Trying to Find Meaning in Marriage, Money and Muddlemarch

It must certainly be an eternity since I read a novel from the 19th?century. My aged father had ordered a copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot from Amazon more than a year ago and I thought I must read it. I have already shared some of my observations about the book on?social media, including the new imprint from Penguin called Drop Caps, and how it is all guided by design, if you please. I have also?shared?a few?passages?from the book, which reek of PR agency’s mischief. So, I was quite prepared from the start for the nonsense that was to follow as George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

The book of almost 900 pages has no chief protagonists to speak of, only a motley crew of characters who live in a small town or hamlet in England called Middlemarch. Since two sisters, Dorothea and Celia, are at the centre of the story about the rest of the characters’ relations with them, they might be called the main protagonists. Dorothea and Celia are a study in contrasts. They are orphaned, of course (PR agency idiots’ obsession!) and are raised by their uncle Mr. Brooke. But they are not the poor and struggling orphans of Charles Dickens’ novels; they belong to privileged society, or so George Eliot would have us believe.

The way George Eliot – whose real name is Mary Ann Evans – treats the two sisters is also very different from the way, for example, Jane Austen treats sisters in?Sense and Sensibility. It appears that George Eliot’s main aim in having two sisters at the centre of the story is to set up the contrasts between them, and she spends quite some time describing this early on in the book. In fact, Middlemarch begins like this:

“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the blessed virgin appeared to Italian painters… she was usually spoken of as being more remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister, Celia, had more common sense…

Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal’s?Penseés?and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam… (this last sentence made no sense to me)

The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally in favour of Celia as being so amiable and innocent looking, while Miss Brooke’s large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking… compared with her, the innocent looking Celia was knowing and worldly wise…”

We are guided through their lives that take totally different turns, not least because of choices and decisions, that the elder sister, Dorothea, makes. Most of these are to do with marriage. For a woman not yet twenty years of age, and from elite society even if not aristocratic society, Dorothea can contemplate only thoughts of marriage. She imagines herself married to a learned person like the clergyman, Mr. Casaubon, and Celia married to James Chettam, a baronet, and she actually engineers the weddings so.

All this is quite in contrast with Jane Austen who dealt with issues of marriage and society’s obsession with it, with irony, intellect and wit. When she’s not thinking of marriage, Dorothea spends all her time thinking about how to use the land for the benefit of the poorer classes. She is preoccupied with drawing plans for buildings, from a children’s school to homes and later, to a hospital and an infirmary. Having decided to marry Casaubon for reasons that range from her chance to learn so much from a learned man, to helping him in his work, she comes to regret her decision early in the marriage. And she engineers Celia’s wedding to James Chettam, even though he is more interested in Dorothea.

The start of?Middlemarch?is decidedly slow and deliberate. I think this could be because George Eliot seems to prefer to describe her characters in detail and etch them out, rather than let readers discover the characters for themselves as the story progresses. This is a major drawback of the book and the problem with such long descriptions is that they make for tedious and stop-start kind of reading. And while I am not a literary critic or even a student of comparative literature, although I have read plenty of literature throughout my life, George Eliot’s tendency to describe a great part of her novel instead of letting the story unfold and the action take place, seriously mars?Middlemarch.

The language too is clumsy and unwieldy, as in the “occupation for Bedlam” expression I shared earlier. When George Eliot describes the sisters, she writes, “…so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it.” Then, there are statements or observations that make the author sound so irrational and prejudiced that I wonder if they aren’t the inventions of unprofessional PR agency idiots and their cronies in BBDO Chennai, who have been meddling in publishing for several years. That learned people are ugly.

“For the first time it entered into Celia’s mind that there might be something more between Mr. Casaubon and her sister than his delight in bookish talk and her delight in listening. Hitherto, she has classed the admiration for this “ugly” and learned acquaintance with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne, also ugly and learned.”

