Middlemarch: The Ambition to Be Useful
By Ayman Fouad Abdelgawad
George Eliot asks what becomes of a generous ambition when it misunderstands the world it hopes to serve.
Dorothea Brooke wants a life with moral consequence. Her marriage to Casaubon initially appears to offer participation in an important intellectual undertaking. Lydgate likewise arrives with professional ambitions that exceed the comfortable expectations of provincial society. Neither lack of aspiration nor simple wickedness explains their difficulties.
Eliot's multiple plots give ambition a social setting. Money, marriage, reputation and other people's needs interfere with the heroic story individuals tell about themselves. A worthy purpose does not automatically confer knowledge of how to accomplish it, and sincerity offers little protection against misjudging a partner.
The novel's expansive form matters. By moving among lives, Eliot makes each person's self-explanation provisional. Someone who appears as an obstacle in one story becomes a vulnerable centre of experience in another. The reader is asked to carry more than one account without flattening their differences.
This produces a demanding kind of sympathy. Understanding the pressures behind a choice need not make the choice harmless. The narrative lets explanations accumulate while preserving consequences. Its moral intelligence lies partly in refusing the easy bargain by which compassion purchases acquittal.
The serious question is how to remain useful after discovering that usefulness will be less grand than expected. A life may contribute through acts too dispersed to resemble a public achievement. Such a conclusion can be consoling, but it also raises an uncomfortable issue: how much diminished possibility should we learn to accept?
Editor's critique
What I admire is Eliot's patience with the distance between wanting good and doing it. I find that distinction more valuable than the familiar celebration of good intentions. The novel makes me suspicious of the pleasure of imagining myself useful before listening to the people who might receive my help.
My reservation concerns the comfort a reader can take from quiet influence. It is possible to praise modest goodness while becoming too reconciled to the restrictions that made a larger life unavailable. I read the ending as a recognition of value within limits, not an instruction to stop questioning the limits themselves.