The Craft of Middlemarch

The Craft of Middlemarch: Possibilities for Third Person Omniscient

How do I start this? So, apparently, Mary Ann Evans lived for over two decades with a married man? Did y’all know this? She lived in the home of a married man as his “conjugal partner” while his wife also lived there and then stayed with him through his wife moving in with another man. This from Wikipedia.

I was just sitting here, about to begin my book review, and I thought, “gee, I should probably know a thing about Evans before I launch into Middlemarch—for example, whether she was in any way wealthy during the Victorian Era”—and boom: “conjugal partner.” But it’s not really like that, yea? I had to snoop a bit to learn her choice was more a statement on the era’s restrictions for divorce—which actually makes a lot of sense, given the nuanced perspectives she provides on marriage in Middlemarch, especially between Dorothea and Casaubon, and Rosamond and Lydgate.

Ok there’s your hook for my book review. Onward.

As you know from my article a few days back, Mary Ann Evans, or George Eliot, was intelligent and autodidactic. Middlemarch is an illustration of the breadth of knowledge Eliot gleaned from books and observation. Indeed, the depth to which she delves on subjects like medicine, politics, religion, society, economy, business, love, marriage, and psychology are awe-inspiring to the brink of intimidation. How could a person even engage with a mind like hers in real life without the sense they’ve been run through an MRI with contrast? I try to be kind to myself: of course she knew a lot about her own culture; I know a lot about my own culture too, certainly, but I rarely fall prey to the Dunning Kruger effect: I am well aware of the limitations of my knowledge on the vast array of fields about me—probably specifically because access to the Internet serves to humble. But was her breadth of understanding common to her time? I daresay not…as I’ve read plenty of Victorian Era women’s writing to date and rarely do any touch upon more than one of these fields at once in a book/novel. Is Middlemarch a novel? Or is it a case study? I suppose its plot structure makes it a novel.

In the interest of my interest, I will not treat my review of Middlemarch as a literary analysis so much as a craft analysis: I am currently writing my first large piece of fiction (yes, a novel, hopefully) from the third person PoV—while simultaneously teaching fiction PoV for the first time—and was very curious about the potential capabilities for interiority via third person omniscient. That will be my focus here; in the coming paragraphs I will explore the ways Eliot’s narration shifts worldviews as she “head-hops,” her access to deep interiority (which I thought only accessible via first person PoV), and her charming lapses into the perspective of the first person narrator (i.e. breaking the fourth wall).

Eliot blew my mind as I realized how fluently she was able, like a chameleon, to take upon each protagonist’s worldview via narration when she head-hops. Let me start here by defining head-hopping real quick. The first I ever noticed head-hopping was in Stephen King’s The Shining, which I re-read about two years ago: in the novel, King jumps between the internal thoughts all four protagonists, Danny, Wendy, Jack, and Dick. Via this head-hopping, we learn about Jack’s alcoholism and (unintentional?) abuse of Danny, which then serves as the psychological underpinnings for the horror. We also learn about Danny’s capacity to shine. Key to have that head-hopping in King’s case.

Eliot takes this head-hopping to an entirely different level: the narrative language—not just the flashbacks, dialogue, or action but the interiority itself—is written in the worldview/perspective of each protagonist. In essence, whenever Eliot head-hops, the reader has a sense that they become that character for the time being, even when that character’s motives and behaviors are dubious. The most illustrative example of this is whenever Eliot head-hops into Rosamond, Eliot’s most narcissistic, manipulative protagonist (yes, I said it: Rosamond’s more noxious than Bulstrode).

Here’s the excerpt that best illustrates Eliot’s uncanny ability to drop herself wholly into the mindset of a character:

She returned home by Mr. Borthrop Trumbull’s office, meaning to call there. It was the first time in her life that Rosamond had thought of doing anything in the form of business, but she felt equal to the occasion. That she should be obliged to do what she intensely disliked, was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity into active invention. Here was a case in which it could not be enough simply to disobey and be serenely, placidly obstinate: she must act according to her judgment, and she said to herself that her judgment was right—“indeed, if it had not been she would have wished to act on it.” (367)

Upon this, my third reading and subsequent copying of this passage I finally catch a whiff of Eliot’s potential disdain or mockery of Rosamond’s thinking via the added quotation marks at the end. Otherwise, Eliot seems to report Rosamond’s logic as a matter of course, as though it were perfectly rational, totally unflawed, and by our omnipotent narrator unjudged. But nobody believes someone’s logic perfectly rational besides that person themself, right? Each time we glimpse Rosamond’s interior regarding her decision-making, this withholding of judgment on Eliot’s part serves the impression that we are momentarily dropped into Rosamond’s simple little head to wander around there and wonder at its strange construction—like, “so this is what it’s like to be this sort of person”—because we all know a Rosamond or two in our lives, amirite? Pretty cool. Very skilled!

