In The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism, S. Pearl Brilmyer sets out to redefine realism by centering our attention on the handling of character in British novels from 1870 to 1920. As she compellingly demonstrates, these novels work according to a logic that is quite different from that of mid-century high-realist novels on the one hand and modernist novels on the other, and as a result its protocols and aims have remained largely invisible. Unfamiliar as it might be, however, this logic is internally coherent, consistently pursued, and in keeping with contemporary scientific paradigms. It reflects a fundamental shift in conceptions of personhood, for rather than presenting character in terms of interiority and development, later realists pursued a dynamic materialist account of character as plastic, impressible, spontaneous, impulsive, relational, and vital.
Brilmyer’s chapter on Eliot’s Middlemarch establishes the central claims and methodological protocols...
University of California Press