Middlemarch
While Middlemarch gestures towards so many fascinating issues,
I'd like you to keep in mind two of them in particular: 1.)
the idea of a vocation or calling -- of work which is somehow truly important,
and 2.) the narrator's shifting sympathies.
1.) Vocation
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What sorts of work do characters perform in this novel -- or attempt to
perform? Does work (intellectual and physical) provide the path to
fulfillment?
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Patrick Brantlinger has written that in Middlemarch nearly
everyone attempts to be a reformer, whether political, social, spiritual,
aesthetic, or intellectual. Do you agree? And, when, in your
view, are efforts at reform successful? When are they not?
Why?
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What role does gender play in the pursuit of one's vocations? How
does 'women's work' figure within this novel?
a.) Make sure to read the "Prelude" (first two pages) closely:
Why does Eliot refer to St. Theresa? What sort of statement is Eliot
making about women's vocations here?
b.) See also p. 28-29 and p. 274: How does the narrator describe
Dorothea's attempts to pursue "a grand life"? What options exist
in her "gentlewoman's world"?
c.) p. 144-145 (ch. 15) on Lydgate's passion for work, contrasted
to romantic passion. Are work and love ever compatible in this novel?
2.) The Narrator
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How does Middlemarch compare to the other forms of narration we
have discussed so far? What does -- and doesn't -- it treat as 'heroic,'
'significant,' and 'sympathetic'?
a.) See p. 278-280 (ch. 29, pars 1-2): What effect dos this
passage have on you, with its "but why always Dorothea"? For whom
does it create sympathy? What portrait of marriage, emotion, and
intellectual work does it offer?
b.) p. 59-60 (end of last paragraph, midway through ch. 6) where
the narrator compares the reader's act of interpretation to peering through
a microscope. Why use such a scientific image? What notion
of community (and of cause and effect) does this image construct?
(You may also want to think of the similar rhetoric surrounding Lydgate's
medical explorations.)
-- Tamara Ketabgian