A little beyond the midway point in Middlemarch

My thoughts (no spoilers) on Middlemarch thus far and more

We are in the fickle month of March. I love a tumultuous start. The dramatic clock change. The warmer days have me feeling even more hopefully. How quickly I forget how bleak February felt. We had two days in the sixties and then a morning in the thirties. The grass was covered in frost, and I asked the universe “Who has done this to us?” as though this is not to be expected.

When it finally warmed up, I spent almost an entire day splitting wood by hand. The same day, we brought what I’m hoping to be our final 1/2 cord bin of firewood down to the house. On the night of the total lunar eclipse, we woke up at 3AM and ran outside in sweatshirts with blankets draped over our shoulders and said “wow” up at the red hazy moon while the cats walked around us confused. Soon (realistically in another two months) we will be putting the screen door on the tiny cottage we call home. Later still (but still so close I can taste it), we will be cooking outdoors again. I’ve already put the clothing rack on the patio to dry my wool cardigan in the sun.

The day I was splitting wood, I saw one of my favorite neighbors walking down the road. I have only spoken to this man briefly. He has a familiar accent. Italian or maybe French. He walks his dog from some nearby street to our gravel road and stops in front of our house facing the giant sycamore tree. This tree is often a point of conversation and awe for anyone who visits the farm. It’s massive trunk and wide spread crown create a microclimate all its own. This man, stopped with his sweet dog, once said to me “I am praying to your tree” as an explanation as to why he was standing at the top of our driveway. “I get it. Enjoy,” I said and headed up to the barn to finish my chores. I wave when I see him and leave him to his prayer. It gives me a new appreciation for the tree that is older than any of us reading this. Older than our home, built in 1811.

We are entering a new season here on the farm. I’ve decided against teaching a class in March. While I had a few interested participants, it seems most people are busy and I get that. I am busy too. I should reserve this time for my own writing, which will be taking me on residency to rural North Carolina in early July. It feels far away but I am sure the weeks will fly by.

Until then, I’m basking in the last of the wiggly winter weeks by devouring Middlemarch. The fear that I would not be able to get into it, as I’ve experienced in the past, is fully gone. I’m loving it. I love the gossipy townsfolk. I love the drama. I love the narrator, presumably George Eliot herself, divulging town secrets and dropping beautiful bits of wisdom in our lap, like “The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.”

I love how much Mary and Rosamond roast Fred for his flute playing (“a wheezy performance, into which he threw much ambition and an irrepressible hopefulness”) and how Rosamond chastises Fred for getting up late—“You can get up at six o’clock to go out hunting! I can’t understand why you find it so difficult to get up on other mornings.” I loathe Fred but in a way that makes the story interesting. I find Celia and “Dodo” (Dorothea) a great interpretation of sisterhood, although I find Dorothea really hard to relate to unlike some other people reading Middlemarch right now who find her to be a warning to their younger self (I must admit I skimmed Lacey’s piece since it contains a lot of spoilers). Celia makes me laugh, especially when she describes her sister as fond of “melancholy things and ugly people.” I understand her dislike of Mr. Casaubon’s soup spoon scraping on a visceral level. Mr. Casauban is a very boring character and I found myself rolling my eyes at him often. Thus far I feel neutral about Will Ladislaw and Lydgate. I think Mary may be my favorite. I loved the moment where she and Rosamond were chatting and when asked what she was up to lately Mary said “minding the house—pouring out syrup pretending to be amiable and contented—learning to have bad opinion of everybody.” Or when she said, “If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?” I love a cranky woman. She better not marry Fred.

I’m a sucker for books that demand my time, a label I’m stealing from Julie’s recent newsletter (She was talking about Middlemarch as we all are). It’s why I love a series, like Ali Smith’s Seasons Quartet or Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels. It’s why I love 800 page novels that I chase or non-monogamously read with a 150 page novella. For me, reading is a reclamation of my attention span away from distractions— i.e. social media. In some seasons, it’s a discipline that has to be practiced. In others, it’s something that takes over me, and entirely transports me to another place. I’m basking in my savoring of Middlemarch, but, not Middlemarch alone.

So far this month I also read No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce by Haley Mlotek, upon the recommendation of Rebecca, one of my favorite readers. I struggle with nonfiction. I used to be a memoir-head. It used to be all I read and all I wanted to write but more and more these days, I just want to be lost in provincial life of an English Midlands town. But No Fault was easy. I listened to the audiobook version as I drove to my friend Emma’s house to see her newly completed library. I listened while I split wood. I listened on walks and hikes. Part historical document of marriage and divorce, part personal anecdote, I found the book to be insightful and smart. I particularly liked the vignettes that featured famous people’s relationships to marriage—Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Audre Lorde to name a few. And the mentions of famous divorce movies. There were moments that made me confront what I know and think about marriage, which is honestly that I don’t often think much about it despite being married. Mostly it made me think of Middlemarch, likely due to the proximity of these two reads in time but also because of the messy marriages central to its plot. I think of Dorothea, who in the first chapter says this of marriage, “The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew if you wished it.” Yuck. Later she describes Mr. Casaubon as “a lake compared with my little pool.” “Have some confidence,” I wrote in the margin. It’s no wonder she has such little opinion of herself with the misogynist Mr. Brooke as her uncle. Talk about another eye roll worthy character.

Towards the end of the fourth book of Middlemarch, our omniscient narrator says, “In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.” I feel like this could easily be a quote reserved for the opening pages of of No Fault. I wonder if it’s foreshadowing. Only time will tell.

I also recently cracked Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, the collection that includes the essay that inspired my last class. Dillard always feels natural to read. Her prose is mystical and metaphoric. Her writing brings me a lot of awe, which was one of my New Years resolutions—to be more in awe of everything. This year is certainly delivering on that.

On Friday Jared and I both had a free afternoon, something that never happens. We decided to spend it adventuring off the farm, which we do so rarely. We went for a long hike in a new spot guided simply by Jared’s intuition and my desire to follow along. He heard there was an abandoned farm in this area, which turned out to be true. We spent an hour ducking in and out of open out buildings and marveling at the mystery and sadness of the place long abandoned. We speculated about the many operations and what the family may have been like before continuing up the mountain to take in the sights and sounds— the wild spread of snowdrops, the expansive view of the river valley, the sound of an eagle, the call of wild turkeys. On our way back to the car we encountered a young porcupine napping in the leaves.

If you are just joining me on this newsletter adventure, I hope you will subscribe and continue to follow along. As I move more and more of my time off other apps and platforms, I’m glad to have this space established to share with you all some thoughts on my writing, reading, and beyond. But don’t let this be me just talking at you. Send me an email back, or say hi in the comments. Otherwise it is a lonely journey that feels akin to talking to myself. And what good are we if not for the company of our lovely friends.

Until next time,

CM

Some images as parting gifts: