The Inward Sublime: Deconversion and Meliorism in George Eliot’s Middlemarch
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During the Victorian era, conversion was an important—and divisive—social and religious phenomenon. Well-known novelists of the mid-Victorian period such as Charlotte Brontë, William Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope all tried their hand at representing either converts or the process of conversion in their fiction. This essay examines the important link between religious conversion and the Victorian novel by focusing on George Eliot's representation of deconversion in Middlemarch (1871-72). In contrast to earlier writers who closely associated the emotional and intellectual development of their protagonists with religious conversion, Eliot suggests that without deconversion, female Bildung is impossible. The essay provides a new reading of the Rome passage in chapter 20, where Dorothea Brooke experiences disenchantment with both her religious idealism and her trust in Casaubon, her husband. By using the framework of deconversion and the religious language attending it, Eliot is able to represent the hyperbolization of inward feeling. Middlemarch represents psychological interiority by means of what I call the inward sublime—Eliot's inversion of the Romantic sublime. The inward sublime as a technique is crucial to understanding Eliotian moments of inwardness that characterize novels such as Adam Bede and Silas Marner, as well as the novelist's formulation of and support for the philosophy of meliorism.
Abstract
During the Victorian era, conversion was an important—and divisive—social and religious phenomenon. Well-known novelists of the mid-Victorian period such as Charlotte Brontë, William Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope all tried their hand at representing either converts or the process of conversion in their fiction. This essay examines the important link between religious conversion and the Victorian novel by focusing on George Eliot's representation of deconversion in Middlemarch (1871-72). In contrast to earlier writers who closely associated the emotional and intellectual development of their protagonists with religious conversion, Eliot suggests that without deconversion, female Bildung is impossible. The essay provides a new reading of the Rome passage in chapter 20, where Dorothea Brooke experiences disenchantment with both her religious idealism and her trust in Casaubon, her husband. By using the framework of deconversion and the religious language attending it, Eliot is able to represent the hyperbolization of inward feeling. Middlemarch represents psychological interiority by means of what I call the inward sublime—Eliot's inversion of the Romantic sublime. The inward sublime as a technique is crucial to understanding Eliotian moments of inwardness that characterize novels such as Adam Bede and Silas Marner, as well as the novelist's formulation of and support for the philosophy of meliorism.
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