Contemporary Reviews of Middlemarch

Summary

If the contemporary reviews in our critical edition represent a typical reception, it appears that reviewers of Middlemarch were conflicted in their opinions. On one hand, they all praised Eliot’s depth of character, descriptive powers, and acute observation of human nature as unparalleled. “Never before have so keen and varied an observation, so deep insight into character and motives, so strong a grasp of conceptions, such power of picturesque description, worked together to represent through the agency of fiction an author’s moral and social views” (573). One the other, the reviewers thought the novel too didactic, for all its genius of insight and mastery of language. The Saturday Review went on wish that Eliot had told the story from the purer motive of storytelling, rather than seeking to teach a lesson. Eliot’s view of the world as too selfish and a society too hollow tended, the review says, to drain away the likeability of otherwise more or less normal characters, such as Celia. In the world of Middlemarch, if one is not as selfless as Dorothea, an obscure St. Theresa, than one is selfish. Saturday Review disagrees, noting there is a difference between selfishness and reasonable care of self. Other reviews quibble over the novel’s structure, notably Henry James lamenting, with some merit, that Dorothea’s character was wasted after the death of Mr. Causabon, and not give the centrality it deserved.

                Essentially all the reviewers loved Eliot’s genius in characterization as she paints them with such subtlety as to be truly lifelike. James proclaims the construction Dorothea a great achievement, and Saturday Review spends well-deserved space on Mr. Causabon. It speaks of him as exceedingly well-drawn: the physical and spiritual personification of dry, worthless scholarship, with his tomblike appearance and tomblike book.

Analysis

James wrote: “The figure of Will Ladislaw is a beautiful attempt, with many finely-completed points; but on the whole it seems to us a failure” (580). I was rather taken off guard to find this same sentiment arise time and again in these reviews, not because I disagree, but because I do agree, but had thought my opinion of no account. As the story progressed, I developed a vague uneasiness about Ladislaw because I could not see how he measured up to Dorothea as a friend or love interest, or even as an Eliot-worthy character generally. James calls him “vague and impalpable”, a figure who never overcomes early insubstantial dilettante ways (580). Like Saturday Review, I found Ladislaw charming, but failing the “test of duty” all other Middlemarchers were to pass. “He does what he likes, right or wrong, to the end of the story; he makes no sacrifices; even his devotion to Dorothea does not preserve him from an unworthy flirtation with his friend Lydgate’s wife. He is happy by luck, not desert” (575). Leslie Stephen was less kind: “But [marrying Ladislaw] seems to imply that a Theresa of our days has to be content with suckling fools and chronicling small beer” (584). As Dorothea’s love for Ladislaw became clearer, I could only say to myself, “Why?” My feeling was not as sharp as the reviewers—just a vague dislike for the character and his role—but they crystallized my undefined feelings exactly.

Works Cited

Eliot, George. Middlemarch: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. Bert G. Hornback 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2000. Print.