No es una novela para alguien que tenga prisa (la edición inglesa supera las 900 páginas), pero es una novela que merece la pena. Middlemarch es el retrato de una sociedad de provincias en una época de costumbres conservadoras, pero es sobre todo un conjunto de historias sobre las relaciones, especialmente las relaciones matrimoniales y de amor.Al presenciar las vicisitudes de los protagonistas, nos damos cuenta de la dificultad que supone tomar las decisiones correctas y no caer en la trampa de nuestras propias ilusiones sobre la realidad.
La profundidad de los análisis psicológicos, la riqueza y variedad de los personajes, los comentarios inteligentes del narrador sobre el mundo que nos cuenta, hacen de este libro una lectura absolutamente recomendable y muy actual en los temas que trata.
Como muestra este botón del final del texto:
Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
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.
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.
Bibliografía
Eliot, G., Middlemarch, London, Penguin, 2012.