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Jan. 22nd, 2008 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo the thing is, on the way to and from Harrisburg, I had a total of about . . . probably twenty hours of transit by plane and train, maybe more. When you are too lazy to take out your laptop and do actual work and too cheap to pay the five bucks for Direct TV on Frontier (not that I am knocking Frontier - I think it's a great idea to have the TV available, I just didn't take advantage of it this time) this racks up to a lot of reading.
The first book I finished, on the way there, was George Eliot's Middlemarch. Now, you have to understand my family has a History with Middlemarch. Ever since I was fairly small, my mother has been telling me that Middlemarch is one of the best books of all time and that I had to read it in order to make my life complete. My father, on the other hand, has firmly asserted that Middlemarch is one of the most boring books of all time and that I should never read it because it would be a waste of a significant portion of my life. Consequently, being, as aforementioned, lazy and tending towards inaction, I . . . never read it.
Enter my friend, a fellow English major who also has a fondness for nineteenth-century novels, and who has known me and my family since we were in kindergarten and is therefore well aware of the Great Middlemarch Debate. This past year, she read it and entered the lists firmly on the pro-Middlemarch side - and to prove it, she bought me a copy over winter break and handed it to me right before I went back and told me that I had to read it and make up my mind one way or the other, which is how I ended up reading an 800-page nineteenth-century novel right at the beginning of the new quarter. So you see, there are at least several people out there (even if none of you are among them) who put great importance on my thoughts on Middlemarch. And the end verdict was: although it took me a while to get into it, I did, in fact, really like it, and would firmly recommend it to anyone. Except people who get frustrated by epic nineteenth-century novels, which is probably a more normal response than mine.
Basically, Middlemarch has three main plotlines. First and foremost, there's the story of Dorothea Brooke, who really really wants to do good deeds (she spends all her spare time designing better farmer's cottages) and unfortunately decides to do it by marrying a much older scholar whom she thinks is Great and Wise and will Teach Her The Right Way To Go. As all her friends keep trying to tell her, this doesn't work out so well. The book starts out with this story, and I found it a slow starter; Dorothea is really frustrating at times, and her story doesn't start to pick up until she's realized the full problems of her situation and started getting angry about them. However, before that happens, you get the two other main plotlines of the book. Dr. Lydgate is the other main protagonist; he's just moved to town and also really really wants to do good and Reform Medicine and Turn People's Lives Around, but unfortunately he's pissing off all the other doctors in the town by doing so - not to mention spending money and getting into relationships he really can't afford. The third story centers around Fred Vincy, who failed out of university but is convinced he's going to inherit an estate from his cranky older relative so it's okay, and the girl he's desperately in love with, Mary Garth, who is a character I love and possibly my favorite female character in nineteenth-centur literature ever. She's ordinary-looking and smart and sensible and sarcastic and capable of earning her own living, and refuses to marry handsome charming etc. etc. Fred several times over because even though she's crazy about him, she's fully aware that at this point in time he's a self-centered idiot and she's not going to marry him until and unless he grows up.
As the book goes on, Eliot examines the way that marriages based on the typical nineteenth-century courtship can very easily fall apart, the way that people with the best intentions can end up responsible for very unpleasant things, and the question of how the hell you can ever manage to change the world when the world is really really resistant to change. . . . which makes it sound depressing, but it's really not as much; things overall end suprisingly well. Her characters are complete and well-rounded - including Middlemarch the town itself, which is very much an entity throughout the course of the novel, and maybe even the main character - and she doesn't fall into the trap common in nineteenth-century novels, and even Eliot's other books, of making the good characters TOTAL AND PURE AND FLAWLESS paragons. Though she's harder to read than, say, Dickens, she's worth the time and effort.
. . . and I was going to write up several other books here too, but I need to get lunch and then go to a meeting instead, so you will have to LANGUISH IN SUSPENSE. Or, alternately, put up with even more entries on your flist. Next up: The Monk, The Unknown Ajax, and The Revenger's Tragedy in both literary and filmed form (Christopher Eccleston murders Eddie Izzard, guys!)