Equally surprising are the author’s treatment of women, and it is not with a sense of irony that she describes them this way. In the first chapter, she writes “women were expected to have weak opinions, but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was that opinions were not acted on.” In a later chapter, three men – a lawyer, a banker and someone described as “a coursing celebrity” and middle-aged bachelor – discuss what an ideal woman should be. Mr. Standish, a lawyer praises Miss Brooke, as she leaves the room, when Mr. Chichely, the coursing celebrity and middle-aged bachelor quips,

‘“Yes, but not my kind of woman; I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should be a little filigree about a woman, something of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at you, the better.

“There’s some truth in that,” said Mr. Standish, disposed to be genial….

“I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another source,” said Mr. Bulstrode (the banker). “I should rather refer it to the Devil.”

“Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman,” said Mr. Chichely, whose study of the fair sex seemed to be detrimental to his theology.’

There is also a Mr. Lydgate, who could be called another of the central characters of the novel. Lydgate, a surgeon “with ideas” arrives at Middlemarch to try and make a difference to healthcare in the village with his ideas of modern medicine. But a combination of ignorance, misunderstanding and callousness gets Lydgate into an awful lot of trouble. And while?Middlemarch?is supposed to be one of George Eliot’s best books dealing with the Reform Bill in Britain, it hardly gets the attention it deserves in the story. Barring passing references to the Reform Bill here and there in the novel and the political ambitions of Mr. Brooke, there is very little connection between the Reform Bill and its impact on Middlemarch. Neither does it provide a backdrop or context for the novel. Adam Smith is mentioned a couple of times in the novel and I shared just such a passage in social media!

Marriage is not without its love complications, however. Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon travel to Rome and The Vatican soon after their marriage, since he has work there. He is working on a treatise called?The Key to All Mythologies. Dorothea spends her time at museums and galleries, where she runs into Will Ladislaw, Casaubon’s cousin who is studying art financed by Casaubon. Their meeting and the friendship they strike leads to Casaubon suspecting them deeply. He prohibits Ladislaw from visiting them in Middlemarch, and even in failing health, makes plans to prevent Dorothea from marrying Ladislaw after his death. He prepares a will with a codicil that were Dorothea to marry Ladislaw, she would inherit none of his property. This section had potential for drama and intrigue, but in George Eliot’s hands it turns into just another description, once again.

“The sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon’s power of suspicious construction into exasperated activity… Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw’s intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea’s impressions, were constantly at their weaving work.”

When she writes, “…and what had occurred since then” in the above passage, the reader is at a loss to know what occurred because it is never told, you see. Simply stating it, or describing it is clearly not adequate.

On matters of money, again, there is plenty in Middlemarch. People like Fred Vincy fall deeper into debt, forcing him to turn to the same people to borrow more, but you never know or sense the full extent of his misery. His sister, Rosamund Vincy, often referred to as Rosy in the novel, who is married to Lydgate, the surgeon, similarly faces a difficult time when Lydgate breaks the news of his deteriorating financial condition to her. He tells her that they have to pawn their house and belongings, and change their lifestyle. She tries to seek financial help for him without his knowledge, which Lydgate resents, and he lets her know her place as a woman.

‘Lydgate’s anger rose; he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine weakness, but not towards feminine dictation… “What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge. That is not the question between us. It is enough for you to know that our income is likely to be a very narrow one – hardly four hundred, perhaps less, for a long time to come, and we must try to rearrange our lives in accordance with that fact.”’

That Lydgate is the victim of doubt and gossip as many of his attempts at healing people have had curious effects, isn’t given the attention it requires. And many people haven’t paid Lydgate in the meantime, adding to his financial problems. Because George Eliot again describes all this, rather than leave it to the rumour and gossip mill, the story-telling suffers.

The final blow comes when a certain Mr. Raffles re-enters Mr. Bulstrode’s life, and there seems to be a troubling fact in their past relationship. But we never know what it is, because George Eliot’s description now is hurried and slapdash. I thought this episode from their past could have been an important side-plot, through which we readers could learn more about Bulstrode’s character. Raffles dies in Bulstrode’s home, because Lydgate’s prescriptions and instructions – for moderate doses of opium to be administered in case of sleeplessness, without any alcohol – is not followed. Meanwhile, Bulstrode has made an offer to Lydgate to help solve his financial difficulties which, it turns out, was a bribe in order to rid himself of Raffles.