This nonjudgmental omniscient third also lends itself to a deep interiority that I thought was too much and therefore taboo in my own writing—especially third person PoV writing. My sense was that we should always retain at least a little bit of mystery, allow the reader to do a little bit of work with regard to our protagonists’ thoughts and motives—and I’m not sure whence this impression sprung: the key to Dostoyevsky’s psychological realism in Crime and Punishment is its overwrought, overthought interiority, isn’t it?

So, such interiority is rife throughout Eliot’s tale, as we learn the complex interwoven web of each character’s motivations and how those clash with others’. One excellent example lies in the moment that Farebrother must go make the case of marriage for Fred Vincy with Mary Garth (whom Farebrother loves, himself). But the example I have here to illustrate is that of Ladislaw:

No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the impetuosity of Will’s repulse or the bitterness of his words. No one but himself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his relation to Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon’s treatment of him. And in the rush of impulses by which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode’s there was mingled the sense that it would have been impossible for him to ever tell Dorothea that he had accepted it. (351)

In this moment, Eliot reminds us of Will’s profound devotion to Dorothea and the insult to Will Ladislaw left in Casaubon’s will—nearly 200 pages prior—and how that might play upon his acceptance of Bulstrode’s guilty money. We, as readers, are privy to Ladislaw’s deepest motivations when Ladislaw conceals them from everyone—Bulstrode, yes, but even his dear Dorothea.

For eons I believed that a third person omniscient narrator would eliminate the possibility of mystery and therefore be boring; however, I find this exposure invigorating! It is in knowing that the other characters do not know Ladislaw’s motives that the story becomes interesting. How will he prove his quality to friends and neighbors if he will not defend his own honor? My fears that the third person omniscient would not have access to deep interiority or that it might on the contrary provide too much information and therefore omit the possibility of intrigue—Eliot has dispatched both.

Nevertheless, strikingly, Eliot’s third person omniscient narrative voice falters at moments, and at still other moments, she eschews it completely as if removing a mask. Yes; part of what makes Eliot’s Middlemarch so charming are the moments when she breaks the fourth wall and speaks to her readers directly from (we presume) her own heart. At times, she’ll lead a transition with something to the tune of Let’s not be too hard on him…or when she writes, “I think Lydgate turned a little paler than usual” (65). Like—who’s “us” and who’s “I,” Eliot?

My favorite is when Eliot launches into the interior motives of one distant, unknown antagonist, Mr. Joshua Rigg, when he inherits Stone Court (which so many of Middlemarch had coveted) and immediately puts it up for sale to instead settle in the North Quay. Here, after an entire half-page paragraph dedicated to Rigg’s motives, Eliot writes,

Enough. We are concerned with looking at Joshua Rigg’s sale of his land from Mr. Bulstrode’s point of view… (292)

This breaking of the fourth wall and reference to “we” I find endearing. It is almost as though Eliot recognized she got carried away with Rigg’s perspective where the protagonist-of-the-moment was intended to be Bulstrode. Is this a brief snapshot outside the world of Middlemarch and into Eliot’s mind? I’d like to tell myself so because it feels pleasant to connect more personally with our narrator.

Oh, but how shall I end this? Maybe tie it up with a bow, as I am wont to do.

It doesn’t surprise me that Eliot lived domestically with a man who was married to someone else, or as Wikipedia calls it, “in an open marriage,” based on the difficulties of divorce during the Victorian Era. There were moments written in Rosamond’s perspective that reverberated with the sentiment of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, of a Victorian woman in marriage as a bird trapped in a cage. And if there’s one real lesson I’m taking away from Eliot’s piece, it is that there are layers beyond our understanding to everything: medicine, politics, agriculture, economy, business, religion, government, interpersonal relationships, psychology, marriage, love, and more—and that absolutely none of these layers are off-limits to the motivated, autodidactic, nonjudgmental student-of-the-world turned fiction author. So don’t hold back.