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Initially I found this book very tedious, simply because the character of Dorothea Brooke is intolerable. INTOLERABLE. As in, I want to dip her in radium, set her on fire, and push her out to sea in a hole-ridden boat. She is richer in sanctimony than a banana is in potassium. Yes, in the last 50 pages she fully redeems herself, but for the majority of the book you have no assurance that that will happen, and you are forced to deal with the fact that this is the main character who will be keeping you company for the next, oh, 900 pages.

The absolute worst part is that, because Dorothea is initially painted as someone to admire, like, etc. you start to get the feeling that you’re being Mary Sued and Miss Brooke is just author wish-fulfillment. And we all know, there’s nothing more annoying than *that.*

Blessedly we are given Celia Brooke at the same time Dorothea is thrown in our faces, and Celia is a lovely character I wish we’d seen more of. She knows what’s up, and more importantly, she knows her sister is a pretentious, holier-than-thou poseur with delusions of grandeur. Well, perhaps she doesn’t go that far, but she definitely knows her sister’s been drinking the holy water if you know what I mean. So we the reader are given the manna that is Celia, and it gives us the strength to press on.

At long last we are given the true gift of the novel: the OTP of Fred Vincy and Mary Garth. Ahhh. My inner reader-kitty is soothed. My heart warms up to Eliot and to Middlemarch. It’s not *Dorothea* that George Eliot identifies with- it’s Mary Garth. What a difference that realization made for this novel. Also, Mary Garth is just a fantastic character overall. She seems, at first blush, a bit of an afterthought, this mousy “little figure, rough wavy hair, and visage quite without lilies and roses�- but she’s clever, humble, opinionated, and odd in an endearing way. If you can read about Mary Garth and not want to be here, there is something wrong with you.

And Fred is great because he’s a shifty fucker when it comes to money and it feels very realistic, Mary’s love for him and simultaneous lack of respect for him. That pitying yet unconditional maternal love for a lover is absolutely a fact of life for many women. And (spoiler) we’re happy that he gets his shit together and they end up together in the end.

Lydgate and Rosamund are actually both lovely characters- both of them, but Rosamund especially, get a lot of heat but honestly Rosamund annoyed me for most of the novel less than Dorothea does. Hers is a familiar kind of frivolity. I think it’s a phase we all go through, typically in adolescence, and some of us, like Rosamund, don’t outgrow it. It’s that inability to appreciate the facticity of subjectivity (“ility icity ivity�- I apologize for the composition of that sentence). But all the same, you can’t help but love Rosy a little for that, the way you love your embarrassing, foolish younger self. Lydgate, while frustrating, is a very good man, and very familiar- we all have Lydgate for an ex-boyfriend or a brother or whatever.

After Dorothea (view spoiler)[ catches Will and Rosamund doing� whatever exactly they’re doing, and she wakes up that morning having all manner of truth and life-affirming epiphanies, she’s transformed into a completely different person. (hide spoiler)] After that event, she is no longer so naive that you want to kick her in the shins, but even with this heartrending blow, she composes herself and maintains a moral true north. All the traits that just made her tedious before, when they had no grounding, become traits that have substance and nobility. And the fact that I came to adore her by the end of the novel when she was positively unbearable at the beginning, without realizing the change come over me- that is artistry. George Eliot is a writer like no other.