Middlemarch George Eliot (essential reading txt) 📖

Middlemarch

By George Eliot.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Dedication Prelude Middlemarch Book I: Miss Brooke I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII Book II: Old and Young XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII Book III: Waiting for Death XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII Book IV: Three Love Problems XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII XXXVIII XXXIX XL XLI XLII Book V: The Dead Hand XLIII XLIV XLV XLVI XLVII XLVIII XLIX L LI LII LIII Book VI: The Widow and the Wife LIV LV LVI LVII LVIII LIX LX LXI LXII Book VII: Two Temptations LXIII LXIV LXV LXVI LXVII LXVIII LXIX LXX LXXI Book VIII: Sunset and Sunrise LXXII LXXIII LXXIV LXXV LXXVI LXXVII LXXVIII LXXIX LXXX LXXXI LXXXII LXXXIII LXXXIV LXXXV LXXXVI Finale Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes,
in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.

Prelude

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than anyone would imagine from the sameness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

Middlemarch A Study of Provincial Life Book I Miss Brooke I

Since I can do no good because a woman,
Reach constantly at something that is near it.

The Maid’s Tragedy: Beaumont and Fletcher

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; and her profile as well as her