{"id":3086,"date":"2011-12-06T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T10:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jolene-test.com.bishopcompsol.com\/?p=3086"},"modified":"2011-12-06T10:00:20","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T10:00:20","slug":"middlemarch-by-george-eliot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jolenephilo.com\/staging\/middlemarch-by-george-eliot\/","title":{"rendered":"Middlemarch by George Eliot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Would the librarian who pulled the audio version boxed set of George Elliot\u2019s Middlemarch<\/em> out of the stacks and displayed it on the end cap please stand up? I\u2019d like to thank you for opening my eyes, or should I say ears, to a delightful two weeks of listening.<\/p>\n

My only other encounter with George Eliot, the assigned reading of Silas Marner<\/em> for a high school English class, was not a rousing success. I was too immature to grasp the subtlety of the classic and consequently avoided Eliot for years. To this day, the only thing I remember about Silas Marner<\/em> is that George Eliot is the pen name of the woman who wrote it.<\/p>\n

But a few weeks ago, I couldn\u2019t resist the cunningly displayed audio version of one of Eliot\u2019s (Mary Anne Evans) later works, Middlemarch<\/em>. The image of the woman with hair piled impossibly high, with the words \u201cunabridged classic\u201d tucked in one corner, Kate Reading listed as the narrator gave me the gumption to give the book a go, all 25 audio CDs.<\/p>\n

You read that right. 25 CDS. And every one of them worth a listen.<\/p>\n

At first I wasn\u2019t sure. But it didn\u2019t take long to be drawn into the story of the main character, a young woman named Dorothea Brooke and her train wreck of a marriage to the sickly, pompous Reverend Edward Casaubon. He dies mere months later, but not before trying to derail any future happiness between his young wife and his young, distant relative, Will Ladislaw. Weave into that two more subplots concerning two other pairs of young lovers – Fred Vincy and Mary Garth as well as Dr. Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy – and I was hooked. (To get a complete look at the characters and themes of the novel, check out Wikipedia. Or do an internet search of \u201cMiddlemarch\u201d to turn up 25 CDs worth of analysis of the book and author.)<\/p>\n

Thanks to the subtle, yet distinctive voices Kate Reading created for each character, keeping them straight was easy. She handled the narrative passages with masterful, lively\u00a0 pacing that never bored or disappointed. The book held me captive to the last, powerful paragraph. It described the remainder of Dorothea Brooke\u2019s days by defending the importance of what society might consider an unremarkable, common life as follows:<\/p>\n

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.<\/em><\/p>\n

I would not have appreciated that paragraph in high school English, back when my vision of a worthy life required novelty and acclaim. But now, having observed the world made better by the unhistoric, selfless acts of many quiet people, its wisdom moves me to tears.<\/p>\n

Thank you, unknown librarian, for making my world a better place through the unhistoric act of displaying Middlemarch<\/em> to catch this patron\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s time to read Silas Marner<\/em> again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would the librarian who pulled the audio version boxed set of George Elliot\u2019s Middlemarch out of the stacks and displayed it on the end cap please stand up? I\u2019d like to thank you for opening my eyes, or should I say ears, to a delightful two weeks of listening. My only other encounter with George […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[90,479,675,769,801,1055],"class_list":["post-3086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-audio-book","tag-george-eliot","tag-kate-reading","tag-mary-anne-evans","tag-middlemarch","tag-silas-marner"],"yoast_head":"\nMiddlemarch by George Eliot - Jolene Philo Staging<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Middlemarch by George Eliot - Jolene Philo Staging\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Would the librarian who pulled the audio version boxed set of George Elliot\u2019s Middlemarch out of the stacks and displayed it on the end cap please stand up? 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