Hebdomadal topic (week 9)

Tristen (306) reminded me this afternoon that I haven't really leaned on how optional these topics are. The hebdomadal topics I post online are questions that intrigue me, and they're (I hope) useful starting places for analysis.

However, if there is a text or an approach to a text you would really like to tackle, then please go off on your own! All I ask is that if you choose to write on a hebdomadal topic of your own devising, let me know what that topic is at the beginning of your hebdomadal. (You might find it easiest to phrase that topic in the form of a question.)

In that spirit, here are two topics for this week: one is extremely open-ended, and the other focuses on a problem that has been getting to me.

Topic 1

In both discussions today, you developed exceptionally good questions about Middlemarch. I mean that, by the way: in four years of teaching, I have never seen students move so quickly to develop thoroughly brilliant discussion questions.

We didn't address these questions at all thoroughly. In section 306, we just skipped two or three amazing questions. In this hebdomadal, you can do one of three things:

1. Answer a question that was posed but never addressed. In 306, these questions were:
   • Is anything in Middlemarch left to "choice"? (Shelby, can you let me know the page number of Lydgate's comment? There's a good bit about "liking to do" on p. 402, but I don't think that was the passage you were working with.) Shelby writes that we should consider "page 401, where Lydgate says, 'My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice.' It is in regards to Rosamond's comment that living in a 'poor way' will lower his status, so this raises a theme like how social pressure limits personal choice, or something to that effect." Excellent stuff! Thanks, Shelby!
   • How and to what extent can a character move beyond his past deeds?
   • By the way, if I missed any great questions that came up in either class that didn't get their share of attention, send me an email or post a comment below!
2. Answer a question that we didn't deal with quite thoroughly enough in our conversation
3. Answer a question that you and your partner worked through but that you never got to share with the group

Topic 2: Reading reading in Middlemarch

Early in our 305 meeting today, John suggested that Mary Garth is a social outlier in Middlemarch because she's exceptionally good at reading character. We also notice that Mary is just plain good at reading: her voracious appetite for reading is mentioned on pages 72, 89, 160, 196 and elsewhere.

Working either with the example of Mary or with any other character, explain why characters in Middlemarch read. What good does George Eliot -- or her narrator -- think books do? Of the many kinds of books that are read by Middlemarchers -- mythological texts, religious texts, encyclopedias, legal and financial documents, etc. -- what specific role do novels play?

Here are some other scenes that might interest you:

• 47: Dorothea sees Casaubon's library, and at that moment reads him
• 48: Dorothea sees Casaubon's mother's parlor, and sees the books in it as decorations
• 299 and 306: Casaubon's library is described as a sort of a tomb, only moments before he dies
• 66: Fred reads ("only") a novel
• 72: Peter Featherstone's limited library is described
• 196: Trumbull reads Mary's borrowed copy of Anne of Geierstein in his auctioneer's voice
• 353: Sir Walter Scott is mentioned again, and at some length
• 375: Trumbull talks at some length about the value of a book of riddles