Fred in Middlemarch

Zadie Smith’s analysis of and reflections on Middlemarch, by George Eliot – particularly Henry James’ review of said book, where James repeatedly wondered: “Why so much Fred?? Let’s stay with Dorothea … why Fred?” It’s a valid question – and reflects some of my experience reading the book as well. I identified so strongly with Dorothea (probably over-identified) – that I wanted the plot to keep its focus on her. Obviously that was not what Eliot was up to or interested in. Unlike Jane Austen, whose books are strictly interior books (I don’t think the name Bonaparte is once mentioned, although don’t fact-check me on that – the point is: the entire world is not in her books. This is not a criticism, just an observation) … so while Austen focuses on one or two major thrulines, Eliot juggles, how many in Middlemarch? Maybe twenty different threads? Maybe more? It’s breathtaking. Politics, class issues, the railroad, agriculture, art, the position of women, education of women, marriage … There isn’t one major issue of the day that isn’t covered in Middlemarch. Not to mention, with the thruline of Lydgate, one of the most harrowing descriptions of what it feels like to be drowning in debt ever put on paper. But if you identify (over-identify) with a character (say: Dorothea) – you may feel like the book is “losing its way” at points, when actually the fault is in you, the reader, for not perceiving what the book is actually doing. Smith replies (in part) to James (and me):

In her intellectual and personal life, Eliot demanded continuous and varied food – and she conceived of many things. One of these things was Fred Vincy, a commonplace young man who would seem more suited to a penny-farthing romance. But it’s worth looking again at the facts, which means, in the world of Middlemarch, the emotional facts. Fred is in love with a good girl; a girl who does not love him because he is not worthy; Fred agrees with her. Maybe the point is this: of all the people striving in Middlemarch, only Fred is striving for a thing worth striving for. Dorothea mistakes Casaubon terribly, as Lydgate mistakes Rosamund, but Fred thinks Mary is worth having, that she is probably a good in the world, or at least, good for him (“She is the best girl I know!”) – and he’s right. Of all of them Fred has neither chosen a chimerical good, nor radically mistaken his own nature. He’s not as dim as he seems. He doesn’t idealise his good as Dorothea does when she imagines Casaubon a second Milton, and he doesn’t settle on a good a priori, like Lydgate, who has long believed that a doting, mindless girl is just what a man of science needs. What Fred surmises of the good he stumbles upon almost by accident, and only as a consequence of being fully in life and around life, by being open to its vagaries simply because he is in possession of no theory to impose upon it. In many ways bumbling Fred is Eliot’s ideal Spinozian subject.

Book excerpt and some of my thoughts on it here.