Recently, I
mentioned my interest in nineteenth century women writers including George
Eliot. Her greatest work is Middlemarch, the quintessential novel of
the nineteenth century. While
reading the book for that review, I came across a book about Eliot’s wonderful tale of life in the fictional town of
Middlemarch, something like Coventry, England.
Rebecca Mead is a
staff writer for my favorite magazine, The
New Yorker. Eliot’s novel profoundly
influenced her love of reading, and, while she admits to slacking off on the
amount of books she reads, she still has a special, intimate corner of her mind
firmly fixed in Middlemarch. My Life in Middlemarch examines the
qualities of the novel which make it the great piece of literature it has
become. I remember the first time I read
this novel, and I immediately became awestruck by the power of the prose, the
meticulous detail, and the close bond I developed with the characters. Middlemarch
grabbed me by the lapels, dragged me into the nineteenth century, and
introduced me to all the residents there – Jane Austen, Charlotte, Emily, and
Anne Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and, of course, George Eliot.
Born Mary Ann Evans
to Robert Evans, the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family
in Warwickshire, in 1818. She lived a
rather unconventional lifestyle for the nineteenth century, and adopted a
male pseudonym. She wanted her fiction
to be taken seriously and separate herself from most female writers of the
century know for light comedies. She
also wanted to shield herself from criticism because of a long-standing affair
she carried on with the married George Henry Lewes, whom she met in 1851. They began living together in 1854 until his
death in 1878. While many Victorians
carried on affairs, Eliot and Lewes scandalized the world because of their open
admission. They considered themselves
married for the rest of their lives. She
died in 1880.
Mead focuses on the
effect the novel had on her from her first encounter with Eliot at age 17. She quotes extensively from the novel,
letters, and contemporary reviews and comments by those who knew George. She also explains her philosophy of books,
writing, and reading. Mead writes, “Reading
is sometimes thought of a s a form of escapism, and it’s a common turn of
phrase to speak of getting lost in a book.
But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is
grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so
much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself. There are books that seem to comprehend us
just as much as we understand them, or even more. There are books that grow with the reader as
the reader grows, like a graft on a tree” (16).
Rebecca mead and I have a lot in common!
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| Rebecca Mead |
One frequent source
for Mead is Virginia Woolf. Rebecca
writes, “the early works, Scenes of
Clerical Life, Adam Bede, and The
Mill on the Floss, … seem drawn from Eliot’s own rural experience and are
peopled with characters so true to life that readers forget they are fictional”
(45). She then quotes, Woolf, “‘We move
among them, now bored, now sympathetic, but always with that unquestioning
acceptance of all that they say and do, which we accord to the great orginals
only. We scarcely wish to analyse [sic]
what we feel to be so large and deeply human’” (45-46).
I haven’t read Middlemarch in quite a few years, but I
will get back to it soon. If you haven’t
read it, Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch
will surely whet you appetite for one of the most noted authors of the nineteenth
century. 5 platinum stars.
--Chiron, 2/9/14
