During my reading of Middlemarch, I found myself hating many of the characters. It took multiple readings and days of meditation before I was willing to forgive some of the characters and try to understand their motivation. I was really jealous of several of the other Middlemarch bloggers because they seemed to understand the characters in ways I could not. Reading My Life in Middlemarch invoked a similar feeling within me. Rebecca Mead understood the characters on a level that transcended my own understanding. Mead’s explanations of each character highlighted their progress as people, not just as characters, and allowed me empathize more easily with characters that I hated.

Dorothea really bothered me throughout most of Middlemarch. I found her cerebral and charitable nature very annoying. I could not understand the impact of living in a town like Middlemarch, to be in the country with very little society or experience, having an intimate knowledge of your immediate surroundings but only a vague concept of life outside of your confines. Mead combats this beautifully when she speaks about her own journey to get out of her small English town and head off to university. Dorothea had a mix of arrogance and charity, a final spark of youthful innocence and optimism that I don’t really see in people her age (and im 20), and when I do, I run the other way. Mixing Dorothea’s story with her own allowed Mead to mire Dorothea in reality a bit more and helped me appreciate where Dorothea was coming from.

This illumination didn’t stop with Dorothea. Mead uses her personal journey and her years of experience and personality change to comment on how the reader’s relationship with the characters is a constant evolution. The young teenager Mead delighted in Dorothea where the older reader found solace for failed ambition with Lydgate and later with Celia. Mead also talked about Elliot’s personal evolution and how her growth showed up in her characters. There was something immensely special about understanding the change from idealistic Elliot to rebel (living with a married man) to mother. George Elliot became a person, much like her characters, though this reading. It is so easy to abandon the story of the author as the author gets lost among her creation. By breathing life into Elliot, several characters where explained.

Mead illuminated Middlemarch for me, making me tempted to go back and re-read it for myself and catch more of the subtle character changes. I think I will wait five years until I walk back into Middlemarch. Maybe I’ll finally have patience for Dorothea. Maybe I’ll not want to slap Rosamond. Maybe I’ll find my way back to these blog posts and be embarrassed by my lack of empathy. I can be certain that this book with still resonate with me, characters will find paramours in my real life, and my perception will most assuredly have evolved. Middlemarch is a personal journey, with each character representing different stages of life and understanding. And like any good home town, I know they will be waiting to welcome me home.

– Valerie Harrison