ABSTRACT
George Eliot's lifelong practice and patronage of music has already been well documented by Beryl Gray, and the connection between sympathy and musical characters has been studied by Shirley Frank Levenson, Karen B. Mann and E.A. McCobb. 1 What is perhaps less obvious is the use of musical performance to explore tensions between evolutionary theory and music aesthetics, especially in terms of individuals' social roles. It is important to understand what these theories were because, as many scholars have noted, George Eliot's novels often explore how new ideas and philosophies are applied to human experiences. 2 This chapter is about the theories of music, aesthetics and evolutionary biology that are particularly relevant to George Eliot's fiction. 3 While I will allude to her fiction throughout this chapter, I will specifically focus on how these theories work in The Mill on the Floss (1860), Middlemarch (1874), and Daniel Deronda (1876) in Chapters 6 and 7.
