theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life

Week 2 | analyzing week one and getting into our next chapters

Welcome to the Closely Reading book club, where we closely read classic literature together and discuss assigned chapters each week. Right now, we’re reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch—and you’re welcome to join us any time.

what’s in a prelude?

For week 1 of our read-a-long, we read the Prelude and Chapter 1 of the novel. So, let’s talk about them! (As a reminder, you can view the full schedule here.)

For my reading brain, the prelude felt like a taffy pull. The sentences were dense and wandering; the questions were rhetorical and pointed. I paid attention to how the prelude characterized Saint Theresa of Avila:

• “little girl walking”

• “seek[ing] martyrdom”

• “wide-eyed and helpless-looking”

• “human heart…beating to a national idea”

• “passionate, ideal nature”

• “her flame quickly burned up that light fuel”

• “rapturous consciousness of life beyond self”

• “she found her epos in the reform of a religious order”

This is a brief and stunning summary of a brilliant girl—a girl so unique, high-minded, and brave that she would “demand an epic life.” This is a heroine in the making, holding the small hand of her younger sibling and taking off into the unknown to reshape the world.

Rebecca Mead summarizes it thusly:

“The opening sentence of Middlemarch refers to an incident in which the young Theresa and a sibling, seized with precocious religious conviction, set off from Ávila with the intention of being gloriously executed for their faith by non-Christians, only to be thwarted by family members who stopped them in their outing.”

(Source: proceed with caution, this link contains spoilers!)

What does it mean to have an “epic” life? Consider not just the definition of the word, but the genre implied by it—think of “epics,” like those by Homer.

As the prelude tells us, “Many Theresas have been born,” and so we see that Eliot is deploying Theresa as more than a metaphor. She’s creating a type of woman; Theresa establishes the form that many other young women will take — she’s a type of character and, for some reason (!), Eliot wants us to know this “type” before we meet Dorothea in chapter one.

The final line of the prelude leads us into Book One of the novel, titled “Miss Brooke”:

“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 centering in some long-recognizable deed.”

Middlemarch, Prelude

This sentence sets us up to read Dorothea—or Miss Brooke—as “foundress of nothing.” But what does that mean?

This is worth pushing on.

“The novel’s first sentence may not be pithy; it may even be clunky. But with it, Eliot establishes what is to be her theme, developed with complexity throughout the novel: What happens when grand aspiration dwindles into lesser accomplishment?” -Rebecca Mead

What patterns has the prelude established? What rhythms or “beats” to the story have been set here? What do those patterns do to you, as a reader?

By this, I mean: What do they establish for your introduction to Dorothea and Celia? What ideas has the prelude planted into your mind? What imagery, even if subtle and barely there, is tenderly pulsing as a landscape behind these characters in chapter 1?

The art of paying attention to these questions is closely reading.

“reach constantly” into the reading experience

Music theory tells us that a prelude’s primary purpose is to establish tone and mood for a longer, larger piece of music. A prelude also introduces major themes that listeners will hear played out in full, later in the full pieces of music.

A prelude can also be thought of as something of a “warm-up” piece or even a more improvisation-driven set-up that establishes patterns before taking those patterns under a longer study—and expanding, building upon, or evolving those patterns in the rest of the larger piece.

So, this is another way you can start closely reading Middlemarch—

• What are character types? What “types” seem to be at work in this novel?

• Why would an author introduce a character’s form or mold, before the character herself?

• Is Eliot telling us the whole story in miniature before she tells us the whole story in 800-ish pages?

  • If so: why would she do that?

Chapter 1 opens with a poetic epigraph—a short excerpt, from another work of literature or poetry—that sets us up for the chapter.

“Since I can do no good because a woman,
Reach constantly at something that is near it.”

Middlemarch, Chapter 1 epigraph

It’s almost yet another prelude to meeting Miss Brooke, and this one comes from The Maid’s Tragedy, a divisive Elizabethan play from 1619, written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Eliot is flexing her deep knowledge of the literary and cultural tradition into which she writes her novel.

