This Side of Silence

'Middlemarch' and Moral Perfectionism in a Different Voice

Abstract

Moral perfectionism, for Stanley Cavell, is the lifelong struggle to side with the better (the unattained but attainable) version of oneself, where this better self is a) pursued through speaking for the consent of others with whom you are, or want to be, in community and b) never fully realisable because justice itself is never fully realisable. A glaring omission from Cavell’s list, in the opening pages of Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, of the texts that demonstrate this struggle is surely George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

Cavell read and admired George Eliot. He used examples from her other novels to explore moral judgment in The Claim of Reason and even hints briefly in both Cities of Words and Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow that her work (along with Jane Austen’s) is a forerunner of the remarriage comedies, some of which are included in the list. Spinoza’s Ethics is there too—famously translated by Eliot and providing a philosophical blueprint for much of her work.

In this paper, I suggest that Middlemarch exemplifies Cavellian moral perfectionism in its investigation of the moral perfectionist struggle as experienced by its major characters and also in three additionally instructive ways. First, it helps us address the central importance of voice for moral perfectionism and exemplifies a philosophical voice ingeniously close to the human voice. Second, it illuminates the productive tension within moral perfectionism between searching for one’s voice (Emerson calls this “whim”) and attending closely to the minutiae of ordinary life (feminists call this “care”). And third, it endorses a version of Cavellian moral perfectionism that reinforces the primary importance of caring. I hope that the overall effect of this argument will be to reinforce ascendent readings of Cavell’s work as pertinent to, and reflective of, feminist care ethics.