George Eliot's Middlemarch - Miss Brooke (Lecture One) (Patreon)

Let's begin our journey into George Eliot's Middlemarch with a deep-reading of the first book, 'Miss Brooke'.

As this is one of our longest lectures to date (2 hours 24 mins), do feel free to take advantage of the timestamps below to stagger your listening and reading. 

The first 30 minutes gives us a historical grounding in the Age of Reform, the Woman Question, and English politics in the Victorian Era. After that, we dive into a close analysis of the first book of Middlemarch.

There are no story spoilers beyond that first book. After all, as we are playing "first reader", George Eliot has yet to release the second part of her masterpiece.

The lectures refer to page numbers in the Penguin Classics paperback edition of Middlemarch, but we also indicate chapters for those of you working from another edition.

• Middlemarch - Penguin Classics Edition 
• Middlemarch and the Rise of the Reading Public 
• How to Read Middlemarch (10 Tips) 

Video Timestamps:

• 0:00 welcome to Middlemarch
• 1:30 what does the title mean?
• 4:00 Middlemarch as historical novel
• 4:30 the Age of Reform
• 6:00 George Eliot’s Victorian England
• 9:00 the publishing world of the 19th Century
• 11:00 urbanisation, industrial revolution, and 1819
• 15:00 English politics and parliamentary practices
• 16:20 the Whigs vs Tories
• 18:00 suffrage, Chartism, and reform without revolution
• 22:00 the 1832 Reform Act
• 23:00 the prelude to Middlemarch
• 28:28 the Woman Question
• 35:00 chapter one of ‘Miss Brooke’
• 37:00 literature, art, and the condition of music
• 39:00 comparing Dorothea and Celia
• 43:00 the idealism of Miss Brooke
• 44:00 Pascal’s wager
• 45:00 meeting Chettham, Casaubon & Mr Brooke
• 53:00 George Eliot’s narrative style
• 57:30 the Romantics’ contribution to art
• 1:00:00 artistic reform and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
• 1:02:50 art as selective mirror
• 1:03:50 the George Eliot novel
• 1:05:00 what writers did George Eliot read?
• 1:07:00 Don Quixote and Dorothea Brooke
• 1:08:00 a dinner table discussion about reform
• 1:14:00 Dorothea’s view of Casaubon
• 1:18:00 Middlemarch and the web of society
• 1:27:00 the nature of opinions and ideas
• 1:33:00 dramatic irony and historical foreshadowing
• 1:38:00 does self-erasure ultimately affirm one’s self?
• 1:40:00 loss of individualism in the age of industrial reform
• 1:42:00 Casaubon’s letter and speech to Dorothea
• 1:44:00 the prose style of George Eliot
• 1:50:00 the tribalism of provinces
• 1:56:00 George Eliot’s moral purpose in practice
• 2:00:00 the characters’ psychological complexity
• 2:05:00 meeting Will Ladislaw
• 2:10:00 sympathising with the characters of Middlemarch
• 2:14:00 entangled in a labyrinth of metaphors
• 2:15:30 meeting Mr Bulstrode, Mr Vincy, and Rosamond
• 2:16:20 Lydgate on the cusp of medical reform
• 2:21:45 preparing for book two

Questions to Consider:

1) We appreciated many different "Eliotic brushstrokes" during this first lecture. Which of George Eliot's literary techniques do you find the most interesting? 

2) "If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally." (George Eliot) - Does the first book of Middlemarch meet its author's moral aims?

3) How does George Eliot's differ from other novelists you have explored and enjoyed? Where do you think she will sit in your personal canon?

Happy Middlemarching, folks!