We Mortals Have Our Divine Moments: Towards an Anarchist Reading of Middlemarch

Towards the end of book 5 of Middlemarch, Mr Farebrother, the kindly vicar, says to to the feckless and lovelorn Fred Vincy that “[m]en may outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.” This biting comment gets at two of the core themes of the book. First, that people’s passions (not just love, but money, lust for power, etc.) are often key to their own downfalls. Second, that there are consequences that can be enacted upon us that can mark us, if not for life, then for at least years to come.

Middlemarch has the unusual feature that almost all of the punishments, whether just or not, visited upon its characters come from their neighbors, peers, and community. The punishments delivered to and the redemptions offered to the principle figures in Middlemarch don’t come from God or the State or any hierarchically higher source of power, but rather from the people they share their lives with day to day.

Instead of providing stability or power, traditional hierarchical systems and sources of power tend to serve a double role: to provide the desires that lead characters to their ruin and then to provide them false hope and ultimately fail to protect or redeem them. In order to see this pattern in action, I’ll discuss a few of these characters who are failed by these hierarchical powers.

The first and most notable is Bulstrode. Bulstrode, the haughtily religious banker, is let down not by one power structure but by two. His desire for money leads him to betray his elderly first wife and silently disinherit her grandson, Will Ladislaw. This leads to a kind of original sin that pursues him in the form of another money-hungry wretch, Raffles, who serves as the kind retributive spirit to bring Bulstrode’s old life into the present and set up his downfall.

Money also fails to save Bulstrode, no matter how much he tries to leverage it to escape the consequences of his past. His bribes to Raffles find the man’s appetites bottomless. His loan to Lydgate gets misconstrued as blood money. His fortune can’t stave off the odium of the residents of Middlemarch.

His other source of desire and false salvation is religion. He’s a pious man to a fault, often holding other people to the exacting standards of his own personal theology. He often uses it as an excuse to get deeply involved in the affairs of the town, such as when he pushes to have Mr. Tyke appointed chaplain of the new hospital due to Bulstrode’s own theological preferences.

When Bulstrode’s past sins come back to visit him, he throws himself at the mercy of his version of God. In return his God is silent and does nothing to stay the hand of Middlemarch in enacting its punishment, a kind of forced-yet-self-imposed exile. Eliot vividly renders the disappointment that Bulstrode’s faith delivers him when he tries to rely on God to save him from the wages of his past:

“He felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife’s face with affection in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution.”

For Bulstrode, money and God are sources of desire that ultimately fail to save him from the consequences of his own recklessness.

We see a parallel arc in the story of Mr. Brooke’s dabbling in politics and of the “Reform” question more broadly. Brooke fancies himself a serious, yet moderate man, fit to stand for parliament. His campaign centers around reform, even though that seems to mean different things to everyone who talks about it. (Notably, one of his tenants seems to view reform as some sort of great leveling that will bring landlords like Brooke to account. This poor tenant is also betrayed by reliance on government reform, since even if he were right, the bill was shot down in the House of Lords.)

Brooke’s desire for political power leads him to spend money on his campaign, rather than his family. It leads him to engage in public gladhanding and, ultimately, in lavish public speaking to a proletarian crowd that he’s clearly not familiar with. His arrogance in viewing himself as the moderate guiding hand that the country (and his community in Middlemarch) need, causes him to put himself out in ways that irritate his neighbors and stretch his talents far beyond what they’re capable of.

The end result, being beclowned by a mob riled up by his political opponents, leads him to shame. He learns his lesson, however, and doesn’t pursue his desire for politics beyond this short, embarrassing shock delivered by the jeers and pelting eggs of his would-be constituents. The political process and his desire for political influence both set him up for disappointment and couldn’t protect him from the ignominy he suffered.

The third hierarchy that I’ll highlight is Rosamund’s desire for and trust in social class connections. One of the things that draws her to Lydgate is his connection to landed gentry. She wants to climb the (in the context of Middlemarch, fairly explicit) social ladder and sees her marriage as one way to do that. She’s even initially well-received by Lydgate’s relatives, being complemented by his uncle, Sir Godwin Lydgate. There’s even hints of flirtation between her and Lydgate’s cousin, Captain Lydgate, with whom she goes riding behind her husband’s back.

