Middlemarch: Manifestation of Emotion and Memory within Inanimate Objects Anonymous College

Objects might be more human than we think; well, in some sense. Although a plate lacks the capability to display sorrow, psychology studies have suggested evidence that it might contain the ability to embody sentiments after all. In the late nineteenth century, questions concerning the potential for memories and feelings to move outside the mind were regularly discussed. In fact, the topic became common in literary works, including George Eliot’s Middlemarch. In this novel, emotion and memory both manifest within inanimate objects because of character’s psychological association of the identity and the physical remnants of an individual, to material commodities.

Frequently demonstrated throughout the novel, the identification of self through material belongings displaces one’s emotional sentiments onto abiotic entities (Vrettos 200-201). While analyzing psychology in Victorian literature, Athena Vrettos notes, “[Nineteenth century psychologist and philosopher] William James describes clothes, furniture, and collections of personal property as extensions of the body” (200). These inanimate objects are argued by James to form the “innermost part of the material self…[If they are lost, we experience] a sense of the shrinkage of...