“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
I first read Middlemarch during the summer of 2014 and was mesmerized. The lives of the inhabitants were painted in detail and somehow came alive until I was part of the community and involved in all their celebrations and struggles. I finished it in three weeks and then longed to go back. Well, it’s been over ten years since my last read of it and with some more maturity and the input of others, I was curious as to how I would respond upon my second reading.
Written by Mary Ann Evans, who used the pen name, George Eliot, the novel is set in a fictional English town and follows the lives of a myriad of characters, painting their life stories from a detailed and sympathetic palette. The book spans the years of 1829 – 1832 which was a particularly turbulent time in British history, as it corresponds to the time of the Reform Act of 1832 and the years leading up to it. While the novel intersects with social reform, such as the advent of railroads, advances in medical science, and extending voting rights to a lower segment of the working-class population, Eliot does not really delve into the history but simple shows the reader how these changes played a part in village life and community.
