English Faculty Work
Title
Utopian Socialism, Women's Emancipation, and the Origins of Middlemarch
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2011
Publication Title
English Literary History
Volume Number
78
Issue Number
3
DOI
10.1353/elh.2011.0020
Abstract
This essay seeks to illuminate two perennial questions of George Eliot scholarship--the origins of Middlemarch, and Eliot's attitude toward the "Woman Question"--by exploring the novel's connections with utopian socialism. By tracing allusions to pre-Marxian socialism in the novel and in Eliot's diary and notebooks, I demonstrate that it was crucial to the genesis, and is fundamental to the structure, of Middlemarch. Because the utopian socialists considered women's emancipation the crux of social renovation, I argue that Eliot's appropriation of their doctrines quietly aligns her with the proto-feminism of the contemporaneous women's suffrage movement.
ISSN
0013-8304
First Page
715
Last Page
739
Recommended Citation
Allison, Mark, "Utopian Socialism, Women's Emancipation, and the Origins of Middlemarch" (2011). English Faculty Work. 8.
https://digitalcommons.owu.edu/eng_pubs/8
Link Out URL
https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2011.0020