














Middlemarch


By

George Eliot




New York and Boston

H. M. Caldwell Company Publishers




To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our
blessed union.




CONTENTS

BOOK I

CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII


BOOK II

CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII


BOOK III

CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII


BOOK IV

CHAPTER XXXIV CHAPTER XXXV CHAPTER XXXVI CHAPTER XXXVII CHAPTER XXXVIII
CHAPTER XXXIX CHAPTER XL CHAPTER XLI CHAPTER XLII


BOOK V

CHAPTER XLIII CHAPTER XLIV CHAPTER XLV CHAPTER XLVI CHAPTER XLVII
CHAPTER XLVIII CHAPTER XLIX CHAPTER L CHAPTER LI CHAPTER LII
CHAPTER LIII


BOOK VI

CHAPTER LIV CHAPTER LV CHAPTER LVI CHAPTER LVII CHAPTER LVIII
CHAPTER LIX CHAPTER LX CHAPTER LXI CHAPTER LXII


BOOK VII

CHAPTER LXIII CHAPTER LXIV CHAPTER LXV CHAPTER LXVI CHAPTER LXVII
CHAPTER LXVIII CHAPTER LXIX CHAPTER LXX CHAPTER LXXI


BOOK VIII

CHAPTER LXXII CHAPTER LXXIII CHAPTER LXXIV CHAPTER LXXV CHAPTER LXXVI
CHAPTER LXXVII CHAPTER LXXVIII CHAPTER LXXIX CHAPTER LXXX CHAPTER LXXXI




PRELUDE


Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious
mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt,
at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with
some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one
morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek
martyrdom in the country of the Moors?  Out they toddled from rugged
Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human
hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met
them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great
resolve.  That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning.  Theresa's
passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed
romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to
her?  Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from
within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which
would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with
the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self.  She found her epos in
the reform of a religious order.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not
the last of her kind.  Many Theresas have been born who found for
themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of
far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of
a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of
opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and
sank unwept into oblivion.  With dim lights and tangled circumstance
they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but
after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and
formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent
social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge
for the ardently willing soul.  Their ardor alternated between a vague
ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was
disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient
indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures
of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as
the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might
be treated with scientific certitude.  Meanwhile the indefiniteness
remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one
would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite
love-stories in prose and verse.  Here and there a cygnet is reared
uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the
living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind.  Here and
there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving
heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are
dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some
long-recognizable deed.





BOOK I.

MISS BROOKE.



CHAPTER I