It’s the mooooooooooost wonderful tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime of the yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeear!

No, not Christmas.  Well, yes, Christmas, but also… READALONG TIME!  I can’t believe that before 2013, I’d never participated in a readalong, and now this one will be my third.  (Last spring, I read Villette along with Beth and Amal, and this fall I joined in Kerry’s readalong of Jane Eyre.)  Beth is ending 2013 on a high note, hosting a readalong of Middlemarch, and when she proposed the idea, I immediately knew I wanted in.  After all, Middlemarch has been on my to-read list for years, and how could I find a better reading buddy than Beth?

Here’s the plan for the readalong: Middlemarch is a gigantic tome, so we’re reading it all month long.  Today we’ll be talking about Vol. I (“Miss Brooke”) and Vol. II (“Old and Young”).  Next Monday I’ll recap Vols. III and IV, the week after that, Vols. V and VI, and finally, on December 30th, Vols. VII and VIII as well as the “Finale.”  If you want to join in and geek out over George Eliot in real time, there are several of us on Twitter discussing the book using the hashtag #middlemarch13.  (I’m @backyardyogini.)  So, them’s the rules, and now let’s get to the book chatter.

Volume I: Miss Brooke

Volume I of Middlemarch introduces the primary characters we’ll be following: intense, spiritual Dorothea Brooke; old grouch Edward Casaubon; young artist Will Ladislaw; idealistic doctor Tertius Lydgate; and blazing beauty Rosamond Vincy.  And, of course, there’s another character: the town of Middlemarch, itself.  Lydgate and Rosamond don’t appear much in this volume; as one might expect from the title, we’re more concerned with Dorothea.

When the novel opens, Dorothea is a young heiress living with her uncle Brooke and her younger sister Celia.  Dorothea is, as I noted above, incredibly intense and spiritual.  She’s highly intelligent and longs to live a life of intellectual rigor.  Dorothea, being well-born, beautiful, and an heiress, is considered quite the catch among the gentlemen of Middlemarch.  The baronet Sir James Chettam, in particular, is determined to make her Lady Chettam – but Dorothea has no interest in this sporting, affable chap.  (Poor Sir James.  As I tweeted, he seems like such a nice fella.  I’m rooting for him to end up with Celia, who I like rather a lot.)  Dorothea proves to be quite dense, believing Sir James to be interested only in her sister – and when Sir James proposes to take up Dorothea’s plan to build improved cottages for his tenants, she privately congratulates herself on having found such a sterling future brother-in-law.  Of course, Sir James doesn’t want to be Dorothea’s brother-in-law, and when Celia breaks the news that Sir James is actually courting Dorothea, our heroine is shocked and appalled.  Oh, Dorothea.

Of course, Dorothea does have her eye on someone: one Edward Casaubon.  Casaubon, an associate of Uncle Brooke’s, is a pompous clergyman who is working on a “Key to All Mythologies,” and Dorothea considers him to be the key to her future intellectual life.  She is convinced that Casaubon alone can usher her into the higher realms of thought.  He’s pushing fifty (and Dorothea herself is not quite twenty), but he’s rich, so Uncle Brooke doesn’t feel he has a leg to stand on when it comes to forbidding the match.  Nonetheless, most of Middlemarch is kind of grossed out when they learn of the upcoming wedding between the flower of local society and the crusty old clergyman.  Dorothea, however, can’t be dissuaded, and by the end of Vol. I she is Mrs. Pompous Casaubon.  Yuck.

Volume II: Old and Young

At the end of Volume I, the Casaubons leave for their honeymoon in Rome, and we turn our attention to the other main character: Tertius Lydgate.  Lydgate, who was introduced only briefly in Volume I, is a newcomer to the area.  A doctor bent on reform, he quickly falls in with the local banker, Mr. Bulstrode, who he considers to be a key ally in building an improved local fever hospital.  Bulstrode is as pompous, in his own way, as Casaubon is – as evidenced by his dealings with the Vincy family (relations through Bulstrode’s wife).  Lydgate, for his part, likes the Vincys – especially the daughter of the house, the stunningly gorgeous Rosamond.  Still, there’s a difference between admiring a decorative girl and wanting to get married, and Lydgate has too much to accomplish before he gets married.  He isn’t planning to walk down the aisle for at least five years.  Little does Lydgate know, Rosamond has plans for him.  Oh, does Rosamond ever have plans for him.

There’s an interesting interlude in Volume II, in which Lydgate gets to know the Rev. Mr. Farebrother, a friend of the Vincy family.  Farebrother has been the chaplain of the local hospital, but Bulstrode wants to replace him with a different clergyman, a Mr. Tyke, whose spiritual doctrine more closely matches Bulstrode’s own.  The general consensus among the hospital movers and shakers seems to be that Farebrother is a nice guy and everyone likes him better, and it seems unfair to pluck the position away from him right when it will begin carrying a salary, but Bulstrode has his way in the end – in part, because Lydgate votes with him.  Although Lydgate likes Farebrother very much, and although he personally scorns local politics, he feels he has no choice but to go along with Bulstrode if he wants his fever hospital – and Lydgate does want his fever hospital.  I can see Lydgate’s dealings with Bulstrode becoming a more important plot piece in the future, but in the meantime, it was interesting just to have a glimpse into the inner workings of the Middlemarch elders.  It was also rather ironic to see how quickly Lydgate, for all his wanting to stay above the fray, was dragged into the machinery of local politics and forced to get his hands dirty like everybody else.

Volume II ended with a quick glimpse of the new Mrs. Casaubon on her honeymoon… which she is very much not enjoying.  Casaubon is using his honeymoon as a research trip, leaving his young bride to fend for herself most of the day.  When they do spend time together, Casaubon and Dorothea argue as he misinterprets her well-intentioned questions to be harsh criticism of his work.  In Rome, Dorothea becomes better acquainted with Casaubon’s much-younger second cousin, Will Ladislaw, who she met briefly before her wedding.  Will, who had originally believed that anyone crazy enough to marry his cousin must be intensely unpleasant, soon revises his opinion of Dorothea and finds himself appalled that his cousin would, after having the good fortune to marry this “adorable creature,” leave her alone for long stretches, and on their honeymoon no less!  Will and Dorothea quickly become friendly, and Casaubon isn’t over-thrilled with this development – but he’s too full of himself to be really threatened by Will.

Two volumes in, I am really enjoying Middlemarch.  George Eliot is at her best in the dialogue, and it’s fun to be a fly on the wall as these characters all get to know one another.  Each of Eliot’s characters has a distinctive voice, distinctive, you know.  (See what I did there?  I’m Mr. Brooke!)  Even in the non-dialogue segments, there are so many nuggets of sentences that the whole book feels like digging in an exceptionally rich gold mine.  At first – like Will – I didn’t much care for Dorothea but already, only about a quarter of the way through the book, I find myself pitying her horrible marriage and wishing happiness for her.  (I still think she would have been better off marrying Sir James, but I’m hoping for a James-and-Celia union soon.  Please, George Eliot?)

Stay tuned for my next recap, of Volumes III and IV, coming next Monday!