From the Sublime to the Picturesque: Dorothea's Husbands, Embodied in Rome

AbstractThis article considers sightseeing as a useful metaphor for reading Dorothea's courtship and matrimonial journeys in George Eliot's Middlemarch. Through a focus on the visual idiom of the novel's Roman sections, I suggest that Dorothea's two husbands can be understood as embodiments of contrasting aesthetic categories of sightseeing: deathly Casaubon as the overwhelming sublime, while sunny Ladislaw is the manageable and accessible picturesque. Through a discussion of nineteenth-century travel to Italy, and its contingent expectations and disappointments, I chart Dorothea's journey from her first husband to her second, from Casaubon to Ladislaw, from the sublime to the picturesque.