Reading older books that focus on women can be a challenge. Sometimes, the women don’t seem real. Sometimes they focus on only one aspect of a woman’s personality. Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert (1856) was the fourth book on my 2025 reading list. I had read it many years ago and decided to try it again. The madame of the story seemed to only be focused on dreams of love and high society, so seems a bit myopic. Howards End by E.M. Forster (1910) is another book that focuses on the female characters. They are somehow both commited to their beliefs but subject to their husbands’ wills. Though the narrative is positive when the women succeed, the story implies that their compromises would be a happy medium, a middle ground that gives women the opportunity to speak their mind, even if they do not have the power to get their own way. I’m not so sure about that. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871) is a wonderful book that I read several years ago. I think the fact that the author was a woman makes it a more successful presentation of women and, of the three books here, is the one I look forward to rereading.
Madame Bovary is a good story of an unfortunate family. I say family rather than just focusing on the title character because this is a story of unhappiness that extends beyond one person. Emma is married to a man that she considers mediocre, a doctor who is not particularly ambitious or clever. Charles loves Emma and is committed to her, yet he seems to be oblivious to, well, everything. He gives her whatever she wants … and she wants a lot of stuff. Emma neither respects nor loves her husband, with deepening aversion to him over time. She has a child who she doesn’t particularly care about and neighbors she doesn’t really like. She aspires to be a member of high society but has neither the money nor background to get there. She went to a dance thrown by a duke and thought about it for months afterward, dreaming of receiving another invitation … which never came.
To fill the void in her life, Emma takes lovers – sadly for her, she loves them more than they love her. Leon and Rodolphe (and then Leon again) are pretty men who enjoy their trysts with Emma and other women. They, too, love her in a superficial way because … she is beautiful. But, there is not much else to Emma. She lacks curiosity and depth, though there is one scene in which she helps her husband during a patient’s bloodletting when she shows grit and strength. I was hoping to see more of that strength but the story focused on being “in love with love” and wanting a great romance. I felt sorry for Emma. The things she wanted from life are much different than what I want from life, but there is something so sad about the fact that she cannot get to where she wants to go.
One of the other striking things is how quickly the book ends after Emma’s death. [Spoilers ahead.] Her suicide is a painful read, but what was even more shocking was the wrap-up of other characters after her death – literally less than a page. Her husband died not long after Emma – presumably of grief. This leaves their daughter Berthe to live with her paternal grandmother, who died not long after that. The poor child then goes to live with an impoverished aunt who sends Berthe to work in a mill. This whole succession of custody is covered in about a paragraph! I guess the author shared Emma’s lack of interest in her husband and child.
Howards End. The book, particularly the first part, is sort of a commentary about three strata of English society in the early 20th century. I’m not a fan of “let’s use a character or two to reflect this entire group of people” because I think the characters end up being more one-dimensional than they would otherwise be, i.e., they are not really fully formed as people because they are meant to convey a message rather than to just “be”. Also, in these situations there is often an implicit push to root for certain characters not because you like them but because you should like what they represent. I generally believe that people are both complex and contradictory – they have nuances and are not always logical. Representative characters often give up a certain amount of individuality to play to the more common elements of whatever group they are representing. To be honest, I think the 1992 movie was more successful with this part of the story than was the novel.
Fortunately, as the story went on, the characters were free to be more individualistic and to make more interesting choices. I really grew to enjoy reading their thoughts and actions – how they were like others in their group and how they diverged. Margaret and Helen Schlegel and Ruth Wilcox are all interesting women who have convictions and express them as possible given their role in families in the early 20th century. It was great to see the level of independence, particularly of Margaret and Helen. Even if they did not have to power to act, they expressed their beliefs and wishes.
In the second half of the book, there are a series of coincidences that need to occur to have the story play out. Leonard has to come seeking the Schlegels after nearly a year on the same few days that Helen is back from Germany, for example. It would be one thing if she contacted him, but (unless I missed it) she did not. So, there were a few eyerolls, but overall I enjoyed the way the story was told and how the characters had grown/changed. The writing was lovely and, by the end, the characters were generally well-developed and interesting.
Middlemarch is both the story of two sisters and a story set in the context of a community in mid-19th century England. The characters have a good mix of traits – some good/enjoyable and some bad/annoying. This complexity of personality and ambitions make for interesting and nuanced story lines. The novel takes place over several years, at a time when two sisters, Dorothea and Celia Brooke, marry very different men. The story follows several couples as they navigate their marriages and interactions with others. But, as much as the framing is largely through these couples, it is a character-based novel that is written in an engaging way and takes place in a broader context of change.
Dorothea is a progressive character, particularly for that time. She is smart, beautiful, loyal, loving, stubborn, quick to anger, quick to forgive, wants to make a difference in the world, and so on. She marries an older man who thinks he’s smarter than he is, more benevolent than he is, more thoughtful than he is. She looks up to him – only to realize after marriage that she had missed his self-centeredness, pettiness, controlling nature, etc. when assessing his character. After he dies, she comes into her own more fully and is able to take some control of her life – it was wonderful to watch her grow over time. It was also fascinating to see how others responded to Dorothea. They love and respected her, but were frequently baffled by her decisions – the men in her family tried to rein her in, but to little avail. She had her own ideas and followed her head and heart. I really enjoyed Dorothea’s thought processes and believe that it is one aspect that sets the book apart.
I also love the reactions of others toward her – even the men seemed to understand that, although they may influence her actions, they were not really going to control them. She was not a “silly woman” nor was she interested in gossip, clothes, status or other of the usual things that characters (and people!) focused on. But Dorothea wasn’t a caricature of the independent woman of the time – she brought a unique spin to it, a subtlety and realness. She also took responsibility for herself. I did feel that she was a kindred spirit – she and I both value independence, scholarship and simplicity in living style.
I was a little disappointed in Celia – she started out to be interesting, as she seemed to have more on the ball than she let on. But once she got married (and had a baby) she conformed to that “my husband is always right and he understands what we women can’t” mode. I also liked that Dr. Lydgate and Will Ladislaw were independent thinkers. They brought a more worldly element – or at least something outside of the norm for Middlemarch. I will reread this book at some point!
