ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that several points that run contrary to usual assumptions about the sublime as it relates to the Victorian novel as represented by George Eliot’s Middlemarch. It suggests that the sublime holds an important place ideologically in Eliot’s work, relating closely to her ideas of sympathy. The chapter demonstrates that Eliot’s receives the concept of the sublime at least partly through the romantics, William Wordsworth and, especially, Percy Shelley. It describes how the aesthetic relates to larger issues of community and morality in Eliot. Eliot is concerned with the interconnectedness of small causes, like the threads of the web or of woven cloth. The image of clinging to the wreck of a ship is a recurring one in Middle-march, and relates to Eliot’s idea of her book as a “study” or “experiment.” The chapter deals with a few images that, while seemingly unrelated to the sublime, are actually quite important to assessing its presence in Middlemarch.