The first book I finished, on the way there, was George Eliot's Middlemarch. Now, you have to understand my family has a History with Middlemarch. Ever since I was fairly small, my mother has been telling me that Middlemarch is one of the best books of all time and that I had to read it in order to make my life complete. My father, on the other hand, has firmly asserted that Middlemarch is one of the most boring books of all time and that I should never read it because it would be a waste of a significant portion of my life. Consequently, being, as aforementioned, lazy and tending towards inaction, I . . . never read it.
Enter my friend, a fellow English major who also has a fondness for nineteenth-century novels, and who has known me and my family since we were in kindergarten and is therefore well aware of the Great Middlemarch Debate. This past year, she read it and entered the lists firmly on the pro-Middlemarch side - and to prove it, she bought me a copy over winter break and handed it to me right before I went back and told me that I had to read it and make up my mind one way or the other, which is how I ended up reading an 800-page nineteenth-century novel right at the beginning of the new quarter. So you see, there are at least several people out there (even if none of you are among them) who put great importance on my thoughts on Middlemarch. And the end verdict was: although it took me a while to get into it, I did, in fact, really like it, and would firmly recommend it to anyone. Except people who get frustrated by epic nineteenth-century novels, which is probably a more normal response than mine.
Basically, Middlemarch has three main plotlines. First and foremost, there's the story of Dorothea Brooke, who really really wants to do good deeds (she spends all her spare time designing better farmer's cottages) and unfortunately decides to do it by marrying a much older scholar whom she thinks is Great and Wise and will Teach Her The Right Way To Go. As all her friends keep trying to tell her, this doesn't work out so well. The book starts out with this story, and I found it a slow starter; Dorothea is really frustrating at times, and her story doesn't start to pick up until she's realized the full problems of her situation and started getting angry about them. However, before that happens, you get the two other main plotlines of the book. Dr. Lydgate is the other main protagonist; he's just moved to town and also really really wants to do good and Reform Medicine and Turn People's Lives Around, but unfortunately he's pissing off all the other doctors in the town by doing so - not to mention spending money and getting into relationships he really can't afford. The third story centers around Fred Vincy, who failed out of university but is convinced he's going to inherit an estate from his cranky older relative so it's okay, and the girl he's desperately in love with, Mary Garth, who is a character I love and possibly my favorite female character in nineteenth-centur literature ever. She's ordinary-looking and smart and sensible and sarcastic and capable of earning her own living, and refuses to marry handsome charming etc. etc. Fred several times over because even though she's crazy about him, she's fully aware that at this point in time he's a self-centered idiot and she's not going to marry him until and unless he grows up.
As the book goes on, Eliot examines the way that marriages based on the typical nineteenth-century courtship can very easily fall apart, the way that people with the best intentions can end up responsible for very unpleasant things, and the question of how the hell you can ever manage to change the world when the world is really really resistant to change. . . . which makes it sound depressing, but it's really not as much; things overall end suprisingly well. Her characters are complete and well-rounded - including Middlemarch the town itself, which is very much an entity throughout the course of the novel, and maybe even the main character - and she doesn't fall into the trap common in nineteenth-century novels, and even Eliot's other books, of making the good characters TOTAL AND PURE AND FLAWLESS paragons. Though she's harder to read than, say, Dickens, she's worth the time and effort.
. . . and I was going to write up several other books here too, but I need to get lunch and then go to a meeting instead, so you will have to LANGUISH IN SUSPENSE. Or, alternately, put up with even more entries on your flist. Next up: The Monk, The Unknown Ajax, and The Revenger's Tragedy in both literary and filmed form (Christopher Eccleston murders Eddie Izzard, guys!)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 06:18 am (UTC)Northanger Abbey was great. I need to read that again, though. It's been quite a while.
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Date: 2008-01-23 07:22 am (UTC)We're also doing Northanger Abbey in class, too, because of the Gothic parody aspect, which I am looking forward to rereading.