Abstract
This chapter argues that even an author as aesthetically, philosophically, and intellectually superior as George Eliot was engaged with her period’s unusual fascination with hands. It begins by mapping the terrain in which material and cultural developments—mainly the rise of industrialization and the emergence of new evolutionary theories—caused the hand to become a particularly rich site of representation for Victorian fiction writers. The Victorians were highly cognizant of the materiality of their hands precisely because unprecedented changes in industry and science made them the first people to experience a radical disruption of this supposedly distinguishing mark of their humanity. Given this unique historical context, I examine how and why Eliot prioritized representations of hands in her fiction. The chapter presents hands in relation to physical and intellectual labor in Adam Bede (1859), Felix Holt (1866), and Middlemarch (1871–1872), and to family and religious affiliation in The Mill on the Floss (1860), Romola (1863) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Such a lens offers us new and alternate ways of assessing Eliot’s approach to realism and provides an embodied dimension to her most sacred concern for human sympathy.
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Capuano, P.J. (2019). Handling George Eliot’s Fiction. In: Arnold, J., Marz Harper, L. (eds) George Eliot. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10626-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10626-3_8
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