Daily Archives: May 12, 2016

43% done with Middlemarch

B4;C40

Looks like I misread Mr Brooke a bit. He’s not liberal with his tenants, he’s sort of a slum landlord. He thinks he’s a jolly chap but his tenants are drunk and have had it with him.

I like that Eliot is making Mr Brooke an all-around good guy. We see some of the dirty underbelly of this sort of life that everyone is guilty of to one degree or another. We’re all hypocrites about some things, I suppose.

43% done with Middlemarch

B4;C39

“We must not have you getting too learned for a woman, you know.”

Oh, my, how times have changed. Imagine saying this to someone today.

This does bring up a related issue, however. Joseph Conrad is forever being labeled a racist for saying things like this about other races, yet is Eliot taken to task for having her characters speak as people did then? They are only products of their time, for good and bad.

43% done with Middlemarch

B4;C38

I’m going to have to admit to some ignorance in this chapter. I feel as if I was plopped down in the middle of a conversation about things and (some) people I don’t know anything about. I get they’re talking local politics and that Mr Brooke is (perhaps?) being too liberal with his new newspaper and how lax he is collecting rents from his farms. Beyond that, I’m a little lost here.