This desire to rise in the world is partially to blame for Rosamund’s profligate desires, which her husband indulges, leading to steep debts. When Rosamund writes to her high-born uncle-in-law, he dismissively writes back to her husband, not only declining help, but functionally severing ties. Social status and landed relatives thus fail to dig her out of the predicament she got into in part via her desires for that very status.¹

In all three of these cases, the proximate mechanism by which the consequences of the characters’ passionate recklessness are delivered is social opprobrium. Gossip, shunning, and innuendo are the primary punishments meted out by the community to Bulstrode, Brooke, and the Lydgates. The power of the social punishment comes from the shame and the secondary punishments which the characters all inflict on themselves. Bulstrode, while legally in the clear and still possessing a massive fortune, decides to flee town with his family. Brooke gives up on political life. The Lydgates leave Middlemarch for London. No legal penalty or wrath of God was required. The community of their peers and neighbors was able to punish them without recourse to any hierarchical governing force.

This mechanism is even shown as being somewhat self-correcting in the case of Lydgate, whose association with Bulstrode is severed and his social sins forgiven once Dorothea takes over his debts and pleads his case to pillars of the community.

These failures of traditional sources of power raise the question: what does lead to a good and happy life in Middlemarch? If money, God, government, or status don’t work, what does?

In short, one’s genuine relationships with lovers, friends, family, and neighbors, as well as the rejection of the temptation of traditional sources of power and prosperity. Over and over again, the characters who do personal, selfless acts of good for the people around them are seen living happy lives, even if they are unprosperous ones. Mr. Farebrother, for instance, is caring and supportive to his elderly relatives. He gives sound advice to Lydgate while holding no grudge for Lydgate not voting for him for chaplain of the new hospital.² He even gives needed advice and correction to Fred Vincy with whom he has a romantic rivalry over the affections of Mary Garth. (Though, admittedly, a rivalry that he seems to know he’s bound to lose, even if he does end up marrying her.)

For this, he is modestly rewarded. (The metaphysics of Middlemarch seems to only allow for modest rewards.) Dorothea appoints him to vicar of Lowick, which provides him more comfortable means. He is loved and respected by those around him and generally ends the book better off than when it began.

Characters who stick to their own, internally-derived morals come to happy ends. Caleb Garth has a genuine moral commitment to work and to doing well in his trade and by his customers. Even though this causes him and his family temporary material want at times (though this is only a problem when exacerbated by Fred Vincy’s profligacy), the respect it earns him is ultimately rewarded with respect and the offer of good positions and the chance to ply his trade. When he rejects Bulstrode’s attempts to employ him, avoiding entanglement with Bulstrode’s tainted money, he ensures that he will later be free to help Fred Vincy work an honest life at Stone Court, and provide for his daughter Mary.

Mary herself earns her right to a modest and happy life by sticking to her morals by rejecting Featherstone’s money and by demanding that Fred be true to himself by not entering the church.³ Her rewards are laid out in detail in the Finale, and summed up nicely: “All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that these two…achieved a solid mutual happiness.”

The final way in which people’s happiness is ensured is by specific, kind acts of mutual aid to other people. These acts cannot be compelled or done in bad faith (such as Mr. Vincy fixing his tenants’ fences only for political gain), and they cannot be high-minded, generic charity (as with Dorothea’s cottage designs or Sir James’ building thereof). Rather they must be specific kind turns, performed with an open heart, to benefit friends and neighbors.

Dorothea’s acts and rewards make this most clear. Early on in the book, Dorothea’s good will is turned towards social reform and a desire to do grand, but nebulous good works. This leads her to her unhappy marriage with Casaubon and being trapped in his sterile and abstract world of ideas and forms without acts. Her high-mindedness, while well-intentioned, brings her misery.

Towards the end of the book, she begins to do things for the good they will bring to specific people and the concrete ways in which they will help her neighbors. She gives Farebrother a position that will keep him comfortable and allow him to provide for this family. She gives Lydgate the money to disentangle himself from Bulstrode and spare him from his debts and puts in a good word with others in Middlemarch to revive his reputation. She ultimately turns her back on social expectation, material wealth, and her high-minded ideals. For this, she is rewarded with a modest, but happy marriage to Will Ladislaw.

In the end, Middlemarch teaches us that salvation and happiness do not come from above. They do not come from powers divine or secular. Rather, both come from the good works we do for one another and the relationships we nurture and cherish. As the closing line of the novel observes:

“[T]he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

A world of Farebrothers and Dorotheas would not need redemption. It would already be saved.