If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark - Shakespeare
So, without sounding like some Carrie Bradshaw wannabe, I've recently been questioning whether or not I have given up entirely on love. I think what's got me more frazzled is the idea of getting married. There's a lot behind my doubts - a family history of loveless, flailing marriages, my very own heartbreaks and let downs, the feminists out there with all their enthusiastic marriage bashing, and I've recently read Middlemarch by George Eliot.
One of my aunts recently asked me if I wanted to get married. I pictured hanging out white, linen laundry on some green-valleyed idyll with chickens and small, brown babies running around my ankles. This ridiculous thought bubble was burst when my aunt followed up her question with 'you don't even have to love the man just make sure he's rich.' I thought of her and my uncle who have had their share of downs, two grown boys and a 5 year separation that was finally consoled on some sort of 'agreement'. I watch them from time to time and it's evident that it's a partnership without love. This is basically the marriage model of most of my relatives. How could I ever want that?
At my age my mother was a widow with an 18mth old baby who insisted on climbing everything. It can't have been easy to have a child 4ft off the ground, manage a house, hold down a job, etc and still remain sane. Then again there are people I've gone to school with who are hitched, mortgaged and have child-proofed their homes; leaving me to endure the Facebook updates of what baby ate today and bathroom renovations gone wrong (eugh). On the other hand none of my closest friends are anywhere close to having these things.
Reading Middlemarch was like seeing what Sex & the City might have looked like 150 odd years ago. Love, scandal, money, propriety... but no sex. It is the women who are key to this book - Dorothea, Celia, Rosamund and Mary.
Dorothea is at first nauseating. I almost stopped reading on account of her character. Eliot shapes her as this bleached, white angel who sweeps into a room with her Christian haughtiness-cum-perfection that makes you want to vom. She won't ride a horse because it's too enjoyable (perhaps too sexual? Victorian innuendo?) or wear a necklace because it would make her 'feel as if she had been pirouetting'. I thought only earrings had that effect. So, Dorothea is given two choices for marriage - dashing Sir James Chettam and OAP Mr. Casaubon. You can guess who she picks right? Yep, the fogie. Apparently so she can learn more as he is so very wise (yawn). I think all girls have bought the older guy t-shirt. I certainly have and lord only knows what I was thinking. Apart from the fact that he was a possessive psycho things went down a steep hill when I said that I didn't want children for at least another 10 years. Clearly not a match made in heaven but if I followed my aunt's advice it would have been perfect. For Dorothea, Casaubon is a huge let down - loveless, unable to show her affection, and has no time for her in his business and, as my horrid experience with the older man, extremely jealous. Oh and he's sickly too. Inevitably he pops his clogs but not without leaving a bitter aftertaste of spite and distrust for his child-wife to endure after he's carked it. We end up pitying her as she goes through a series of realisations and after she's come to terms with her mistakes in love and marriage. In the end her character is more real, more likeable and a stronger female model.
Rosamund on the other hand remains throughout the book a creature to loathe. She's a top graduate of Mrs. Lemon's school for young ladies, which has clearly left a sour taste in her butter-wouldn't-melt mouth. Always finely dressed, Rosamund is like a pretty shell and swans around with empty thoughts and a disillusioned manner. The scene in which her and Mr. Lydgate fall in love is full of warning signs:
Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted and rash. He did not know where the chain went...
She's a siren! A water nymph! She's going to eat you alive! Before he knows it Lydgate is unhappily married to this cretin who cares more about silver plates and jewels than the well-being of her husband, who we see become a shadow of his ambitious self on account of her character. Their relationship is a neon sign for the vows of 'for better or for worse' and 'for richer for poorer' but regardless worse is not an option for Rosamund who does nothing but make her own situation worse through her own petulance. She pouts and stamps her feet, well at least she would if Mrs. Lemon had taught her not to. Instead all she does is make a slight turn of her swan-like neck. Well we all know how maleficent swans can be. Graceful yet with the ability to stretch their wings to full span and chase you around like a chicken. Lydgate is doomed to unhappiness and Rosamund couldn't care less. Poor Lydgate, no-one wants to end up unloved. I know I don't but there's no safeguarding really except for never getting married or giving your heart up to cupid and his trigger-happy arrows.
Then we come to Celia. She's like the pin-up girl for Victorian ladies. Married gentry, manor house, fine lace, etc. She may not have the angelic manner or religious zest that her sister Dorothea has but, nevertheless is practical minded albeit a bit dim otherwise. After marrying Sir James Chettam (Dorothea's other suitor) she is there in order for us to better highlight what could have been for Dorothea. How different her life would have been if she had married him. He certainly was more of a man than Dorothea gave him credit for. But then again you wonder whether she might have been happy with Chettam because she did actually love Casaubon. Follow your heart and let it be trampled or take Aunt's advice and disregard love or forget the whole damn thing and continue to have meaningless flings and flirtations? But then what is the use of love?
But Mary on the other hand marries in the end to Fred, her true love. Of course, this isn't until he actually proves himself to be worthy of her. Not that Mary is painted as anything extraordinary - Fred's mum can't bear the thought of her son marrying someone so plain. But they did love each other and after Fred wasn't such a rascal it was ok for them to get hitched.
Anyway, the book is great and I highly recommend a read of it. Eliot gives us an insight into womenhood and marriage which is still relevant today and she's frighteningly clever too. But I'm left feeling cynical. There are idiots like Liz Jones feeding her right-wing readership nonsense like all us women folk are stealing your boy sperm and then Kate Bolick who's brave enough to make the audacious statement that she may never marry. I mean what's the big deal with getting married? I'm all for the argument that if you want to get married you should be allowed to. The notion of not being permitted because of race, religion or sex is ridiculous. My fear is that it will turn into heartbreak or a loveless dull continuum. And then what? Perhaps after a string of unluck with my now steely heart I'm unwilling and for now any poor sod who approaches me will be told to bugger off but I've not given up entirely on love. Marriage though? Still a long way off for Pea.
They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on her mistakes, it was never said in the neighbourhood of Middlemarch that such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was born had not smiled upon the marriage from a sickly man to a girl less than half his own age- on modes of education which make a woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance - on rules of conduct which are in flat contradiction with it's own loudly-asserted beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to breath, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, where great feelings will take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. (Removed/edited out last lines of Middlemarch)
Love - Smoke and Mirrors? Or shall we listen to Karen O?
