Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading George Eliot’s nineteenth century masterpiece Middlemarch. I remember reading it many years ago just after completing Year 12. This latest reading was prompted by my hearing a lecture – located on YouTube – delivered by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, entitled ‘Fiction and the Work of Grace’. In a general discussion on the writing of novels and the power of literature, Williams makes reference to the writer George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Ann Evans, and to her most famous novel, Middlemarch.

One thing which caught my attention while listening to Williams’ presentation, was his reference to ‘the countless unseen lives that painfully seek meaning’ at the cost of their own comfort and wellbeing. He went on to say that in a very real sense, these people shape the world invisibly at levels we may never fully appreciate. I thought of the many ‘unseen’ men and women currently serving others at this very difficult time during lockdown. Their tireless work for the common good generally goes unseen, yet the effect of such service is so significant. 

Whilst Dorothea Brooke, the heroine of Middlemarch, is not someone who will make an impact on the public stage, the difference that her costly exploration, suffering, error, and recovery makes on the world around her, imperceptibly slips into the fabric of human existence in a positive and profound way. Her silent contribution is invisible yet enduring. 

I thought I would include the final paragraphs to the 889-page novel, Middlemarch. This text, though published in 1871, still speaks to us today. 

‘Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. … We insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. 

Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’

Mrs Clare Murphy
English Coordinator and Literacy Instructional Coach