Paper 104: Machines, Minds, and Modernity in George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’: The Material and Moral Technologies of Victorian Life

Paper 104:  Machines, Minds, and Modernity in George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’: The Material and Moral Technologies of Victorian Life  

This blog is a part of the assignment of Paper 104: Literature of the Victorians 

Machines, Minds, and Modernity in George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’: The Material and Moral Technologies of Victorian Life 

Table of Contents

• Academic Details 
• Assignment Details
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Research Question
• Hypothesis
• 1. Introduction
• 2.The Crisis of Empiricism: Lydgate, Casaubon, and Epistemological Failure 
• 3. Microscopy and Semiotic: The Technology of Materiality and Vision
• 4. Plexuses, Ganglia, and the Biological Model of Social Life
• 5. Modernity, History, and the Technology of Social Relations
• 6. Conclusion
• Work Cited

Academic Details 

• Name: Nidhi R. Pandya 

• Roll No.: 20  

• Enrollment No.: 5108250024  

• Sem.: 1  

• Batch: 2025 - 2027  

• E-mail: nidhipandya206@gmail.com   

Assignment Details  

• Paper Name: Literature of the Victorians 

• Paper No.: Paper 104 

• Paper Code: 22395  

• Unit: History of Victorian era  

•Topic: Machines, Minds, and Modernity in George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’: The Material and Moral Technologies of Victorian Life 

• Submitted To: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University  

• Submitted Date: November 10, 2025 

The following information numbers are counted using QuillBot.  

• Images: 5 

• Words: 2599 

• Characters:  18324 

• Characters without spaces: 15778 

• Paragraphs:  93 

• Sentences:  198 

• Reading time: 10 m 24 s 

Abstract 

George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871–72) offers a profound analysis of Victorian modernity, not merely through its social chronicle but through its deep engagement with contemporary scientific and technological thought. This paper argues that Eliot utilizes the scientific language, metaphors, and epistemological problems of her era particularly those concerning biology, medicine, and emergent information systems as a framework for exploring moral and social life. The novel positions material technologies (like the railway or the microscope) and scientific methodologies (like Lydgate’s empirical quest) as inherently linked to the formation of   the ethical frameworks, forms of sympathy, and knowledge systems required for navigating a rapidly changing, increasingly complex society. By integrating scientific discourse with moral critique, Eliot scrutinizes the limitations of pure empiricism, champions an imaginative approach to both science and ethics, and ultimately proposes a vision of social order based on biological principles of interdependency and connection, effectively mapping the architecture of the human mind and moral sphere onto the Victorian world. 

Keywords:  

George Eliot, Middlemarch, Victorian modernity, scientific discourse, moral technologies, empiricism, biology, microscopy, social order. 

Research Question: 

How does George Eliot, in Middlemarch, utilize the discourse and metaphors of Victorian material science (e.g., biology, microscopy) to construct a theory of "moral technology" that critiques individualistic empiricism and proposes a model for social order?

Hypothesis: 

Middlemarch argues that successful adaptation to Victorian modernity requires the integration of material progress with a sophisticated moral technology, where imaginative sympathy functions as the necessary biological mechanism for maintaining social cohesion against the isolating tendencies of specialized empirical inquiry.

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1. Introduction 

Title page of 1918 printing of Middlemarch by George Eliot 

George Eliot’s Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life stands as a monumental reflection on the processes of material and intellectual modernization that characterized the Victorian era. While the novel is celebrated for its sweeping portrait of social life, its depth lies in its seamless integration of contemporary scientific discourse, transforming literary realism into a profound meditation on the very mechanisms of knowledge, morality, and social cohesion. Eliot, heavily influenced by her partner G. H. Lewes, a prominent figure in scientific thought, embeds the age's intellectual anxieties from advances in biology and medicine to the limitations of utilitarian empiricism directly into the narrative structure and character arcs. 

This essay explores the intersecting roles of "machines, minds, and modernity" in Middlemarch, arguing that Eliot foregrounds both material technologies (e.g., the railway, the microscope, medical instruments) and moral technologies (e.g., systems of ethical judgment, intermental thought, and sympathetic imagination) as critical components of Victorian life. The novel uses scientific imagery not merely as allusion, but as a foundational critique of knowledge acquisition and a proposal for a biologically grounded, relational ethics. As Michael York Mason (1971) suggests, Middlemarch is fundamentally concerned with the "Problems of Life and Mind" that preoccupied Victorian science, intertwining its discourse "with moral life" to emphasize the necessity of imagination both in scientific advancement and in ethical development (Mason, 1971). Ultimately, Eliot maps the biological organization of the individual mind onto the social organism of Middlemarch, advocating for a social order sustained by empathetic connection rather than individual, isolated ambition. This comprehensive strategy ensures that the novel’s realism is intellectually grounded in the most advanced thought of its time. 

2. The Crisis of Empiricism: Lydgate, Casaubon, and Epistemological Failure 

Image Source: Gemini AI 

A primary function of scientific allusion in Middlemarch is to critique the limits of a narrow, individualistic empiricism, which Eliot views as insufficient for achieving either true scientific knowledge or moral clarity. The ambitions of both Tertius Lydgate and Edward Casaubon, though seemingly disparate, are framed as failures of method rooted in an insufficient synthesis of observation and imagination. Their stories collectively warn against the perils of isolating intellectual pursuit from practical wisdom and human understanding. 

2.1. Lydgate's Blindness: The Failure of Isolated Scientific Focus 

Lydgate’s dedication to reforming provincial medicine stems from a genuine, scientific quest to uncover the fundamental "primitive tissue" (Eliot, 1872, Ch. 15). He embodies the spirit of rigorous empirical inquiry. However, his method is compromised by his social blindness and lack of imaginative insight into human motives. Mason (1971) points out that Eliot examines epistemological themes to critique empiricism, arguing that Lydgate's "moral dispositions" are ultimately shaped by his "scientific and social understandings." Lydgate’s scientific quest demands focused, singular attention, yet his social interactions especially his impulsive marriage to Rosamond Vincy demonstrate a catastrophic lack of observation and a reliance on superficial impressions. His failure is thus not purely scientific, but an ethical and social failure enabled by a mechanistic view of life that separates the material (his research) from the moral (his marriage). Eliot emphasizes this myopic focus, noting: 

"His mind was blocked up with an importunate content that the eight hundred thousand people in London were all doing something or other to keep the fever of the world constantly rising." (Eliot, 1872, Ch. 15) 

This single-minded devotion to the laboratory, divorced from the human currents of the world, perfectly illustrates the limitations of an isolated scientific focus on material truth. 

2.2. Casaubon's Antiquarianism: The Irrelevance of Knowledge Without Renewal 

Casaubon, meanwhile, is the antithesis of the modern scientific mind, yet his work the Key to All Mythologies is an equally ambitious, if outdated, form of totalizing knowledge. His approach is not empirical but antiquarian and isolating. The narrator famously compares him to a "dried-up man of eighty" (Eliot, 1872, Ch. 10), and the scholarly commentary suggests his failure is representative of a methodology that has been superseded by modern intellectual rigor. His inability to see Dorothea’s mind or the irrelevance of his own project underscores the critique that knowledge divorced from imaginative, sympathetic understanding is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Their collective failures illustrate Eliot’s core belief: the successful application of scientific principles (the material technology of research) requires a corresponding refinement of the moral self (the moral technology of sympathy and self-awareness). Casaubon's dusty, backward-looking method confirms that knowledge must be a dynamic, living force to hold moral relevance in the modern world. 

3. Microscopy and Semiotic: The Technology of Materiality and Vision 

The microscope serves as one of the novel’s most significant technological metaphors, acting as a crucial semiotic device that links material knowledge to moral insight. M. Wormald (1996) explores how "Microscopy and Semiotic in Middlemarch" enriches the novel's exploration of knowledge, materiality, and morality. The microscope, a tool of precision and revelation, promises the unveiling of truths hidden from the naked eye, mirroring Lydgate's ambition to discover the primal fabric of life. This technological device fundamentally changes the scale at which knowledge is pursued and moral realities are perceived. 

