An Objective Aural-Relative in Middlemarch

This essay contends that musical sound—formally described and ideologically inscribed in Schopenhauerian philosophy—offers an alternate mode of realism in a novel traditionally praised for its imagistic precision. It traces George Eliot’s construction of realism as well as her formulation of sympathy in Middlemarch to the decisions she made in 1853 as the co-editor of the Westminster Review. The essay avoids positing the replacement of the optical by the aural, but rather considers how Schopenhauer’s influence on George Eliot complicates the enduring realist connection between seeing and knowing.