ABSTRACT
In Middlemarch, George Eliot offers a surprising response to the Protestant denunciation of idolatry. In the heroine’s first marriage plot, Dorothea Brooke idolizes Mr. Casaubon and he, like the beloveds of many didactic tales, is struck dead. Yet his death functions as a liberation rather than a punishment. Will Ladislaw appears in the persona of a sun god, offering warmth and light to the heroine after the cold night of her first marriage. Eliot ultimately treats the worship of another person and, more broadly, the worship of love itself as a compelling alternative to Christianity. The novel constructs a humanistic religion that affirms the glory of worldly affection.
