How often have we seen this person: a 20-something in a thrifted button-front shirt sipping ethical coffee and chattering about finding their passion. I can so easily picture Miss Brooke in a rare and antique bookshop, perusing first edition classics over tortoise framed glasses. Perhaps she is enamored of her Greek literature professor at her liberal arts college – lusting after his sexy intellect and dusty tweed jackets, a likeness of Casaubon. She visits his office hours as often as she can and confesses that she’s not like other girls: that she’s seeking a life of knowledge and service aimed at alieving some of the world’s great misery. No beer pong, quad streaking, or undergraduate frivolity for her. She wonders how she could ever even look at fratty, vapid Sir James despite hopping on her service projects so willingly and being a nice guy.

Miss Brooke and other young characters in Middlemarch parallel today’s Millennial hipster in their countercultural morality, at once internalized and performative, as well as their naïve rejection of materialism, consumerism, and youth. People of my generation, myself included, love perceptions of thrift and romanticized, artistic starvation: secondhand clothing and anything upcycled, yet continue to enjoy prohibitively expensive luxuries such as secondary education (paid in full by mom and dad), unlimited smart phone data packages, and that five-dollar fair-trade iced dirty chai. Recall how immodest Miss Brooke feels at the idea of wearing necklaces, but continues to enjoy the lifestyle of a high society woman. She works philanthropically to build cottages on Sir James’ estate, but believes this will “make the life of poverty beautiful” (Eliot 27). She pronounces they should all be driven from their homes with whips and be made to live in those same cottages, that life would be better in them, but where is the action to follow the claim? How many times have I myself stated I should make like Thoreau, leave behind this life of objects and status and make for the woods? Live a life of simplicity in a one room cabin where I grow my own food and sit in silent gratitude of the natural world around me. I currently reside in my parents suburban Richmond home. I would leave, but I can’t sleep without air conditioning and they buy me really expensive organic yogurt.

Look also at young Ladislaw in his adversion to devoting himself to a profession, preferring instead to amble through Europe on Casaubon’s dime, waiting for purpose to stumble across him. His uncle’s accusations of self-indulgence echo older generations accusations of Millennial narcissism and laziness. He believes himself, as do many of my peers and my own self, touched by genius. Not by intellectual capacity, but by a specific, critical role in the universe unfulfillable by anyone but ourselves. I would call this suspicion a hunger for vocation. We could certainly be accused of having a distaste for work, but perhaps it is in actuality an unwillingness to settle for the mundane and unspectacular. We are all, each of us, a special snowflake. Our mommies told us so.

I find the sentiments expressed by these characters and my generational cohorts both irritating and endearing. I of course understand why Casaubon and Baby Boomer alike grow impatient at our perceived lack of focused application and realism, but I believe we have a genuine want of something more. We suffer a deep dissatisfaction with the insufficient life at hand. We don’t want careers or amiable husbands. We want poetry. We want ecstasy. We want God and change and purpose and to build something more beautiful than ourselves. We see great need and are well intentioned in our wanting to help, but in the youth and ignorance we have desperately been trying to shed, we fumble in execution in the eyes of our guardians. We will work still to reconcile our newfound awareness and adult agency with our childlike and unwanted focus on the self. As I see Miss Brooke and Ladislaw struggle to find what they are supposed to do with themselves, a reflection of my generation, and perhaps more accurately, myself, I would remind them that one does not have to be distinct to be important. There is beauty and importance in the fulfillment of humble roles though they will not feel extraordinary. We will not all be famous. The world and those who suffer in it can be touched by a strong wife, a kind lawyer, a compassionate community member. To the elders of Middlemarch and to older generations in their unique set of challenges and experiences I urge patience and to remember that young adults are still trying to grow up.

Emma Robbins