Middlemarch: A Grown-Up Novel

Abstract

This short article was originally given as a keynote at the Middlemarch 150th Anniversary Symposium at the University of Washington. It finds a utopian current in Middlemarch in Dorothea's “plans” that pushes against a long critical history of reading the novel as reformist. Specifically, this article looks at the avant-garde paintings of Swedish modernist artist Hilma af Klint to argue for a “diagrammatic” and feminist political aesthetic in Dorothea Brooke's unrealized plans.