I am SO SORRY! I really wanted to post every week, but life just got the better of me. The third term has begun with a bang. At the moment, I have exactly 2 weeks of teaching left before our Matrics leave to begin the spiral of exams that will bring them to the end of their school careers. On top of that, for the past 3 weeks, I have been juggling parent meetings, external moderation and all the other joys that arrive with the beginning of a new term (I even had a wonderful 13 hour day at school!). I'm sorry. But had I decided to post something it would have read like this: I thought Lydgate was errrrrrrr... what did I think? Who was I thinking about? I know I had a thought... lkrjdghkwjsbhfjhghdvasdv zbnc (me falling asleep on my keyboard). (All the posts that have been popping up on my blog were posted more than 3 weeks ago and set on a timer. I was sorry to see that my prediction of this insanity was right.)So, my thoughts on the end of Middlemarch. Be warned. Spoilers everywhere! I really enjoyed it. And from what I have read of other comments, I am unusual in liking the finale. No, not everyone lived long lives, not everyone got the ending they deserved. But I liked that it felt conclusive - even though I was very fond of Lydgate.
Although Rosamond had me fuming and stomping around, and venting to my mom (who is now four chapters from the end, as I type this), I 'forgave' her a bit by the end. Yes, she still remained horrifically shallow, but at least she wasn't going around ruining Lydgate's chances of getting out of debt - the debt she helped put him in! (That chapter ... I could have spat blood!)
I was really pleased that Dorothea ended up with Will. She seemed happy in the end. (I am still a bit convinced that she would have made a good wife to Lydgate though. Just saying.) Someone, somewhere in the comments of one of the earlier posts, commented that Eliot was showing the reader how harmful an unhappy marriage could be in those times. I think Will was a much better match for her than Casaubon. (But then, most people would have been a better match than him.) I also enjoyed James's reaction to her marrying Will in the end. (I wondered when I read this whether Featherstone's will was foreshadowing the negatives that could come out of Casaubon's will. Just a thought.)
I must confess that besides my outright hated for Rosamond, the other character that I ended up not really caring for was Dorothea's sister. While her heart might have been in the right place, I found her forgettable (I can't even remember her name), and I thought that her ways to help Dorothea were more self-serving and more to her liking than her sister's. Possibly it is just that she didn't understand her sister. But coming from the reader, who by the end of the book knew many of the people in Middlemarch almost intimately, I thought her choices silly.
Fred and Mary! I was so happy for them. They were the couple that might not have been, and they ended up working out better than all the others. Perhaps Eliot was suggesting that working hard for a relationship, and not relying on just a pretty face, are likely to be far more effective methods of choosing a life partner. (Ahhh! If only Lydgate had learnt from his first 'love'!)
Since I haven't posted in the past 3 weeks, I also just want to add how unexpected I found the angle with Ruffles, Bullstrode and Will. I didn't see any intrigue coming and I found it a pleasant surprise.
OK. That is me. I know I really do have a lot more to say, but it is late and I have work tomorrow, and I still need to prep Hamlet before I hit the sack. Nighty night all. And An Armchair By The Sea, thank you for hosting this readalong. I really enjoyed the book you picked, and I enjoyed seeing what everyone thought.
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