More on Middlemarch

I listened to the Penguin Book Club talk on Middlemarch. It stimulated more thoughts.

Themes
1) Politics- Eliot present the political scene in Midlands Englandin 1831/1832. The main themes were electrol reform and political stagnation.
2) Marriage - Eliot presents 8 couples.
Rosie and Tertius Lydgate - unhappily married. Tershus wanted a beautiful benign wife, a 'wall flower'.  He chose an egotistical, vain,  person, who clearly knew the power given to her by her special beauty.
Dorothea and Edward Casaubon -  a sterile, unbalanced relationship. Dorothy was marrying her absent father? Edward realised his selfishness in marrying a woman he could never make happy.
Fred and Mary Vincey- young lovers, relationship based on equality, where Mary, described as a plain girl, reveals her inner beauty.  I fine marriage built on good role models in the Garth family.
Caleb and Susan Garth - older mature relationship, based on mutual respect and adoration. Mrs Garth saved an enormous amount of money from her tutoring, which she gave to Fred to cover his debts, with great grace.
Harriet and Nicholas Bulstrode - marked by Harriet's selfless devotion to her errant husband.  She is fully committed to the road she took when she married him.
Dorothea and Will Ladislaw - Dorothea's second marriage.  One marked with passion. A romantic, painful, whirlwind of a relationship. Rosemary Ashton, in her introduction in the Penguin edition, feels that Dorothea makes two bad marriages.  I heard the story more favourably on the second time of asking.
Lucy and Walter Vincey - Rosamund and Fred's parents.  From humble stock, raised up through the Victorian industrial revolution, simple minded, spooling their children, with hopes of securing a prosperous status quo, but largely vanity.
Ceila and James Chetham - Dorothea's sister marries the titled local land owner.  He targets beautiful Dorothea initially but is rebuffed, so settles for the smaller, sillier sister.  Even rich land owners cannot have everthing their own way.
3) Medicine - Eliot is able to demonstrate her knowledge of the scientific progress of medicine across the 19th century, as she also demonstrates with her knowledge of land reform.
4) Religion - the clergyman who comes out well in the story is Farebrother, the fly fishing batcholor who has an eye for Mary, but also an honourable soft spot for Fred too.  He speaks the truth in love, though perhaps aware that he really should not be a clergyman.  Casaubon is a terrible priest, who pays his curate to do his work so that he can write an ever diminishing academic tome.  Fred is suggested as a clergyman because he has a degree and therefore is eligible.  Mary puts a stop to this saying he will look ridiculous as a fake.
5) Class - here is a book that portrays 'class' as it is, without bias.  The Book Club noted that in the very centre of the novel, this is adescribtion of how the mild mannered Mr Brooke, attempts to visit one of his tennents, and is fearously rebuffed.

Mr Brooke went to confront his tennents farmer, Mr Dagley, about his son's theft of leverets.
The reply he got was "No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please you or anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords isted o' one, and that a bad un'." Brooke sensibly backs off to try his luck with the sober mother.