Middlemarch

"Finale “Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.”

The final sentence of Middlemarch is one of the most admired in literature, and with good reason—it is “quietly thrilling,” as Stanley Fish, the literary critic, has written. The book ends, as it began, with Dorothea, and it discovers what may be redeemed from disappointment. Dorothea’s fate is not to be another Saint Teresa, but to be a heroine of the ordinary—the embodiment of George Eliot’s grave, demanding, meliorist faith. It reads, “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.” A vein of melancholy runs through the sentence. Dorothea’s impact upon the people around her is diffusive, like vapor vanishing into the air. Things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been—but ill they still are, to some degree, and are not likely to be otherwise. Acts are unhistoric; lives are hidden; tombs are unvisited—all is unmarked and unnoticed. With its series of long clauses and then its short final phrase, the sentence concludes with a perfect dying fall. I cannot imagine reading these words and not sighing at the end of them."

"My Life in Middlemarch: A Memoir" by Rebecca Mead