3.1. The Narrator's Omniscience as a Microscopic Lens 

Image of Microscope Generated by Gemini AI 

The central metaphor, however, is not the microscope itself but the narrator's microscopic vision, which allows the reader to observe the minutiae of provincial life and the inner workings of the characters' minds. This narrative strategy functions as an advanced perceptual technology, forcing the reader to examine the complex, often contradictory, motivations hidden beneath the superficial actions of the community. The famous analogy of the "stream of tendency" (Eliot, 1872, Prelude) and the microscopic view of human experience establishes this critical perspective: 

"The effect of half a dozen men is immediate and perceptible, that of a million is infinitesimal. It is an immense mistake to suppose that we can win anything from the grasp of sheer brute force by a little screaming." (Eliot, 1872, Ch. 15) 

3.2. Materiality as Moral Foundation: The Focus on Minute Detail 

This statement, often associated with Lydgate's scientific idealism, reinforces the idea that great results proceed from minute, sustained efforts a truth applicable both to laboratory research and to moral living. Wormald (1996) argues that this "microscopy metaphor" allows Eliot to explore how "material and moral knowledge" are related, emphasizing the importance of seeing the small, often overlooked, actions and details that cumulatively define a life. Moreover, the microscope is a technology that emphasizes materiality. It brings the body, the tissue, and the physical reality of the world into sharp focus. By aligning this materialist vision with the subtle moral actions of characters like Dorothea or Fred Vincy, Eliot suggests that morality is not an ethereal concept but is instantiated in concrete, observable, and relational acts. The technological device thus becomes a lens through which the novel examines the very semiotic usage of language, action, and scientific imagery (Wormald, 1996). 

4. Plexuses, Ganglia, and the Biological Model of Social Life

Image Source: Gemini AI 

Eliot's engagement with biology extends beyond mere metaphor, proposing a model for the social organism rooted in contemporary physiological concepts. R.A. Greenberg (1975) highlights these specific allusions in his article "Plexuses and Ganglia," revealing how Eliot incorporates "scientific knowledge into the novel's moral and material framework." These physiological terms are co-opted by Eliot to describe the nervous and circulatory system of the provincial town itself. 

4.1. Sympathy as a Moral Neural Network 

The term plexus a network of nerves, blood vessels, or lymphatics and ganglia a cluster of nerve cell bodies are used to describe the interconnectedness of human bodies and minds. This biological language provides the architectural blueprint for the social structure of Middlemarch itself. The novel posits that society is not a collection of isolated, Cartesian minds, but a complex, interdependent neural network. The most powerful biological-moral technology in the novel is sympathy. Lydgate's scientific commitment is to the body; Dorothea’s moral commitment is to the social body. Her ambition to do good, initially vast and vague, is gradually refined through painful experience into targeted acts of imaginative sympathy, such as her selfless decision to help Rosamond and Lydgate. This sympathetic connection acts as the moral nerve fibre, transmitting feeling and ethical energy across the social plexus. However, Eliot also acknowledges the sheer difficulty of achieving this connection: 

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." (Eliot, 1872, Ch. 20) 

This demonstrates that the required moral technology sympathy is an immense, almost physically overwhelming effort, confirming its vital role in preventing social fragmentation. 

4.2. Interdependency and the Social Organism 

A. Palmer (2005) discusses how the novel explores "Intermental Thought," focusing on how moral and political judgments are formed not in isolation, but through constant relation to "societal norms and individual conscience." This relational dynamic is precisely what the biological metaphors suggest. Mason (1971) suggests that Eliot’s emphasis on imagination in both science and morality is key. Imagination, in this context, is the capacity to conceptualize the unseen and to feel the unfelt experience of others. It is the necessary moral technology that complements Lydgate’s material technology (the scalpel and the laboratory). Without this imaginative insight, the scientifically minded individual remains morally impoverished, and the morally minded individual remains socially ineffective, resulting in a breakdown of the social organism. 

5. Modernity, History, and the Technology of Social Relations 

Image Source: Gemini AI 

Middlemarch is set during the historical shifts of the Industrial Revolution and the passage of the Reform Act of 1832, grounding its intellectual conflicts in the tangible realities of emergent capitalist society and technological change. This historical context is vital for understanding the novel’s concern with social order and the impact of modernity. The novel’s setting serves as a crucible where old social structures are tested by new material forces and intellectual ideas. 

