Discover Top Posts Tagged with #middlemarch

RUFUS SEWELL 𝒂𝒔 WILL LADISLAW | Middlemarch (1994)

#damn he's fine #SOOOO fine #rufus sewell #will ladislaw #middlemarch 1994 #middlemarch #george eliot #my gifs

Thinking about how George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch about a woman who distrusts worldly things, longs for a great divine purpose, and is constantly compared to nuns who had mystical experiences, but alas, the days for such things are long past, and so she settles into a small hidden life doing good for her neighbors.

And the very next year was born St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a child who distrusted worldly things, and longed for a great divine purpose like great saints of old, but settled into a life at a cloistered convent where she developed a philosophy that the way to heaven was to do small hidden acts of love for the people around you (and she also had some mystical experiences), and they made her a Doctor of the Church for it.

#middlemarch #george eliot #in trying to reconcile my distrust of eliot's agnosticism #with the fact that by the end of the book she seems to have come up with something very catholic #like even in the very last chapter where she's presented dorothea as almost a living saint #she's still like 'alas and woe the days of greatness are past'#she doesn't know that those days aren't past #they're just beginning #the church is dying but the great secret is that she has a god who knows his way out of the grave #and now i'm starting to wonder if she isn't like baby chesterton #trying to invent a new philosophy to replace religion and accidentally inventing catholicism #unfortunately she's still in a very anti-catholic age so she tries to deny that #but looking at the dates of things per the above #reminds me that god is an author too and has a sense of humor

Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable.

Middlemarch, George Eliot

This is so true it's somewhat frightening

#middlemarch #george eliot #I used to be this way a bit when I was younger #and I've really had to learn how to argue properly #because you have to take other people's perspectives and that can be hard

Would I Be the Asshole if I asked my wife to promise not to do something after I die without telling her what it is?

My (45M) wife (19F) and I have been married for several months. To be quite honest, I haven’t enjoyed being married as much as I expected I would. My wife is very affectionate and always wants to help me with my work (I’m in academia), which I find more annoying than helpful. However, the main issue is that my wife seems to have developed an obsession with my second cousin (25M).

Due to some unfortunate family history that I felt it my duty to set right, I was until recently financing my cousin’s education. Shortly after meeting my wife, my cousin told me he would no longer like to have my financial support and would instead make his own way. I was in favor of this decision, until it became clear that his idea of “making his own way” was to move in with my wife’s uncle (who lives in the same small town as my wife and I) and take up an occupation that’s now causing embarrassing associations for me.

This all happened while I was recuperating from a heart attack and had expressly asked my wife to tell my cousin not to visit us at that time. Of course, I can’t ask her directly, but I’m convinced my wife went behind my back and asked her uncle to invite my cousin to visit him. There have been a lot of other fishy circumstances, such as my wife asking me to rewrite my will and leave everything to my cousin instead of her because “she has more than enough money already, and it stresses her out.”

I’ve just had another consultation with the doctor, who says there’s a possibility I could have another heart attack at any time, so I really want to set my affairs in order and make sure that if I die soon, my cousin won’t marry my wife for the money. I trust my wife and don’t believe she’s having an affair with my cousin, but I don’t trust my cousin as far as I could throw him, not that that would be very far, as I’ve always been more inclined to mental than physical exertion.

This brings me to my question: WIBTA if I extracted a (potential) deathbed promise from my wife not to do anything I wouldn’t want her to do? As a backup, I will be including a codicil in my will stating that she will lose all of my money if she marries my cousin. However, I think the promise will hold more weight with her; as I said, she’s very fond of me (a bit too much so, but that’s another issue).

Edit: No, it doesn’t matter what my wife’s uncle’s business is. It’s not illegal, just embarrassing.

Second edit: Several people seem to think there’s a loophole, namely that my wife could marry my cousin anyways and forfeit the money. My cousin is both lazy and and avaricious, and I’m convinced he’s only interested in my wife because of the money.

#middlemarch #george eliot #Edward Casaubon #Dorothea Brooke #Will Ladislaw #classic lit memes #victorian literature #classic literature #literary AITA #idk if Ladislaw’s age is actually stated in the novel #25 was my best guess

Excerpt from George Eliot's Middlemarch

#george eliot #middlemarch #english literature #writing #classics

What is your favorite piece of Victorian literature?

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Middlemarch - George Eliot

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Something else (tag it!!)

Show results

Voting ended onFeb 20

Also kindly put in the tags how many of these 10 books you've read, just for data collection purposes (and I'm curious).

#tumblr polls #books #reading #booklr #bookblr #wuthering heights #jane eyre #the picture of dorian gray #a study in scarlet #sherlock holmes #middlemarch #tess of the d'urbervilles #dracula #vanity fair #the woman in white #great expectations

"But you always were wrong: only I can't help loving you."

- George Eliot, Middlemarch

#academia #dark academia #bibliophile #dark aesthetic #dark and moody #book photography #winter #academia aesthetic #classic academia #classic quotes #english literature #literary quotes #literature #george eliot #middlemarch #literary aesthetic

Middlemarch read-along!

Are you one of the apparently dozens of people who resolved to read George Eliot's masterpiece in 2026? Do it in good company! We've got a read-along planned for weekdays from April to July. (Apologies for not being sufficiently on the ball to start it in March. It's 2026, things happened, enough about that.)

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