A Real Point To Make

The last lines of Middlemarch: ... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. Typically didactic, and to some degree unnecessary as Eliot has already made the point abundantly through the very (apparently) real behaviour of her characters; but still worth insisting on as a profound moral truth. The Victorians were not shy of such truths, and perhaps we have gained something by being a little less certain of any truths, but our world is built on their shoulders and I for one, am aware that I am fortunate to be free of many of the ills of which Eliot would have been acutely aware.

The simple truth that Dorothea's generosity of character in going to the dreadful Rosamond to try and be of help to her when it would have easier and more 'natural' to have done very much otherwise, and in the process does immeasurable good for three other lives (and her own) in a way that nobody else will ever really see or comprehend is worth all the contrivance of plot it takes to get there. And isn't the contrast between Dorothea's sense of a self that needs to find itself and Rosamond's sense of nothing but self in some way the structural underpinning of the whole novel? The remarkable thing is that Eliot somehow understands Rosie - the writing of the note to Dorothea explaining Ladislaw's attitude to her, and the motivation for this (which is decent enough, but not exactly noble) is eerily spot on. Every reader knows how dreadful Rosie is but the remarkable thing is that we're invited to see the world in a way that entirely explains, almost justifies, her.

Great, great novel.