Free Republic

Though Middlemarch has a large cast of characters involved in intricately related plots, Dorothea Brooke stands out as the book’s heroine. The narrative begins and ends with her. Book I of the novel’s eight Books is “Miss Brooke.” She is a young woman of simple beauty and surpassing decency. She yearns idealistically to benefit humanity, or subordinate herself as the helpmate of a great man like John Milton in his blindness. Yet she is exceedingly foolish.

On Monday I finished reading George Eliot’s great Victorian novel Middlemarch for the first time. I have tried and failed to finish it several times; it’s not easy reading. At a few points it is, briefly, a slog. Although it remains a subject of debate, I believe the novel lacks a happy ending. Nevertheless, for me, the ending was happy. I finished the book. What did it take? I sought permission to audit an undergraduate class in the Victorian novel at a local college and paid for the privilege. I needed a structure within which to read the book. Like...