Teaching, Living, and Learning: "Middlemarch" by George Eliot

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

"Middlemarch" by George Eliot

After finishing -- and loving -- Howards End, Delycia and I have started on this wonderful novel, which I have read more than a few times. So far, we love the careful characterization. Eliot has clearly established each character as a distinct and unique person, making us dislike a few and love and admire a few. Mr. Casaubon, of course, is a character whom no reader has ever liked, and the author does a wonderful job of bringing his unsavory qualities into a strong light. On the other hand, we love Mr. Brooke, a stumbling, bumbling, winsome, unpredictable, and always kindly gentleman. We look forward to following Mr. Brooke as the story unfolds, perhaps admiring him more and more, and perhaps -- lucky us -- uncovering the secret of his charm, so that we might borrow some of it for ourselves. (I've always felt that reading great books makes us better people.)

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I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett