One of the problems with reading good literature comes when your romanticized version of the past is blown to smithereens. I had a lot of issues with Book 3. The actual reading was easy and the story line was super compelling, but the flaws within every character were reveled and deepened, causing my idyllic notion of what it meant to live in this time period to all but vanish.
We see Fred pawn off his debt on his good friend, feeling guilty not because he is essentially robbing the Garth family of a sum that is going to cripple the future prospects of their young son, but because he is going to lose the regard of Mary. The family that comes in to watch as Mr. Featherstone dies, not because of any familial loyalty, but because they want to pick clean the carcass of his estate as soon as he stops breathing. No one is as I would expect, no one is the prototypical ‘good guy’ who is willing to do a good thing for the sake of doing a good deed.
No one, that is except the people who are not well off. The Garths are good people, though they have never been and will never be wealthy. Mr. Garth is charitable to a fault, thinking nothing of signing a debt away for a friend. He literally gambles his family’s security and future because of his belief that Fred is a good person who will not default. The harsh truth is that Mr. Garth is easily taken advantage of because of this nature. Fred asks Mr. Garth for his signature because Mr. Garth “was the poorest and kindest” because his pride couldn’t allow himself to be “looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts”. Fred is in the wrong and so is Mr. Garth.
The one person who acts morally and in a fashion befitting the antiquated ideals of femininity is Mary Garth. And, truth be told, I found her as annoying as the others. She truly is the ideal daughter—loyal, giving, and hardworking. She makes her own living looking after Mr. Featherstone, though he is remarkably rude to her in front of others. She even saves her money, a sign of responsibility. However, she gives it all up to her father when he comes looking for help to cover Fred’s debt. Even when Mr. Featherstone smears her father by (correctly) guessing that he had come for Mary’s earnings, Mary doesn’t correct him, doesn’t tell him that the debt is Fred’s.
When Mr. Featherstone is dying and offers her money to destroy his second will, Mary refuses. Her honor does not allow her to take money freely offered, money that no one would know was missing, money that would help her family recover from the havoc that Fred created. She leaves the money, refuses to abandon her morals for anyone. Aside from ignoring this request, she does everything she can to comfort the man, even seeing to it that he does not die alone. She is the only characters that does not have a dark side.
Her characterization stands in direct contrast to all the well-off people in Middlemarch. Rosemond and Dorothea rush hastily into marriage without a fully formed notion of what it means to be married; Mary refuses Fred because he has “no manly independence”. Mary provides herself a living while Fred lives on the “chance that others will provide for him”. Mary takes care of Mr. Featherstone in the end, though he was a scrooge in life. It was Mary’s moral superiority in every lauded personality trait that causes everyone else to look worse. Frankly, Mary seems too good for the lot of them, and should, perhaps, consider moving.
– Valerie Harrison