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The Woman Reader in Rebecca Mead's "My Life in Middlemarch"

Traditional literary theory either had no interest in the woman reader or used her to represent the type of reading that favors identification, escape, and pleasure over engaging with aesthetic and formal aspects of a text. According to feminist literary and cultural theorists such as Charlotte Brunsdon and Rita Felski, the woman reader has typically been defined as passive and uncreative, her interests trivial and sentimental, her reading consequently apolitical. Recent feminist theories of reading challenge the sharp divide between academic and non-academic readers, feminist and "ordinary women" readers, creative and uncreative readers, pointing out that academic and non-academic readers are more alike than we are led to believe because they share certain affective and cognitive parameters (Felski). Likewise, this artificial dichotomy is pointedly called into question by the recent surge in popular books about reading, which powerfully showcase the creativity of non-academic or "ordinary" reading. One such book is My Life in Middlemarch (2014), journalist Rebecca Mead's account of her lifelong relationship with George Eliot's classic novel. My Life in Middlemarch combines literary criticism, biography and memoir, proving that "a book can also be where one finds oneself" ; not (only) a form of escapism, but "a part of our own experience, and part of our own endurance".

woman reader ; creativity ; Rebecca Mead ; emotion ; recognition

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