Book Review, Middlemarch 01/09/23

David Congour

Over the past few months, I'd noticed that my attention span, challenged when reading long newspaper and magazine articles, had been declining steadily, to the point where I rarely finished reading anything of depth and substance. This sad result came about for me from the ubiquitous presence of electronic devices, which have the effect on some, such as myself, of grabbing our attention in response to the constant stream of events from a tumultuous world. I had recently read an article somewhere that lamented the fact that, especially young people, were losing the ability to read in depth; and I had found this to be true in my case as well.

So, I came to the conclusion that I must challenge myself to overcome the tendency to scan and skip, and instead to deepen my reading comprehension by challenging it. Having been a fan of Dickens, Hardy, and other British authors of that period, I decided to correct my reading deficiencies by delving into Middlemarch, by George Elliot (a pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans, who felt, for good reason, that her works would not be take seriously by many men of the time). 795 pages of small print; sentences so long that, keeping track of the numerous clauses gave cause for much re-reading; along with the challenge of looking up the meaning of words, and historical references, which have long since left the modern lexicon.

I nearly gave up after the first chapter; then again after the second, and so on. Nonetheless, as I struggled to acclimate myself to the older style of writing; the archaic terms used in the story, unfamiliar historical references, and complex sentence structures, used for descriptive purposes, which have gone by the wayside in the past century. As I read, I eventually found myself able to comprehend more and more the depth of descriptions that the author had endeavored to get across to the reader in those complex sentences. At first, I was lucky to get through a few pages at a sitting; but by midway through the book, I was hooked, and it became a real page-turner. 

As to the gist of the novel, suffice it to say that it is the story of the lives of a couple of dozen moderately wealthy and wealthy citizens of a small provincial town in the Midlands of England in the early 19^th century, along with their careers, adventures and misadventures; along with their nobility, selfishness, greed, loves, hates, and all other traits of humanity.    For me, it was a way to escape to a more pastoral time in human evolution. It also offers a deep dive into the psyches, moralities, and motivations of the characters, turning them from mere names into almost flesh and blood people, some of whom will be missed upon the conclusion of your reading.  The emotional highs and lows I experienced during the reading were a tribute to the power of Elliot's writing style.

At times, I felt transported back to what often appears to be a simpler time, but which was, instead, just a less spoiled environment (and society) filled with characters facing the same societal and economic hardships and joys that we all still experience, in somewhat different circumstances, in our own time.

The book left me with a thorough respect for the author, who proved that a woman was more than equal to contemporary male writers. It's not a book for everyone, but for anyone who needs a mental vacation from an overcrowded, polluted world, it offers a nice escape from the frenzied present, in addition to honing reading comprehension and attention span! I've also found that I tend to finish those long articles that I once did not.