Ruskin’s Dust

This essay traces the connection between the aesthetics and ethics of self-formation in John Ruskin’s The Ethics of the Dust (1865) and mid-century debates about inorganic matter’s “vital” forms. Offering a reappraisal of dust’s role in Ruskin’s oeuvre and Victorian culture more broadly, this essay argues that “dust” signifies decay’s release of chemical potentiality, which thus encodes inorganic matter’s formative power as it ceaselessly morphs and moves through myriad forms. Introduced through Ruskin’s conversion of girls into particles of dust, the essay ends with a meditation on the gender of changefulness by turning to another great Victorian text on dust, Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), and to Lizzie Hexam’s unique relationship with that precious chemical agent: coal.