5.1. The Railway and the Acceleration of Social Change 

The introduction of the railway serves as a concrete material technology that dramatically alters the speed and scale of life in Middlemarch. D.E. Bivona (2019) investigates Eliot's profound "argument for realism embedded in Middlemarch," highlighting how the novel reflects a social order directly "connected to material and intellectual modernization in Victorian life." The presence of the railway, the constant murmur of political change, and the movement of characters like Lydgate from the metropolitan center to the provincial periphery all highlight the forces reshaping the collective mind and material landscape. The novel captures the 'Epic Syntax' of this transformation, exploring the "complex social relations and the representation of emergent capitalist society" (Epic Syntax, 2012). The railway forces the provincial community to reckon with external forces and faster information flow, compelling a faster evolution of their moral systems. 

5.2. Prototyping Ethical Information Systems 

The core technological problem of modernity, for Eliot, is how to manage the vast influx of information, specialization, and ethical ambiguity it creates. A. Booth (2019), drawing parallels to digital humanities, notes that Eliot was already "prototyping of information systems" and the "interrelation of ethics, knowledge systems, and Victorian modernity" in her work. The novel functions as a highly advanced information system, showing how the fate of one small element (like a single piece of tissue or Dorothea’s single act of compassion) ripples throughout the entire body of the town. The moral technology required for this complex modern world is the ability to move "from moral ignorance to clarity" (Spacks, 2014), a necessary process of "moral development" (Spacks, 2014). 

6. Conclusion 

Middlemarch is not simply a historical novel; it is a laboratory for testing the intellectual and moral technologies of Victorian modernity. George Eliot deftly weaves scientific discourse from the biological language of "plexuses and ganglia" to the visual precision of "microscopy" into the fabric of her narrative, transforming these material concepts into essential moral tools. The novel critiques the rigid empiricism that isolates knowledge from feeling, epitomized by the failures of Lydgate and Casaubon, and champions an imaginative, relational approach to life. By mapping the interdependent structure of the human mind and body onto the complex social organism of Middlemarch, Eliot posits that true progress in the modern era relies not only on material machines, but on the cultivation of robust moral technologies: systems of pervasive sympathy, ethical clarity, and intermental understanding. Dorothea’s "unhistoric act" of compassion, magnified by the novel’s microscopic lens, underscores Eliot's ultimate argument: the ethical health of the modern social order depends on the strength of its smallest, most overlooked moral fibres. Middlemarch thus remains a timeless study of how humankind attempts to manage its internal moral landscape in the face of external technological progress. 

A supporting presentation is provided below to illustrate the key aspects of this discussion:

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Machines, Minds, and Modernity in George Eliot’s Middlemarch | Victorian Science & Morality

Work Cited: 

• Bivona, Daniel Edward. “The Emergence of Emergence: G. H. Lewes, Middlemarch, and Social Order.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 50, no. 1, 2019, pp. 66–80. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/dickstudannu.50.1.0066.  Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

• BOOTH, ALISON. “Particular Webs: Middlemarch, Typologies, and Digital Studies of Women’s Lives.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 47, no. 1, 2019, pp. 5–34. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26789605.  Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.  

• Eliot, George. “Middlemarch by George Eliot.” Project Gutenberg, 1 July 1994, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/145. Accessed 05 Nov. 2025. 

• Greenberg, Robert A. “Plexuses and Ganglia: Scientific Allusion in Middlemarch.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 30, no. 1, 1975, pp. 33–52. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2933224.  Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

• Laughlin, Thomas A. “Journal of the Marxist Literary Group.” Mediations, mediationsjournal.org/articles/eliots-epic-syntax. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

• Mason, Michael York. “Middlemarch and Science: Problems of Life and Mind.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 22, no. 86, 1971, pp. 151–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/513010.  Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

• Palmer, Alan. “Intermental Thought in the Novel: The Middlemarch Mind.” Style, vol. 39, no. 4, 2005, pp. 427–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/style.39.4.427.  Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

• Spacks, Patricia Meyer. “The Power of ‘Middlemarch.’” Daedalus, vol. 143, no. 1, 2014, pp. 64–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43297287. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

• Wormald, Mark. “Microscopy and Semiotic in Middlemarch.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 50, no. 4, 1996, pp. 501–24. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2933926.   Accessed 5 Nov. 2025. 

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