Alan Mintz's Critisism of Middlemarch

       Regardless of the era, the thought and emotion when encountering romance still holds prominent in society. Every one wants to feel passion and love, and one way to get that taste can be through books. Middlemarch does not just stop at one romance; it involves various forms of love and the fatality that could surface with love. Alan Mintz read and critiqued the romance and vocation of Middlemarch. Mintz looked at the desire men have for women whether it brings prosperity for a man's life or ruin. He sees that people never grow tired to what King James explained as a woman's “makdom and her fairnesse” (p.630). The push and pull that the genders of our species often have and how it has also tied into the novel of vocation for the future that Eliot reveals to her readers.

      When Alan Mintz is looking and critiquing the romantic aspect of the novel, he has much to look at. The story of Middlemarch is full of romance with more than just one pairing of characters. Instead, Mintz has to look at almost all of the characters to analyze the romantic perspective that each of them have for each romantic pair the reader encounters has a different outcome and vocation. The critic almost seemed enthusiastic about the novel when he referred the piece to the Troubadours. The Troubadours are French poets during the 11^th and 13^th centuries that themed and seemingly devoted their creations to love and the concept of it. Throughout the paper the troubadours is mentioned often when comparing George Eliot's book, “Although erotic love, that “passion sung by the Troubadours,” continues to play a role in the novel, it persists chiefly as a demonic presence, a “catastrophe” that wrecks the more valuable marriages of men to their vocations” (p.632). He is saying that the future for men's new means of realizing oneself is through his own works. The new era for man lies beyond their children and evolve into an “impassioned struggle to change the world” through aspirations and their jobs. The rich and overflowing emotion that Eliot expresses in Middlemarch is full of the rich feelings love can bring in “makdom and fairnesse.” More than romance has captured the heart of Mintz, but the shape of a character's deeds that effect the core of a person.

Furthermore, the problems of originality and community are embedded in the rhetorical complexity of the book through the vocational aspect. “To work means to assert ones individuality,

      Shape ones own deeds and to effect an original relationship to the world” (p.632). Mintz continues this thought by explaining that if the world is nothing more than a community that we all inhabit, it's the sense of security that unhinges by our own vocational assertion. If a person is in a bind, the person produces a threat in the shape of temptation to the other aspirants. Not only are the characters touched by these contradictions, but the narrator is as well. Mintz makes a valid point when applying it to the book by looking at all the choices that are made by the characters like Fred, Casaubon and almost all of them. These characters put themselves in a bind and are in a position to make a decision about vocation or consequences of their choices.

       Alan Mintz looked beyond the simple romantic aspect of the characters and looked at their choices that shaped them whether they were positive or negative. It was clear that he enjoyed the depth of Middlemarch in their relationship and strive for a bigger purpose which people can relate to today. A group of people could read the book and feel differently from each other about the characters which serves as a reflector of the people who we are inside. As readers, we look at the literary worked even as far back as the Victorian age, indulge in its feeling and passion that sprung to life from authors long past and still feel a sense of connection to the characters that we encounter. 

Critical Views of George Eliot's Middlemarch During Her Time

 The critics of her time may have had some issues with the novel Middlemarch, but all of them found some form of enjoyment. They declared the characters in-depth and though there was some plot issues that some explained during their analysis, the story was still to their liking. Joseph Jacobs explains the novel to be a criticism of life. Joseph's critical review was very heavy on his opinion of the book from a psychological stand point, I enjoyed Leslie Stephen's point of view by giving us this image of the three circles within Middlemarch. In each of the circles is the three different stories that were intertwined together in Middlemarch: Casaubon and Dorothea, Rosamons Vincy and Lygate, and Mary Garth and Fred Vincy. The story was one that at least the critics of the author's time had to admit to some level that they had enjoyed the novel, but the fact that so many of the critics gathered all forms of different outcomes tying into their personal opinion was fun to read. Not only did George Eliot create something that had such colorful characters reflecting the lives of many during her era, but in doing so created discussion between critics that exposed a flare of personality with the critics. By doing so, this book was not only created as a reflection of the era through her eyes, but by seeing the view of the critics in the Norton Critical Edition of Middlemarch, we are opened to the personality and in-depth characters of our critics themselves.

Joseph Jacobs views the book in a more logical standpoint, taking close note to the psychological aspect of the specific piece. As he sets off with his opinion, it almost seems as though the thoughts of George Eliot's work was far from a desirable choice for him to criticize. Jacobs began by describing the piece as a curtained painting with the curtain as the art instead of the canvas below. As far as the scientific standpoint of the novel, she did not succeed through the eyes of this critic: “The Selective principal with regard to the latter cannot be of an intellectual, conscious kind at all: it must clearly be of an emotional nature akin to the moral faculty” (p.581). Instead of looking at the novel as a whole and how it pertains to the people of that era, the critic specifies itself on the sole concept of an intellectual standpoint. I believe Eliot was attempting to get the intellectual concept across, but I believe that the emotional aspect was also important for her to incorporate in order to not only educate, but to also draw in the readers. Not to say that I completely disagree with what Jacobs was saying; she did focus on the emotional aspect of the era more than the intellectual aspect, but the critic was a bit harsh with his opinion. The book is not a “complete failure” intellectually. She still puts in some important events of their time and character conversations that could be considered to be intellectual. Though Joseph Jacobs shined light on what people could view as problems, his critique in particular stood out due to its narrowed viewpoint of only looking at her novel in a purely logical standpoint instead of taking the whole concept that Eliot attempted to get across. Instead of Jacobs' nitpicking at only one aspect, he should take it all in, diving deeper into the waters of Middlemarch.

The book takes place in the town of Middlemarch, but at the center of the town is the people within it. In George Eliot's world that she had created, there was no specific center of any particular character. Instead was a trifecta of the couples that the book had set itself around, making Eliot's kingdom such an engaging read. Leslie Stephens also had a similar idea of the story starring the three pairings of Middlemarch: Dorothea and Casaubon, Rosamond Vincy and Lygate, and Fred Vincy and Mary Garth. The characters play as gears to the story, continuing a flow through the novel. Stephens expressed the idea in a portrait of three circles that were the most familiar to George Eliot in her youth. Leslie Stephens described Middlemarch as, “the various actions get mixed together as they would naturally do in a country town” (p.582). She sees her novel as a reflection of society which I believe to be a goal of Eliot. Stephens goes on to express her like for the novel, but understanding of how moments in the story can be protested by the readers such as Dorothea's choice to marry Casaubon. Still, Stephens thoroughly enjoyed the book, finding the story accurate to life in their generation.

The two points of view that I have mentioned gaze into the novel, taking out different aspects and expressing what they see within the piece. This book has the capability to spark the mind of its reader and create a set of emotions in unique ways. The critics, Joseph Jacobs and Leslie

Stephens, had very different opinions on the book. Not only that, but how the two of them took in the book and looked at it were on almost completely different sides of the critic spectrum. Jacobs looked more at the certain aspect of the novel that held strongly with him as he read Middlemarch and really focused on that particular subject that he felt George Eliot lacked in. Stephens however, looked at the piece and the goal of Eliot finding good in her piece as a whole, but expressed some challenges that could come her way in the written piece. Both opinions were valuable; they may be different, but each opinion expresses not only the novel, but a glimpse of the past. When reading the critics of George Eliot's time, people see what was important in a novel to incorporate according to the critics and we see their persons as they reflect not only on the book, but themselves.