The Language of Secular Religion in Middlemarch

Abstract

In Felix Holt, the process of renovating a communal tradition already involves a search for a new form of moral guidance; the same search continues in Middlemarch. In particular, the novel shows a constant effort to bring Dorothea’s altruistic aspirations, especially her ardent preoccupation with ‘the world’s misery’ (M, 9:76), to bear on the question of establishing a spiritual faith. This interpretative relevance is achieved in part by embodying Dorothea’s earthly experience in a language of communal insights such as hagiographic and mythological allusions. The novel thus starts with the life of Saint Theresa of Avila, which prepares the stage for the arrival of the later-born ‘Saint Dorothea’: ‘That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning’ (M, ‘Prelude’:3).¹ The everyday dimension of Dorothea’s spiritual pursuit has been discussed, often with great insight, in terms of the ‘personal’ and the ‘interpersonal’.² Yet, a strong tendency towards ‘impersonality’ is also evident in the language of such a secular religion which is defined by Dorothea as ‘not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most’ (M, 39:383). Often the moral implications of altruistic acts may not directly affect a character’s psychology when such an effect is suggested or implied in the narration. But this lack of psychological access will reveal itself only when examined with reference to the novel’s representation of the personal and the interpersonal, since this impersonality is mostly shown through its relations to both.

… the highest form of existence is Altruism, or that moral and intellectual condition which is determined by the fullest consciousness—emotional and cognitive—of relations.

(George Henry Lewes, FC, II, 27)