The cover shown in the picture is different from the book as there has been many, many editions published.

The story is about Dorothea, a young, idealist woman, born to a good family with a modest fortune of her own. She is a prime catch on the wife market--money, family name, good looks. Her parents are deceased and her friends and uncle seek to pair her up with a local baron as the ideal mate. But Dorothea, bookish, religious and dreamy, has other ideas. She chooses, instead, a superannuated cleric who finally decides to marry as he feels mortality and ill health upon him. Casaubon, the vicar of a nearby rural church is a good match except....he's old, ugly and what the heck is he doing marrying such a young beauty. But Dorothea, who's imagining a sort of superior father figure who could "teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it" wakes up to far less than a reality of marital bliss. And there's an added complication created by her unworthy husband that has dire consequences for the young Dorothea.

The subsequent examination of marriage as a partnership in hell is written with stunning modernity. Eliot not only creates the disastrous marriage of Dorothea to Casaubon, but also pairs, as a comparison, Lydgate, a doctor and his frivolous, vain, uncaring wife. The relationship of marriage to society is never more well drawn, but the internal suffering of people trapped in loveless marriage is written with sympathy and cunning insight. Eliot herself had a live-in relationship with Henry Lewes, who could not divorce his wife. She undoubtedly wrote from personal experience. The insight into human nature, such as jealousy, disappointment, recrimination, loss of trust and a feeling of desperation are themes that anyone who has ever been in a relationship will recognize as truth.

RELEASE NOTES:

Sydney Bookcrossing meetup.

Another of those classics that I feel I should have read but somehow missed. TBR, and thanks.

I am a literary failure! This bored me to tears. I put it down when I was about half way through and planned to have another go later in case it was just my mood at the time, but I never could bring myself to pick it up again. I'm finally admitting defeat coz I remember so little about it that I'd pretty much have to start again - and that's never going to happen.

I'll release it and hope that it makes friends elsewhere.

RELEASE NOTES:

Picked this book up in late August at Café Tiffany’s in the Imperial Arcade on the way to the Theatre to see "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf".

By coincidence the first sentence in the introduction was a comment by Virginia Woolf!

It sat on the shelf for a couple of months before I read it as I have tried to read Eliot before without success.

This time I  persevered but it was hard going.

Good character analysis and interesting story but I prefer Austen's lighter touch.