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Why Is Middlemarch Book Considered A Classic?

2026-04-24 14:39:22
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3 Answers

Selena
Selena
There is much quiet magic in Middlemarch. It does not have big sword fights or grand love stories to tell, but instead it so graphically and masterfully reveals human nature to us, that it seems eternal. Dorothea and her struggles to find her true place in life, stymied again and again by her own high-minded idealism. The soul of young Ambrose Lydgate, with all his great natural gifts for good, slowly slipping away from his highest aims under the relentless external pressure to make a name for himself, to become wealthy. And, finally, the long and inept cartoon of insipid, empty, egocentric vanity, that is Rosamond.

The book is a classic for many reasons. First, it changed the way that 19th-century fiction could be written. Instead of depending on melodrama and morality, Middlemarch presented a realistic portrayal of a small group of people and the events that occurred among them. And yet, despite being set in a small, rather insignificant town, the book managed to present a universe of conflict and drama. In the end, Eliot proved her title to be a lie, for it is clear that life in a small town can be every bit as complex and as full of drama as life in a great city. This is a book that will grow with you as you read it again and again, just as you might discover new hidden compartments in an old desk.
2026-04-25
Noah
Noah
I first read George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ when I was 15. I almost threw it aside after the first three chapters because I thought it was too long and too complex. Instead it has become my literary security blanket. I love it now because Eliot is so good at realism, especially psychological realism. Casaubon is a particularly nice example of a bad man. He’s not a cartoon villain, just a sad, isolated, rather bitter man. He’s also rather insecure and, in the end, rather pointless. His pettiness is surprisingly modern.

The themes of this novel are remarkably up to date. The struggles of Fred Vincy to pay off his debts would feature large in most student loan discussions, Dorothea's intellectual urges have not diminished with the years and remain to be suffocated by the men in her life. The town's powerful resistance to the advances of medical science could be lifted almost unchanged into any anti-vaxxer debate. What lasts in literature is not the plot of the novel but the emotional truth that it contains of people long dead. We read Middlemarch because we recognize ourselves in its characters.
2026-04-29
Yara
Yara
'You can tell that Middlemarch is a grown-up novel. By that I mean it’s not dry or uncomfortable. Instead it portrays adulthood as a compromise between our aspirations and the limitations of our circumstances. So Dorothea doesn’t become a Joan of Arc and Lydgate dies unknown in the fullness of time. That is how life is. It’s rarely Hollywood happy ends. And it’s all described in a style so endearing and compassionate that it’s like reading your wisest friend describing the fallibilities of a small community. But at the same time it’s so astute that it has earned the approbation of academic literary critics and continues to be a airport book. (Despite all the Victorian flimflam, Middlemarch is a very punk novel.)
2026-04-30

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