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- Title
The Hidden Abortion Plot in George Eliot's Middlemarch.
- Authors
Thierauf, Doreen
- Abstract
This essay suggests that Rosamond Vincy, George Eliot's paradigm for failed feminine education, intentionally terminates her pregnancy by deciding to go horseback riding and thus illegally assumes control of the Lydgates' family planning. By exploring the moral and political consequences of Rosamond's supremely transgressive action, this piece argues that abortion discourse in Victorian literature not only obscures its own existence to appease hyper-restrictive editorial pressures, but is uniquely suited to showcase the precariousness of middle-class social and biological reproduction. Simultaneously unmentionable and extensively narrated, Rosamond's calculated miscarriage avoids catastrophic revelation when Rosamond manages to make the event appear accidental, reenacting-and reinforcing-a family planning strategy common among middle-class Victorian women.
- Subjects
MIDDLEMARCH (Book : Eliot); ELIOT, George, 1819-1880; ABORTION; MISCARRIAGE in literature; PREGNANCY in literature; SOCIAL conditions of women; 19TH century English literature; LITERARY criticism; THEMES in literature; FICTION; VICTORIAN (Literary period)
- Publication
Victorian Studies, 2014, Vol 56, Issue 3, p479
- ISSN
0042-5222
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.2979/victorianstudies.56.3.479