We now not only have the figure of Saint Theresa to grapple with, but also this image of a woman “reach[ing] constantly” for something near goodness.

We get to know these two sisters—Dorothea and Celia—in terms of their social perception and standing. They are beautiful, albeit in different and critically unique ways. They were orphaned as teenagers and now live with “their bachelor uncle,” who is unpredictable but reliably kind and purse-clutching.

This is a family that nurses a “hereditary strain of Puritan energy” — for some, like uncle, this strain is evident in his money saving, but this same strain “glows” in Dorothea, whose entire being seems to radiate with Puritanical energies: she is pious, quick to judge, impatient, and she longs to be “generous” with her inheritance someday.

Dorothea, then, is “reaching constantly” to do good—or, at least, what she understands and believes in her deeply religious heart to be good.

And, as I was reading, I thought we were meeting a story of a Saint like Theresa of Avila—but then the novel asked a keen and provocative question:

“And how should Dorothea not marry?—a girl so handsome and with such prospects?”

Middlemarch, Chapter 1

I wrote in my margin: “a marriage plot.”

This is something I wasn’t necessarily expecting in novel that opened with a long definition and exploration of a nun.

Then I realized this is, perhaps, the key tension of the novel, posed as a brilliant question: How would Dorothea not get married? She’s beautiful, even “bewitching,” and has a comfortable inheritance and living coming her way from Uncle Tipton.

But, the novel tells us, there are some barriers in her way—

1. She’s an extremist — look closely at what this means in the text. In what ways is she actually extreme? (How is this different than how we’d explain “extremism” today?)

2. She’s always anxiously regulating and controlling her feelings— how do we reconcile this with her Puritanical extremism? Her fervid bouts of prayer? Her middle-of-the-night whims and reading into all hours of the morning?! Dorothea is

3. She has potential to scheme — she wants to do good with her inheritance, and this could lead to sloppy wastes of money, and could “interfere with political economy” in her household. What kind of husband wants that?

4. She is opinionated — Perhaps worst of all! “Sane people” the novel tells us, “did what their neighbors did.” Dorothea, it is implied, does not.

These are not the only potential barriers to Dorothea finding a nice man. As many of you pointed out in your initial comments and questions, Dorothea also loves to ride horses and has a weak spot for her mother’s jewels (as the scene with Celia reveals).

And so, this question of How will Dorothea not marry? evokes new questions: How will Dorothea need to change in order to marry? What kind of man will be attracted to Dorothea’s extremist pulses and Puritanical self flagellation? Who will Dorothea be attracted to? How will Dorothea end up married, with all these apparent personality and habit-driven barriers in her way?

It’s worth asking yourself, again, about those larger themes from the Prelude:

• How is Dorothea saintly?

• How is Dorothea not saintly? How is she worldly?

• What tempts Dorothea?

• What does Dorothea love?

• What do you still want to know about her? What do you know well by this point?

favorite quote

Each week, I like to share my favorite quote from our assigned pages. And you’re more than welcome to share your favorite quotes, too! Here was my favorite from this week—and it comes from chapter 1:

“She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee.”

I loved it because, well, first of all it’s a lovely style of sentence—two independent clauses linked up beautifully to give us a meaningful contrast to previous connotations about Dorothea’s being. For all her Puritanical judgements and haughty dismissals, there is something in her that rings of a decidedly unholy freedom and that longs for pleasure—on horseback, which she perceives as her greatest vice, Dorothea can partake of fresh air and transforms from the wide-eyed and strange girl devoted to scripture…into someone who glows, not with that Puritan strain of devotion, but with the glow of life, fresh air, and pleasure.

I loved this glimpse at who Dorothea might be beneath all the proud shrouds of her religiosity. I hope to glimpse her again.

what we are reading this week (week 2!)

Here we go into week 2! Here’s your assignment

Week 2: Monday, June 2
Read chapters 2-10 this week

You can view the full reading schedule here.

You can pose your questions here (or in the comments of today’s post!)

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thank you for reading with me!

It’s time to dive into the comments and share all your thoughts on the Prelude and on chapter 1. All of our reader questions from this week come out in a separate post later today.

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