Well, friends, here we are! About to boldly forge into Roxane Gay’s An Untamed State (remember, we’re reading this handy part you can access online, please arrive prepared next Monday!), let us look back on our sweet and prickly journey through George Eliot’s life and work, as well as the glorious writing of Rebecca Mead.
I don’t have much to say, really! I’ve bored you excessively with my thoughts, and I’ve been secretly filmed making elaborate hand gestures about it out loud, so what I’d really love to to hear from you! About Middlemarch, about My Life in Middlemarch, about which aspects of either book really resonated with you.
This is not the time to hold back. What if no one ever asks you about Middlemarch again?
And, most of all, thank you for humoring me all these months while I fangirled about two great books.
Tags: books, middlemarch, middlemarch book club, my life in middlemarch
. I bought and read ‘My Life in Middlemarch’ because of the discussion about it on The Toast, and loved it SO much. It gave me such a great insight into George Eliot’s life, and I loved finding out more about her, and have now embarked on a massive George Eliot read.
One of the things that really resonated with me in Rebecca Mead’s book is when she says ‘I thought I was Dorothea, but it turns out I’m Celia’. I can completely empathise with that. __By the way, if anyone can recommend any great biographical books about other great women I would really love to hear them. And can we all talk about Villette some time? Oh, and different genre, but has everyone read Hild?
It has now been so long since I read it! But I really enjoyed reading My LIfe in Middlemarch too. I think I mentioned in the last thread, I really admired how deftly Rebecca Mead wove her own life with George Eliot’s life. It seemed purposefully but quietly done, and always worked to support and add meaningful dimensions to the narrative of Eliot’s biography, which was central.
In the time that has passed, the section that have stayed most in my memory is about Eliot’s somewhat misguided passion for Herbert Spencer. That letter she writes him! When she’s all “Look I know you don’t love me but I can bear it as long as you hang out with me a lot and don’t fall in love with anyone else and I promise I won’t annoy you”–agh, I felt that one. It’s such a wrongheaded, Nice Guy ™ thing to write. And yet I have been that guy, too, and I have written impassioned letters to men who didn’t really deserve my love (but maybe they would if they would just let me love them into better versions of themselves).
So I saw a lot of my younger self in that section, and take heart from her later-life happy marriage to Lewes. Not because marriage is my end goal–not by any means–but because age may indeed bring wisdom and a deeper, more self-knowledgeable well of happiness.
It has now been so long since I read it! But I really enjoyed reading My LIfe in Middlemarch too. I think I mentioned in the last thread, I really admired how deftly Rebecca Mead wove her own life with George Eliot's life. It seemed purposefully but quietly done, and always worked to support and add meaningful dimensions to the narrative of Eliot's biography, which was central.
In the time that has passed, the section that have stayed most in my memory is about Eliot's somewhat misguided passion for Herbert Spencer. That letter she writes him! When she's all "Look I know you don't love me but I can bear it as long as you hang out with me a lot and don't fall in love with anyone else and I promise I won't annoy you"–agh, I felt that one. It's such a wrongheaded, Nice Guy ™ thing to write. And yet I have been that guy, too, and I have written impassioned letters to men who didn't really deserve my love (but maybe they would if they would just let me love them into better versions of themselves).
So I saw a lot of my younger self in that section, and take heart from her later-life happy marriage to Lewes. Not because marriage is my end goal–not by any means–but because age may indeed bring wisdom and a deeper, more self-knowledgeable well of happiness.
I’m in Portland for work this week, so I made the obligatory trip to Powell’s and found a signed copy of An Untamed State. I feel I am already winning the next war club.
I loved My Life in Middlemarch. The part that stuck with me was the idea of re-reading Middlemarch at different stages of life; like Mead, what really stands out for me with Middlemarch is the spectacular work of observational psychology that it represents, and I fully expect that different parts would resonate at different points in my life.
Also not entirely on topic, may I recommend another book by Rebecca Mead, One Perfect Day. It’s a brilliant study of the contemporary wedding industry, filled with lots of fun and crazy stories along with a great historical perspective. Of course everyone who has read My Life in Middlemarch would expect no less, I’m sure.