Middlemarch is overrated
Middlemarch, which a Guardian poll of "experts" has named as the best novel ever, is overrated. I enjoyed reading it when I was seventeen. I probably re-read it in my twenties. Then I grew up. I became a bit more skeptical of the para-religious sentimentalism-on-stilts that defines George Eliot’s oeuvre, and this novel in particular. This is a pile of nonsense with a grain of truth in it Of course I was in love with Dorothea Brooke as a teenager. So high-minded, and considerate and so wisely accepting of her misfortunes, and rather pretty too. But nowadays she strikes me as a blue-stocking bore (I far prefer the feisty Gwendolyn from Daniel Deronda (partly thanks to Romola Garai’s portrayal of her). Let’s put it simply.
