The Middlemarch Morning Routine
Since both morning routines and Middlemarch are making the rounds this week, why not take George Eliot’s example when arranging your own rise-and-grindset?
3:00am - Financial planning
“The old man listened with a grimace while she spoke, and then said, relaxing his face, ‘The more fools they. You hearken, missy. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’ve got all my faculties as well as ever I had in my life. I know all my property, and where the money’s put out, and everything. And I’ve made everything ready to change my mind, and do as I like at the last.’”
6:00am - Meditation and prayer
“Early in the morning—about six—Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time in prayer. Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid—necessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections? Bulstrode had not yet unravelled in his thought the confused promptings of the last four-and-twenty hours.”
6:15am - Budget session with husband
“Such a wife [as Dorothea] might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere with political economy and the keeping of saddle-horses.”
6:35am - Read military history
“I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. There is a book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one time—human perfectibility, now. But some say, history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far—over the hedge, in fact. It carried me a good way at one time; but I saw it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in time. But not too hard. I have always been in favor of a little theory: we must have Thought; else we shall be landed back in the dark ages. But talking of books, there is Southey’s ‘Peninsular War.’ I am reading that of a morning. You know Southey?”
6:50am - Discuss age-gap relationships while dopamine fasting
“In looking at her his face was often lit up by a smile like pale wintry sunshine. Before he left the next morning, while taking a pleasant walk with Miss Brooke along the gravelled terrace, he had mentioned to her that he felt the disadvantage of loneliness, the need of that cheerful companionship with which the presence of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity.”
7:02am - Language study
“Could I not be preparing myself now to be more useful?” said Dorothea to him, one morning, early in the time of courtship; “could I not learn to read Latin and Greek aloud to you, as Milton’s daughters did to their father, without understanding what they read?”
7:58am - At-home sauna treatment
“The Mrs. Waule who was so far from being admirable in the eyes of these distant connections, had happened to say this very morning (not at all with a defiant air, but in a low, muffled, neutral tone, as of a voice heard through cotton wool) that she did not wish “to enjoy their good opinion.” She was seated, as she observed, on her own brother’s hearth.”
8:12am - Leave-in conditioner treatment/mountain therapy
“One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately long, but abundant and curly, and who was otherwise English in his equipment, had just turned his back on the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican and was looking out on the magnificent view of the mountains from the adjoining round vestibule.”
8:55am - Couples’ therapy (passive-aggressive)
“Dorothea’s eyes followed her husband anxiously, while he sank down wearily at the end of a sofa, and resting his elbow supported his head and looked on the floor. A little flushed, and with bright eyes, she seated herself beside him, and said—
‘Forgive me for speaking so hastily to you this morning. I was wrong. I fear I hurt you and made the day more burdensome.’
‘I am glad that you feel that, my dear,’ said Mr. Casaubon. He spoke quietly and bowed his head a little, but there was still an uneasy feeling in his eyes as he looked at her.”
9:22 am - Meal prep and homeschooling
“Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations at once there—making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one side of that airy room, observing Sally’s movements at the oven and dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their books and slates before them.”
9:34am - Functional strength training/biology
“Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study—you have never seen my fine new study. Pray come too, Miss Garth. I want you to see a stupendous spider I found this morning.”
10:09am - Rededication to the grind
“This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered hope and freedom. He had set out on his work with all his old animation, and felt himself strong enough to bear all the deficiencies of his married life.”
10:41am - Maps?
“But her vagrant mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline; and she walked round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the best means—something to which she must go doggedly. Was there not the geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them. Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime. She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience—nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on each side of her face and say, ‘Oh dear! oh dear!’”
11am - Review assets
“One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a map of the land attached to the manor and other papers before her, which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself of her income and affairs.”
11:15am - Die
“Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night. He died the third morning.”
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Previously in Middlemarch coverage:
“Whenever I read a Victorian novel I like to mentally assign myself the most difficult man in the book as my husband, and ask myself how I would make him happy; with Middlemarch I rank all the characters in accordance with how good they would be at making Causabon, an old goth piece of French toast and my favorite man in the world, happy. So far none of them have met my exacting standards. (It is SO EASY to make him happy!!! Never ask him about a book and every time he tells you he’s started another pamphlet, praise him to the skies!!! Then also submit comments on his last pamphlet on the Etruscan Mysteries under various pseudonyms so he thinks that people are really getting invested in his pamphlets! GOD, Dorothea, either do it right or don’t marry an old man at all!)”
Going Back in Time to Force-Femme George Eliot
Literary Moneyball: What’s the average smiling rate in Middlemarch?
“Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, ‘You perceive, the bears will not always be taught.’”
George Eliot’s Boyish Girls and Girlish Boys
“The slim young fellow with his girl’s complexion looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him.”
“He had not lived with other boys, and his mind showed the same blending of child’s ignorance with surprising knowledge which is oftener seen in bright girls.”
“Dorothea looked straight before her, and spoke with cold brusquerie, very much with the air of a handsome boy, in amusing contrast with the solicitous amiability of her admirer.”
You are a provincial nineteenth-century beauty desperate to attain goodness despite the well-meaning interference of your contemporaries!
PRESS A to pattern your existence after Theresa of Avila.
PRESS A again to pattern your existence after Theresa of Avila more intensely.
PRESS A again to make everyone but your boyfriends hate you.
PRESS B to sit next to the oldest male guest at dinner.
PRESS B again to inquire lovingly after his research.
PRESS B again to cut up his chicken for him.
PRESS ESC to interfere with Lydgate’s marriage.
Daniel Lavery, just please keep producing Middlemarchiana forever.
I did not realize we were in a Middlemarch Moment, but perhaps I felt it in the air, since I took it up for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I've made but slow progress, since Civilization VI lives on the same tablet and is constantly calling my attention away, but so far I'm quite enjoying it.