I just finished Middlemarch and absolutely loved it. After reading it, I finally read a couple of reviews and disagree with those that argue it is a sad novel that ends depressingly. I couldn’t disagree more!

I read it as a hopeful description of reality, relationships, consciousness. Yes, every relationship in the book, every person is challenged, fails, deal with loss and grief. But, there’s also love, joy, everyday happiness, attention, success, goodness. Yes, there is sadness in it. But that is all the more reason it is like LIFE. And I think it’s ultimately hopeful and celebratory of that life.

It, to me at least, even ends in that way:

“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 un-historic acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been if half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.”

What do you all think?