to it here in the Finale? How does it help you understand the novel you’ve just read?

5. The final paragraphs of the novel are very beautiful (I recommend reading them aloud), but some have also found them painfully melancholy. Do you find them sad or inspiring? Why?

6. At the very end, the narrator once again draws us into the novel, speaking directly about why “things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been.” What message, ultimately, do you think the novel has for us about how to live our lives?