Amid this decaying life in Middlemarch, which everyone talks of leaving, Dorothea is the only person who seems capable of redeeming matters to some extent. That’s because she is willing to get to the heart of the problem surrounding all the misgivings regarding Lydgate and at one time had even offered to help merge his hospital with the infirmary. Besides, as she says, she has been left with more money than she needs and she will be happy to see it put to better use.

Returning to the two sisters, there is an exchange between them at the end of the novel when Dorothea has decided to marry Ladislaw and move to London. Celia is surprised and wonders how Dorothea will live.

“Because you always wanted things that wouldn’t do. But other plans would have come. And how?can?you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of us ever thought you?could?marry? It shocks James so dreadfully. And then, it is all so different from what you have always been. You would have Mr. Casaubon because he was such a great soul and was so old and dismal and learned; and now to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw who has got no estate or anything. I suppose it is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable in some way or other.

Dorothea laughed.”

I suppose in the end, Dorothea does have the last laugh. Because she found redemption in helping Lydgate revive his practice successfully, and in marrying Ladislaw of her own free will, without being encumbered by any of Casaubon’s property.

If only the story of Middlemarch would unfold faster through the 900 pages, without it being described to us. Then again, there’s no telling if the edition I have just read is George Eliot’s original novel, or if it is the work of mischievous and unprofessional PR agency idiots and their BBDO Chennai cronies in India.

The featured image at the start of this post is of Bridgnorth, a town in West Midlands, UK, and of the steps leading to High Town in Bridgnorth by Tanya Dedyukhina CC by SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons

Post Script:

I cannot end this book review blog post without also sharing how similar all of Dorothea’s building plans are with what is going on in our neighbourhood Joggers’ Park at Chicalim, Goa, where I used to go for my morning walks. The park has been closed since March 2023 for widening of the jogging track, and completion of whatever construction work was going on inside. I had shared my thoughts on social media saying that with so much construction, there won’t be any park left!

Joggers’ Park, Chicalim, is still shut, but take a look at the kind of construction taking place inside. From what I could see from the road outside, there are structures that look like houses being built, and some kind of art installation as well.

This is also of a piece with the massive construction that is taking place in my old college and alma mater,?Hindu College, Delhi University, North Campus. An old classmate visited there recently and shared photos of the college campus in our college WhatsApp group. There is a new building for science with a rather strange sculpture in front of it, a women’s hostel (which was much required, as in my days in the early 1980s, I had to stay at the PG Women’s Hostel in Delhi University), and a Sports Centre if you please, where there once used to be an open-air tennis court, with steps on one side, where one could sit and watch college students playing, whenever there was a game on.

When I checked the college website over six months ago, when these photos were shared in our WhatsApp group, there was a Prakash Sanganeria who was the head of the college governing body, and most of the construction of the new amenities was attributed to him and his family business. Now we see only a Sant Sanganeria in the governing body. The reason I am mentioning all this is that this too is part of unprofessional PR agency’s mischief along with BBDO Chennai cronies to try and make me someone else, most probably Sarada, my old colleague at Ogilvy Delhi, or my younger sister, Bhavani Sundaram. There used to be a Prakash, a copywriter, working in BBDO Chennai, when I was there briefly in 2003, whose wife was called Sarada.

This meddling is not new, and it even involves the central government. For years, Hindu College was topping All-India college rankings, and I was somewhat surprised by the regularity of such high ranks. It is to do with the same kind of unprofessional PR agency crooks’ meddling, because the education minister then, was Prakash Javadekar. In the most recent All-India rankings, Hindu College has dropped to number 2, with Miranda House taking the top slot. Guess why? Because that happens to be the old college of my former colleague and boss at Ogilvy Delhi, Roda Mehta.

That unprofessional companies and their bosses can be allowed to meddle to this extent to change people into someone else, and have even the government participate in such nonsense, is ridiculous. This is why I say both unprofessional organisations ought to be banished from the industry and blacklisted for a minimum of 25 years, considering they wrecked my career almost two decades ago and still continue to meddle and interfere. Making life hell for me and my parents for all these years.

This book review article was first published on my blog on June 28, 2023.