Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Middlemarch
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love novels about people's inner lives, marriage, vocation and moral choice, and anyone drawn to a community where money, ambition and sympathy shape intertwined lives.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Middlemarch is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It came out in eight instalments in 1871 and 1872, and it is set in a Midlands town in the years just before the first Reform Bill of 1832. Eliot wrote it when she was at the height of her skill, after Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss. She wanted to show how a whole community works, from the landowners and the doctor to the banker, the farmer and the clerk.
The story follows several households at once. At the center is Dorothea Brooke, a young woman who is rich, serious and eager to do good, but who has almost no way to use her gifts. Around her are Tertius Lydgate, a doctor with a bold plan to improve medicine, and Fred Vincy, a charming young man who expects money he has not earned. Their lives cross, and each choice shapes the others.
What do you get from it? You get a close look at marriage, work, money and ambition, told by a narrator who is wise, funny and fair to everyone. You also get a book that shows how large hopes meet small realities, and what people do next. Let us begin with Dorothea, and with the plain, hopeful wish that starts her story.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A young woman longs for a purposeFree
- 2Marriage is chosen on a dream
- 3A town of many small worlds
- 4A doctor arrives with a bold plan
- 5Dorothea meets the limits of her marriage
- 6Debt, hope and the cost of a promise
- 7Rosamond and Lydgate at home
- 8Reform, gossip and public life
- 9What the story is really about
- 10How Eliot tells her story
Punkt 1 von 10
A young woman longs for a purpose
The novel opens with Dorothea Brooke, who lives with her younger sister Celia at Tipton Grange, the house of their uncle, Mr Brooke. Dorothea is beautiful in a plain, serious way, and she dresses simply because she cares more about ideas than about fashion. She is orphaned, well off and full of religious feeling. What she wants most is to do something useful with her life, but the world around her has no clear place for a woman with such wishes.
Celia is the opposite in temperament. She is sensible, light of heart and fond of jewels, and she sees her sister's enthusiasm with affectionate doubt. Their small quarrels over their mother's jewels show the difference at once. Dorothea wants to give up pleasures, while Celia sees no harm in them. Eliot lets both views stand, and she never mocks either sister.
Dorothea has a plan to build good cottages for the tenants on her uncle's land. She studies plans and drawings with real zeal. Sir James Chettam, a decent neighbor, admires her and wants to marry her. He even takes up her cottage scheme to win her favor. But Dorothea does not see him as a husband, and she hardly notices that he hopes for her.
Her eyes are on someone else. Edward Casaubon is a clergyman and scholar in his middle years, who lives at nearby Lowick. He is working on a huge book, which he calls the Key to All Mythologies. To Dorothea he seems like a modern Milton, a man of deep learning who could teach her the truths she longs for. She imagines marriage as a school where she will grow wise.
This first movement sets up the question the whole book asks. What can an idealist do when custom, money and the mistakes of her own judgment stand in the way? Dorothea is not foolish, but she is young, and she reads other people through her hopes. Eliot lets the reader see more than Dorothea does, and that gap is where the tension begins.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Dorothea Brooke
- Dorothea is a wealthy, earnest young woman whose admiration for Edward Casaubon reflects her longing for meaningful work.
- Edward Casaubon
- Casaubon is a reserved clergyman and scholar whom Dorothea admires, and whose young cousin is Will Ladislaw.
- Tertius Lydgate
- Lydgate is an ambitious young doctor newly arrived in town, where Rosamond Vincy attracts his attention.
- Rosamond Vincy
- Rosamond is Fred Vincy's accomplished sister, whose taste for refinement shapes her expectations of Lydgate.
- Fred Vincy
- Fred is Rosamond's charming, indebted brother, who hopes for an inheritance and loves Mary Garth.
- Mary Garth
- Mary is an honest, sharp-witted young woman who cares for Fred but distrusts his lack of purpose.
- Will Ladislaw
- Will is Casaubon's artistic young cousin, whose friendship with Dorothea contrasts with her admiration for scholarly authority.
- Nicholas Bulstrode
- Bulstrode is a powerful, outwardly religious banker whose support for the hospital connects him with Lydgate.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 324,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 21 h 35 min
- Listening time36 h
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 14 other languages
Questions about Middlemarch
What is Middlemarch about?
It follows several households in a provincial English town around 1830. The main threads are Dorothea Brooke's wish to do good, Doctor Lydgate's scientific hopes, and the love and money troubles of the Vincy and Garth families.
Who is George Eliot?
George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who died in 1880. She used a man's name partly so that her fiction would be judged seriously, and she is among the leading English novelists of the Victorian period.
When was Middlemarch written and is it a true story?
It was published in eight parts in 1871 and 1872. The story is fiction, though Eliot set it in a carefully drawn real period, the years just before the 1832 Reform Bill, and the town is invented.
Is Middlemarch hard to read?
The sentences are rich but clear.
What is the main message of Middlemarch?
Eliot suggests that sympathy and patient attention to others matter more than grand ambition. She also argues that the good of the world depends on the quiet, faithful acts of ordinary people whom history seldom records.