Merry Christmas everyone! We have reached the end of the novel - I can’t believe it’s been a year! This is my last post, thank you for joining us on the Middlemarch journey, and stay tuned for the wrapping up of the book next weekend <3

Now, without further ado,

Summary

Caleb goes to see Mary and informs her that her marriage would require her waiting, to which Mary says she doesn’t mind, and that they are devoted to one another. Caleb tells her of Fred living at Stone Court, to which Mary is stunned and delighted. Fred arrives, she tells him the good news. Fred is initially shocked, but Mary assures him it is true, and tells him that she loves him best.

Eliot wraps up the book with her classic amazing commentary, on life and marriage, and goes over what happened to the major characters. Mary and Fred ended up achieving ‘a solid mutual happiness’. Fred became a distinguished farmer and wrote a farming book, which everyone suspected his wife to have written, but then when Fred wrote a book for her kids, everyone gave the credit of this to Fred because he went to uni (lmao). They had three kids together. Lydgate’s life ended at fifty. His skill was ‘relied on by many patients’, but he always ‘regarded himself as a failure’. Rosamond gets remarried after her husband’s death to an elderly and wealthy physician who was kind to her four kids, and forever remembers Dorothea’s kindness towards her. Dorothea never regrets giving up her wealth and her marriage to marry Will, who becomes a Member of Parliament and contributes greatly to politics. When Celia receives a letter from Dorothea announcing the birth of her first son, Sir James finally agrees to visit her. Mr Brooke, on the other hand, lives to old age and Dorothea’s son ends up inheriting his Tipton estate.